Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Really, there's not much to journal about except the drought and the heat. The plants in the garden were still hanging in there at the end of June.
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| The garden on June 29, 2022. |
But according to my little sister's records, for rainfall, we only got:
- 0.39" on June 6.
- 0.11" on June 7.
- 1.67" on June 9.
- 0.61" on June 10.
- 0.02" on June 18.
2.8" of rain for the entire month of June, most of it coming in the first 1/3 of the month. Nothing to speak of since then, but the temperatures were in the mid- to upper-90s for almost the entire second half of the month. By the end of this first week of July, it's becoming pretty apparent that we're in big trouble.
Two days in the outlook for July where we might get some rain, but chances aren't very good on either of those days.
So here we are again. I'm thinking back to last summer when I started my blog, about how hot and dry it was, and how I was trying to keep a few things alive, but it wasn't working. This year is worse so far as the rain and heat are concerned.
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| Watermelon vine suffering in the heat. |
Last summer I lost my little Carolina Buckthorn tree (Frangula caroliniana) because I didn't water it. I made the mistake of assuming that because it was a native tree, that it was adapted to the hot dry weather and while it might shed its leaves, it would just sort of "hibernate" and bounce back in the spring. It didn't.
So this year, I'm trying my best to keep a few things alive with water and mulch, and also by shading them from the hot sun. I'm not so sure the plants can even survive just with water. That sun is relentless, beating down on them, heating the leaves and surrounding soil to well over 120° F - day after day after day.
Some of the plants, including the blueberries, the blackberries and the apple trees, get a bit of relief from the sun when the shade from the pecan trees moves over them in mid-afternoon. But others things, including the strawberries, the American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) and the Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida), aren't in the shade until very late in the day.
I don't have any proper shade cloth, so I've resorted to using an old bed skirt over the strawberry bed, and have suspended some old sheets over the dogwood and hazelnut trees. I've also tried to shade part of the row of Rutgers tomatoes.
I have mulched around the Purple Coneflower plants in the west flowerbed, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough to save them without some shade. They went from pink and beautiful to brown and dead-looking in just a matter of days once the temperatures started to hit the upper 90s and low 100s every day.
Three of the four rain barrels have been connected together, but they've already been emptied twice this spring (that's over 300 gallons of water!). After we missed out on the rain last week, I finally used the garden hose to fill them back up with "city water." But after only a bit of watering yesterday and this morning, the first barrel is already 1/3rd gone. On a somewhat positive note, I think the straw mulch is helping. I tested the soil under the mulch around several plants with my finger and the soil was still damp and cool around all of them.
I just think the intense sunlight is going to be a big problem even for plants that have a heavy later of mulch. So I'm looking at buying some rolls of burlap to use as shade cloth (because I HATE the thought of using plastic shade cloth!).
The phone rang just a few minutes ago. Our County Judge has issued a burn ban until further notice.
Saturday, July 30, 2022
We've made it to the end of July, but there's only one way to sum up the month: July 2022 has been bad.
Until this past Thursday, our last rain was on June 18, when we got 0.02" - really just enough to dampen the grass. While the last week of June was pretty nice (highs only in the low 90s), summer came back with a vengeance in July.
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| July 2022 daily highs and lows, from accuweather.com. |
We've had day after day after day of temperatures above 100° F, low humidity, and no rain. It has been even hotter than the July outlook said it would be. Everything is suffering from the heat and the drought.
The cucumbers that were looking Ok at the end of June gave up pretty quickly to the heat. I watered them once, but decided it was really a lost cause, and just quit on them and let them die. We weren't getting many cucumbers anyway, and the vines were not going to start putting on new fruit even if I kept them alive.
But I kept trying to water other things. Every morning and/or evening, I would fill my little green plastic watering can over and over and over, making many trips back and forth from the water barrels to the garden; to the flower beds; to the blueberries; to the blackberries; to the dogwood; to the hazelnut trees; the strawberries; the pumpkin; the watermelon....
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| My little green plastic watering can from Atwoods. It's cheap and flimsy, but I like using it. I think it holds about two gallons of water. |
But the water alone didn't really seem to be making much difference. The sun was just killing everything, and as I told my sister when she asked how my tomatoes were doing, "they're boiling in their jackets."
I finally gave up on the pumpkin, the watermelons, and the Rutgers tomatoes. I wasn't going to be able to save them. I tried saving the corn, but it was obvious when it started to tassel that it wasn't going to make anything...the tassels where white and didn't have any pollen on them. I gave up on the corn too.
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| Bell peppers that have dropped from the heat. The day I took this picture, I picked up 17 peppers just from the first few plants in the row. |
The bell pepper plants were late getting started (for some reason I couldn't get my seeds to sprout this year). So they were just starting to set fruit as the heat and drought arrived. Even keeping them watered wasn't enough. The little peppers might get up to the size of a half-dollar and then I'd find them on the ground under the plants. The ones that didn't drop off looked like they'd been dipped in scalding water.
I finally went ahead and ordered a 40% shade cloth to go over the strawberries.
It seems to work very well, and I like that I can water the bed without having to pull the cover off, which is what I had to do with the old bed skirt that I was using. (The bed skirt disintegrated in the sun, by the way, and was ripped to shreds when a dust devil tore through the garden one afternoon. That dust devil messed up so many things and I was already so frustrated by the heat and drought that it was all I could do to keep from grabbing the weed eater and just cutting everything down to the ground!!!!)
So I took some more old sheets and another bed skirt and tried to shade the peppers, hoping that at least a little bit of protection from the sun would keep them alive and hopefully allow them to set some fruit.
It looked pretty tacky. And several times the wind caught the sheets and the panel that was leaning up over the beans fell over on them. RAF helped me drive some t-posts at the ends of those rows, so the panel is now secured to the posts and won't fall over. I think the peppers are looking better, but I'll just have to wait and see if I actually get any peppers in August.
All in all, I guess I should consider myself lucky to have kept alive the few things that I did manage to keep alive. And THANKFULLY, WE FINALLY GOT SOME RAIN!
We didn't get much today (we're in the area with no rain on both radar shots). And we haven't gotten as much as some other areas (notice the flash flood warnings up near Ponca and Rogers) but as of yesterday afternoon, little sister said we had gotten right at 1.75" and I'm thankful for every single drop!!!!
I've spent a lot of time since last summer trying to learn more about no-till and one of my favorite YouTube channels is the No-Till Growers channel. Farmer Jesse did a video this summer where he said, "Just keep planting."
