RAIN!

[curly_kate]

We're bracing for some big storms today, but after that the weather looks sunny and dry for the next seven. I have this feeling that in another week or two, I'll be on here complaining about the drought! It doesn't seem like there's a happy medium - either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold.

 

[digitS']

Kate, I was just a week ago or so, complaining that I was tilling the glacial till un-till . . . . when? Every time it would warm up to summer-like conditions, the weather would go right back to cool, cloudy and wind! None of the warm-season plants could grow! And, I was thinking I'd have to turn on the heat in the house about the 1st of July . . .

Then the western heat wave hit! We had a brief break in the searing conditions but it is right now above 90f with wind gusts of 25mph. The wind, I suppose, has been constant over the last 4 or 5 months. It hasn't been terrible nor too far from normal but I'd sure appreciate hitting a little closer to normal on just a few days each week.

Tuff on the plants - tuff on the gardener. Now, we have forest fires - nearly 9,000 lightening strikes in 3 states (link). Prime conditions over the next few weeks for any spark to blow into an inferno.

Steve

 

[dewdropsinwv]

We're bracing for some big storms today, but after that the weather looks sunny and dry for the next seven. I have this feeling that in another week or two, I'll be on here complaining about the drought! It doesn't seem like there's a happy medium - either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold.

Kate, we got those same storms herein WV just about an hour or so ago..... the wind blew the corn over again.... hope it didn't break this time. This weather pattern is crazy!!!

 

[curly_kate]

The weird thing is, we didn't get ANYTHING off those storms! Rained north & south but missed us entirely!

 

[MontyJ]

Weatherman just announced that we have had over 8" of rain in the last 16 days. Supposed to dry out for a few days...finally.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I finally get to add to this thread. We had a pretty wet spring but on June 1st we got 1.8 of rain, on June 16th we had 0.15, and that was it until late yesterday. Then about 7:00 p.m. we had pretty lights in the sky and celebratory noises all around. I hurriedly got the onions in from the drying racks and turned off the water I was irrigating with.

Then it hit! A true gully washer! A frog strangler! The temperature dropped from the upper 90s to the upper 70s. An empty rain barrel was blown over and rolled over to the propane tank.

We got a whole glorious 0.1 in the rain gauge, a full one tenth of an inch. Why, the dust will be settled on our dirt road until close to noon today! According to the forecast thats it for the foreseeable future, but we finally had our rain!

I was talking to my brother over in East Tennessee last night. Water is standing in his garden. His cabbages and tomatoes have drowned. He put in a cattle panel to trellis the cucumbers but his garden is so wet he cant get in there to train them. At least those look good to him from a distance.

Feast or famine

 

[journey11]

We had another downpour yesterday evening. The weather guys said it would clear out and be nice for the weekend, but I just checked weather.com and it has changed... There are several 30% chances for scattered thunderstorms over the weekend. That's just plain WRONG! to get our hopes up like that!

DH hasn't been able to mow so our grass is ridiculously high. Grass is also sprouting up everywhere. There is nicer lawn growing in my garden than there is in the yard. Things are seriously out of control here. My yard and garden look like a jungle.

If you had 10" high grass growing thickly down your rows, what strategy would you employ to try to kill it? I am really at a loss here. :/ Some rows are wide enough to till (should it ever dry out). But I think I may be stuck with hand-pulling the rest.

 

[so lucky]

If the grass is in the paths, you could cover it with cardboard or old carpet. You could pour boiling water on them, or use your propane torch. Or mow it down and consider it garden path mulch. Cover the grass with newspaper and boards, shingles, siding, black contractors' plastic bags, etc. I think if you till it, you will then just have a big muddy mess to have to walk in.

 

[journey11]

I'm about to mow it for hay.

I've got a couple hundred feet of rubber coal conveyor belt DH got from the plant. May have to try to work that in there (it's a bit cumbersome, even in shorter sections). Good thing about it is that it gets really hot and would fry any slugs that tried to hide under there. Ah well, I suppose my neighbors have seen it all by this point... SMH...

 

[majorcatfish]

well lookie there it's raining again..... how about that and i thought we were going to dry out.........

but on a happy note our a/c is fixed.....
and the bill not so priceless....