weather in the garden # 140!

Rain over past few days has helped. Another 90+ day today still have to concentrate on mulching

A few inches of rain here, but we are at minus 9" for the year......flowers are bedraggled....

just a small rain shower late yesterday. there will no more for a week. Drat!

We had a 2 min. shower here.....not much hope for the flowers!

71° going to 81. partly cloudy No rain predicted until Mon.

Three drops plopped onto my windshield....that's all the rain today!

3 more drops than we had.

Even my sunflowers haven't been very productive. Have to fill the birdfeeder daily.. It is usually a solid wall of birds. Poor creatures don't have much else to feed them. I try to keep a birdbath operational also. Course that doubles as a dog watering hole too.

Still have to lay a hose down in front of the shrubs and trees that were planted last year. Everything intended for this year stayed in pots for daily container watering. The water we had earlier in the week did reduce the need a little bit.

Every Sunday we fill containers with mulch at the town dump. Once a shrub section gets a big enough deposit on it, it does make a difference.

I am considering starting an aeroponics aka plant tower project. Less water, less digging, less to worry about toxic chemicals in the ground.

This has certainly been a drought year....who knows about next summer.....we could have rain every other day!

The dryness has affected slender birch trees. they have lost all their leaves. We will see which ones produce new leaves next spring.

I was traveling through Pepperell & crossed the Nashua River where there were some kayakers.....were you out paddling, Bill? Missed my turn in Nashua....hate the cities! Anyway I'm home & it's hot & dry....UGH!

79° It is so dry here. the birch trees are shedding their leaves. How are the Japanese Maples doing Bill?

70° but going up to 86. that is too hot for my taste.

Not a drop of rain predicted for here......

In the 70s We get explanations about how weather fronts are blocking rain ugh!

My japanese dogwood lost its leaves, but the solitary chinese birch sapling I have is fine. I don't think the amounts of water were much different. Of the two atlas cedars I planted last year, only one seems to be thriving, so it is hard to account for which plants pull through.

We had one pretty good rain last week but the grass is brown again.

I am reading these post and I am puzzled that everyone's plants are experiencing problems. Do you guys water your garden or you don't ? Do you have water restrictions, because some years ago we had restrictions.

I have a well.....I get maybe 2 gallons a minute....no way can I water....I collect rain in a barrel, but don't like to get it completely dry...however, this summer it was completely dry....I have about half a barrel left now.....watered some dahlias, that's it!

yes we have a watering ban & it is the driest summer 3 months on record. We usually have the ban in our town, but some of the surrounding towns do not. Some people have their own wells, but the water comes from the same acquifer so helps drain it.

This is a record breaking drought. Neighboring towns have serious bans and our town has us on the honor system to conserve water as we see fit. Anyone who regularly waters their lawn is generally considered to be antisocial.. The ground is naturally sandy anyway so without a high enough aquapher we're talking about ground that is really really dry and not easily remedied by normal watering. I'm talking about leaving hoses for a long time at the base of the few plants I think it is OK to protect.

We're supposed to have a little rain tonight.

We were not on the river Marilyn, was actually driving back from vacation on the cape.

My town is on a full water ban except for veggy gardens. We are on well so I am watering and have still have trees that have lost all or most of their leaves. Next spring will be interesting on who survives.

Glad you got away, Bill! I was on Mascoma Lake in NH, traveling from my friend in Harvard, MA....dry everywhere! We did have a few showers last night.....I see many trees looking very stressed...

We got a good bit of rain that started about 5.30 and it's still raining . I was so happy for the rain too because I got a break on going to wet my Church Garden .The landscapers were here on Tuesday so the lawn got a nice soaking and my plants are also happy .

Have no idea if we will get Hermine's rain this weekend or not......really need it even though timing is poor!

61° our watering ban is not new, it has been on all summer. We have lost some dwarf irises, almost never lose those. The Ipswich river has a low flow in the summer so our bans are not new. It includes people with private wells as their water comes from the same aquifer. The slimmer birch trees have lost their leaves & a few other trees have lost a few. We use a watering can to water new irises when they are put in or moved. Running a hose for a long time is against the sprit of the ban; sorry. No problem giving them a small drink. Hoping for rain on Mon. No knowing if the rain will get to us or Bill.

Hopefully, it will get here.....gardens are pretty sad looking......am worried about my JMs......

We are experiencing Spring weather ,it's 74 degrees going down to 63 tonight.My plants look wilted with the cool weather and it's also windy.

70° cloudy

Looks like NO rain for us....

In the 60s all day. No sign of rain here.

no rain here - wife said she passed the concord river and it dry going down Rt 3. a river here in town that flows into the nashua river is also dry. The pond in my back yard has almost dried up. have never seen it so bad.

Walk the dog near Leadmine Brook.....just a trickle! Praying about well!

We've had a bit of rain for the past few nights, and it is still overcast this morning. Things are generally not so dry at the moment and its been over a week since I even put water into the potted trees. I sorted my potted things over labor day and I count nearly a third of the potted trees and shrubs are losses for lack of sufficient water. Any replacements are going to be pretty drought tolerant this time. Since I was by myself, I made a few trips to the dump to get compost. So glad because there is something on the ground to hold this rain. Temps are bouncing high and low.

Yes, here (next town to Rosemary's) it has rained off and on since Tuesday (the first day of school), though in uncertain quantities. It's really starting to look like the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"--regarding, at least, those plants that have survived. It was pretty dry the previous spring, too, and the thought of all the digging to put in bare-root natives (most of which have disappeared) two years ago makes me groan.

Despite that unpromising start to this gardening journey, I'm hooked now. There is so much to find out! Why are the plants so much happier with rain than with tap water? There must be more to it than the chemicals....

I bet if you scratch the surface the rain we had did not even go down 1/2 inch.

The forecast is for more more showers tonight....keeping my fingers crossed....

Nice to meet you here, FM!

Probably osmosis has something to do with why there is some benefit to even the small amounts of rain we are getting. The rain touches the ground EVERYWHERE. We have a chlorine filter for all of our water. My husband regularly suggests that makes us have to replace the filters often, but I prefer to keep it this way because who wants a drink of chlorine? Once again, the areas with good water retention from compost or additives benefit the most from our little bit of rain. The pots have gel, particles of organic vermiculite and a lot of pine "fines" or pine bark in them. I mix my own. I think I will make a trip for more free compost this weekend although it spills all over the back of the car.

FaintlyMacabre! Great name. Really pricks my curiosity about what kind of plants you grow.

>>The rain touches the ground EVERYWHERE.

Ah--one of my neighbors suggested something similar: evenness of coverage. Sprinklers have heavy and lighter areas. I *have* been watering a good deal (almost everything is new in my yard) but don't feel too profligate--it's short-term plus our water supplier (MWRA--yours as well?) doesn't even have to contemplate a water ban yet. (Just stay alive to bloom another year, plants!!)

Thanks for the welcome, Rosemary. Faintly Macabre is a character in _The Phantom Tollbooth._ I don't have any meat-eating plants, but those black or dark purple varieties of hollyhocks, poppies, etc., do interest me......

I haven't had any hollyhocks in my garden for several years.....one appeared this year.....don't know how....but I'll be interested to see what color it is next year.....I do love the dark ones best!