Well, oddly enough, all of my container plants are doing well (they are usually the first to show signs of stress), but those Kaleidoscope Abelias I bought stupidly (not realizing we were suddenly about to have 98-100+ degree days) wilt every day where I have them planted. I am carrying water out to them twice a day and hoping that will be enough to keep them alive. They usually perk up at night and by noonish, they are drooping again.

Thank goodness I haven't bought anything else (except for container stuff) and won't 'til fall now.

My dahlias, peonys, milkweed and elephant ears are the things that seem to wilt before anything else.

I won't be buying anything else, but still need to figure out how to handle the 200+ seedlings that are still in peat pots.

I've got one rhododendron and one hydrangea that are wilting every day, despite both being in shady spots. Everything else is holding up quite well. All the shrubs I planted in the winter/early spring look good. The perennials I have planted recently are surviving. I don't know how much longer they can go without a really good soaking though (my watering is pretty sparse!)

I have a few more things to plant and have been planting in the evening. Ollierose, 200 seedlings, wow, you have been busy! Can you plant them out and provide some temporary shade for those that are in sun until they get a little bigger?

I'm really hoping for rain today or tomorrow!

I'm hoping for rain myself.

It seems my front/southeast bed is getting more light than last year (maybe I am crazy) First plants to show signs of problems are our repeat-bloom hydrangeas, which get sun up until ~2-3pm. They begin wilting, then within an hour or so, the sunny border speedwell flowers start to fall over. Shortly after that, the blackeyed susan flowers (at the stem) start to bend over. By morning, everything is A-OK again.

Our variegated hydrangeas were doing terrible, nearly dead, so we replanted in pots, today they were very perked up and happy(ier). The LIR hydrangeas went in that same place. We'll see how they are tonight.

Stupid me, I had to have those LIR hydrangeas. Meh. Couldn't help myself, wound up getting a couple of foamflower hybrids and a lime-rickey heuchera at the same time. Those are fine. Actually, the 20 plants (coreopsis, daylillies, gardenias, salvia) that I put in Memorial Day are doing amazing, with only watering once a week for ~15 seconds per plant (2" layer of mulch around them).

I've got one rhododendron and one hydrangea that are wilting every day, despite both being in shady spots.

Dry areas around individual plants will wick away the water you do give them. So it is not necessarily that the plant itself needs that much water, but it is losing it to competition.

YES!!!! The heat is HORRIBLE! I am trying to plant heat and drought tolerant plants this year but they still need water to establish. I picked up some black elephant ears yesterday at the growers outlet (couldn't help it) and I know I shouldn't have with the water situation. Do you think I can water them with bathwater? I am hoping to pick up a couple of rain barrels from Thyme After Thyme in the next couple of weeks.

'I've got one rhododendron and one hydrangea that are wilting every day, despite both being in shady spots.'

Same for me, these two wilt before anything else does. I am "catching" quite a bit of water in the house while waiting for it to get hot, and doing all I can to conserve. I am pretty discouraged right now, because it is so hot even I can't stand to be out there long enough to do much of anything. Oh well, the midwest is drowning in rain, and we can't even get a drop!

well, i still hear thunder, but it's looking like the metro area isn't gonna get anything tonight. judging by clouds and lightning, it looks like everything basically squeaked by on the south west side of town.

well, i can always hope for rain every other day of the week. man...every day...wouldn't that be nice?

I had extra mulch put out yesterday in all of the front beds. Hopefully, that will help.

So disappointing -- the thunder sounded so close and for a while it got really windy, but no rain. I hope some of you got rained on!

Yesterday, weather.com said chance of rain was 60% for today. Now it says only 40%...

Last night things looked worse -- my newly planted Shasta daisies had totally collapsed, several other perennials were a little wilted, and all hydrangeas and rhodies were looking sorry (they had perked up a bit this morning though). I watered the Shastas and hydrangeas but held out on the rest, hoping for rain today.

ollierose -- Just had a thought. Do you have a shady spot close to the house that would be flat enough to lay some large plastic trays on? If so, try this: put about an inch of water in the trays (put out a mosquito dunk if you think you need to) and set the seedling pots in the trays. I just remembered that I did that last year with some small, 4-inch pots of things when I bought them too late to plant and they did really well for about three weeks 'til I had an opportunity to do something with them. It was kind of a pain to fill the trays, but less painful then watering all of the little pots.

Too days of rain potential and nothing to show for it! I hope someone got some rain, but it wasn't at my house. Today doesn't look much better, but you never know.

Things are holding up reasonably well. Perennials/annuals planted this year occasionally need a drink. But we can't go on like this all summer.

So far, so good over here in Woodstock, but we'd really like to see some rain. Monday night thunder was exciting, but not a drop here.

Maybe that thunder was from "heat lightning". I sure didn't see a drop of rain, and it looked like the radar showed some rain SW of ATL.

I recently moved so no veggie garden and only a few young trees are my new plantings. My rain barrel is dry, but I've got graywater in another barrel. The drought has kicked back in, and this heat is drying everything up. Are we seeing the desertification of metro-Atlanta? :(

Hang in there folks... we'll get some rain. A little too late for most of my peaches & cream corn, but there is still hope for the silver queen which has just started tassling.

In the early morning I always do a walk about the garden, mostly because things look nice and fresh before the heat sets in for the day. The leaves of the corn always curl up from the sun & heat, but as long as they open back up during the night then there's hope. Noticed this morning that most of my peaches & cream were still curled, so it's slow walking and low singing for it. Could be worse. Look at our neighbors in Iowa and other states that have been hit by flooding. Imagine seeing your home breaking apart and washing away..... think we are still blessed.

Shot

shot -- You are so right. (We will sing some "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" for your peaches and cream though.) :) We are very blessed to all still have homes to go into to get out of the sun and gardens to get into to give us meaningful work.

But a little rain? I wouldn't turn it down... :)

Last time it rained at our house was May 10th.

I mulched extra carefully this year and things look a little rough but are holding up OK. But only because I have watered a little. Thank goodness they lifted the total water ban.

Carrolbarrel07, I've considered visiting the Arizona forum again to learn how they get things to grow with little to no water and blazing hot sun. I actually read their forum last year. How sad is that?

Shot....
Just pulled up the SE Radar and looks like showers are breaking out all around Laurens Co. Hope your corn & other veggies get some moisture!
Any excess, please send our way, up here in Georgia's High Desert.
Rb

WOOT WOOT WOOT!!! WE GOT A LITTLE RAIN... Not really measureable probably, but RAIN! Maybe more tonight and the days ahead.

Mk87, guess that is better than "when we gather at the river" as others are singing. I watch the Tropical Update on the weather channel hoping to see a low pressure system moving our way.

Opal52, WOW! You need some rain badly then. Raising my glass of juice to you in hopes of some rain for you. SALUTE!

Razorback, yeah, the rain was spotty and hope most of it went to our farmers as without them...... don't even want to thing about that.

Gotta tell yall a little story that I saw on the news several years ago during a drought. They were doing a segment on the dairy farmers and the lack of rain causing the grass not to grow so the farmers had to feed the cows hay. They produce as much milk fed with hay as green grass... they interviewed a lady in the grocery store and ask her what she thought about it. She said it didn't bother her as she got her milk in the grocery store.

Shot

Raining now in the 30309 zip code (midtown) started at 4pm on the nose. Been pretty solid coming down for ~5 minutes. May not last long, but I'll take anything at this point. I just hope it's raining at the house right now, 3-4 miles away.

Jumping for joy!!! It has been raining here for about 25 minutes. I did go out and water my newly planted flowers and shrubs in the Zoo garden, the hanging baskets of lantana and the veggies earlier. But it was so hot, I went back in the house. Meant to go out earlier but it was even muggy at 6 am when I took the pooches out. I did get about and inch of rain on Monday afternoon - it was something too, the sun was shining from the west and the cloud over us was dropping heavy raindrops straight down. The sunlight shined through the drops and made them sparkle like crystals. It was pretty but what I was happy to see was the rain.

Thank you, shot, for sending it our way! We're are getting some now (complete with thunder and lightening). Hooray!

ESH, glad that you and others got some rain. We probably only got about a tenth total, but everything is smiling...

Oh, in the previous message I meant to say that cows do NOT produce as much milk eating hay as they do grass, but you all know that anyway.

Shot
This is for you ESH.

{{gwi:26106}}

Shot, how come my sunflowers never smile at me like that?? =(

Glad ya'll are getting some reprieve today. We didn't get any today but were blessed with more than I could catch on Monday. We've been lucky I guess over here on the state line all spring. It was starting to get dry again but we got a downpour Monday night and I was able to collect about 160 gallons just in random buckets, trash cans, etc...around the drip line until they filled to the point of overflowing. Oddly weather.com's rainfall totals for my zip code totaled 0.02 which I find very hard to believe unless it just sat right over our house the whole time.

I just bought a used 1700+ gallon above ground pool off of craigslist for $25 bucks that I'm going to reassemble and tuck away in the woodline downhill from the house where no one can see it. I'm hoping this will make a great inexpensive cistern for piping our rainwater and grey water into to use for the garden which should take the burden off of our well and ease the concern of it running dry. But I can't put it up until we clear and level the spot for it and rig a cover so the mosquitos and critters can't get in. Gravity will get all of the water into the cistern but I also need to invest in a good heavy duty pump to get the water from there uphill into the garden when I need it. I've borrowed some feed barrels temporarily from a friend so I've got about 400+ gallons of rainwater in reserve at the moment that needs to go into the cistern/pool asap.

Danielle

Thanks for the picture, shot. That is indeed a cheery face. And after tonight's rain, I feel the same way!

Yeah! It just rained here.

Most of my plants are ok because of supplemental watering. But my lawn is already fried.

raining here again in 30312 :) didn't rain long earlier, but got the ground wet. Planted the last two yellow tomatoes in pots just now - i love ikea - 1cu ft round terra cotta pots for $9! :)

hoping this keeps up all night. had to stake up my bell peppers today, they fell over from the weight of the water.

Rain...GORGEOUS rain!!! Only about 1/2 hour of it, but hey...it was water, it was free, and I don't even mind that the weeds are gonna grow too, because of it!

Shot,

Don't know what's in your juice glass, but it sure as heck worked. We got some rain late last night.

It was so nice taking our walk this morning in cooler air with trees still dripping water. I remembered reading your toast and told my husband about it.

Just a little note here to say THANK YOU!

we got a sprinkling around 4-5 and then a downpour for almost an hour around 11.30 last night. Wonderful :)

Sounds like almost everyone on here got rain this week!

Thanks for the IKEA tip, thats a good price. We've spent an eternity in their kitchen dept as we put in an IKEA kitchen last year, I never think to go and look at the garden area.

Good mornin' all!!!
Such a glorious day outside after the little rain yesterday. Been out picking a few peas that I have to get busy and shell soon.

ESH, more sunflowers blooming and they are covered with bees which I love to see. When they get into full bloom will take a photo for you.

Danielle, about the sunflower photo. That particular one was a volunteer from the year before when I had planted that field in sunflowers for the birds. It came up alone and was big and beautiful and had a natural smile on it's face. The blackberries were making and so were the wild plum, so I took toothpicks and made it some eyes and nose.
A tip of the hat, I mean cap, to you and your husband for your conservation of water. Sounds like a great plan.

Opal, you know I can't take any credit for the rain, but I sure like to give others hope. Happy to hear about the rain during the night. Isn't it nice to wake up in the morning to find such??? Yall sound like me, taking the morning stroll. Everything so fresh.... the birds singing... bees working... even welcome the drops off the trees when you touch a limb, but it can kinda take your breath away for a sec... lol... esp down the back of your shirt.

The bluebirds are really busy this morning getting insects. Have about a dozen blue bird houses up...... but that is another forum.

BBL and happy to hear of folks getting rain. The others... it's a comin'

Shot

Woohoo! Rain! I was a dancing fool in my yard yesterday afternoon! Mine are all sitll holding up okay, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more rain today!