My plumies received quite a dose of fire ash the past few days. Other than watering as usual and giving them a bit of a shower, anything I need to do? Just wondering if it adds something to the soil that is not good. Should I just give them a good drenching? Or perhaps some ST wouldn't hurt? Or just talk nice to them? lol
Kathleen
Effects of ash on plumies...
Hi Kathleen, I have it too. I just rinse the leaves when watering. I've been watering every day because of the heat wave and Santa Ana's. The ash is actually not bad for the soil, and I think it makes the soil more acidic, but I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure fertilizer or supplements will do any good this time of year as the growth slows and temperatures drop.
Thanks, Clare. We were very close to the fires, so got quite a bit of the stuff - I was wondering how much was too much. Will carry on as usual.
Sorry to hear that, Kathleen. I bet you were closer than I was. I was about 10 miles from the Santa Rosa fire and 20 miles from the Malibu fire. I had to stay indoors for about 3 days due to the raining ash and smoke. I did not want to complain about that as I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have lost their homes. It is devastating really. I can't even bear the thought of the animals that were lost. That hurts me more than material stuff getting burned not to mention the people that have died -- tragic really.
Yes, thank goodness San Diegans are BIG animal people. Nothing we can do about the wildlife, but that's nature for you. But they immediately started handling evac of small, medium, and large animals. We luckily could take our parrots with us to stay with friends - that's when you know you have *really* good friends! lol Our situation was moderately stressful, inconvenient, and scary - very minor compared to others. :-(
I thought i posted my pics of ash and acid rain damage cause by all the fires we had this last spring..
Anyways have a look what happens when ash falls on your plumies..
Please take care of your plumies!!
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=535617852&context=set-72157594501155091&size=o
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=535618114&context=set-72157594501155091&size=o
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=535735029&context=set-72157594501155091&size=o
Thanks, Robert. We don't have any acid rain here. Lack of rain is part of the problem. It is one of the driest years on record. Regular ash covering everything doesn't seem to cause any problems or changes on the leaves, even if it sits there for days. We've got ash everywhere and will for a while as it blows off the roof tops. I rinse the leaves off when I can. It would be nice if some rain came to help the firefighters and wash everything.
Clare the acid rain was cause by the fires..
It rain when the ash cloud was over us and my pics were the end result...
Normally our rain is 7.0pH which i measure all the time..
Anyways take care..
We should be so lucky as to get rain! :-)
Just shows how differently nature can affect things in different places!
That must have been some toxic stuff, Robert. Sorry about that. It is raining today right now here, but, thankfully, it is not acid rain. I might go measure the Ph if I have time. I was reading about that stuff yesterday: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain and http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/acidrain/2.html and http://www.ec.gc.ca/acidrain/acidfact.html for anyone who is interested. The rain seems clean here anyway and giving everything a little bit of a rinse off which is good.
clare - i think what robert is saying is that the rain becomes acidic because of the fires. you guys not only have airborne particles but also nasty, invisible gases created from the fires. that all mixes in with the rain as it falls producing acid rain. fortunately, the fires are only temporary.
It's not very wet here, but the humidity is wonderful after all that dryness (several days of single digit humidity!).
Thanks, Dete, I understand what Robert is saying, but the rain isn't creating damage to my leaves like it did to his so I think his rain was much more acidic. His smoke cloud was probably thicker and heavier than what we've got here. The closest fire away from me is 10-20 miles, maybe more now. It doesn't appear to be raining closer to where the fire and smoke is at this point. The smoke appears to be traveling west over the Pacific: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/socal_wildfires_oct07.html I'll check the other groups to see if anyone has reported leaf damage from acidic rain, but I don't think that is a problem here.