We have had plenty of rain here. I haven’t watered at all this year. We had a couple ferocious windstorms that knocked off a lot of apples, but thankfully our trees were not harmed. The dead trees here are from Emerald Ash Borer.
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Very little rain here since the spring and we’ve been between abnormally dry and moderate drought ever since. It isn’t enough to be killing established trees, but anything that was planted and not watered well regularly did die - lots of expensive landscaping efforts wasted.
The biggest thing for me and most people I know in our area and further west is that the animals have little food, so are worse than ever and destroying most of what I grow. All pears, apples and peaches gone well before they even sized up, let alone ripened. For the first time ever, deer or raccoons or something took all the figs, even totally unripe ones. They have even stolen almost all of my unripe astringent Asian, hybrid and American persimmons. Many of the remaining fruit on my Prok persimmon, which had a good crop hanging, have tooth marks from animals sampling them in desperation.
I have a couple of large oaks in the back yard and around this time of year I would usually begin to hear regular “pings” through the roof as the acorns fall or are knocked down by squirrels. This year there is a regular rain of acorn shell bits from the trees as the squirrels are eating them all before they fall. The squirrels are all thin and I expect it will be a very hard winter for them unless they can steal enough bird seed from the feeders. Maybe there will be fewer to steal everything next year.
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I’m surprised you are so dry given that you are only 50 miles from me.
Well it’s borne out in this drought map:
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
It is interesting how spotty things are.
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Ayup.
While we’ve had water in wells and lakes this year (unlike last year, when oak and beech forests in nearby hills turned brown in August), the combination of early spring and heat, extreme summer heat and drought has been worse on the fruit than just drought. We’ve had a lot of summer fruit ripen 3-4 weeks early and apples ripening at the end of August instead of mid-October. I’ve also had apples like Gravenstein cooked on the sunny side still hanging in the tree. Apples with low density of flesh were a bust this year.
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Indeed. I think it is even spottier than the maps show, since so much of the summer rain is thunderstorms, etc. that can vary a lot on a local level. My mother is at a senior living place 2 miles from me and she frequently gets a lot more rain as measured in her rain gauge in her tiny garden box she has there than I get in the rain gauge in my yard - same make and model of gauges. And my yard and plants look worse to me than those at my inlaws in WV where drought monitor shows extreme drought.
If I remember, I believe I watched a lot of the rain I was hoping for track further north, so that is probably why you are doing better.
At one point I was supposed to get 2.5 inches from what is coming through now, but it looks like that has dropped like so many times this summer. We are about done and there is only .4 inches in the gauge.
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This has save my trees and bushes from drought. Use a 2 1/2 gallon plastic water container that comes with a spigot. (from the supermarket). Carefully cut a large opening in the top and fill with water. Place it within the drip line with the spigot set to a drip or slow stream.
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Yep. It’s been hot and dry most of this summer in Nashville. River levels are all down. I have a watering system that gives my veg garden and orchard just enough to keep everything alive including my container citrus garden. The one thing I can be thankful about is the fact that I have seen very little anthracnose on my vegetables. Almost all of my tomatoes have been perfect…just ask my Voles. I have finally gotten those pests under some semblance of control. All I changed was the heavy application of castor oil mixed with peppermint Castile soap. Seems to be working.
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NE kansas is beginning to pull out of a 5 year drought cycle. Ponds are slowly filling back up. We are definately still short on water. We are better off that we have been as the rainy 5 year cycle has started.
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My new puppy and I discovered a yellow jacket nest hidden at the base of an apple tree. It was not for the faint of heart. Lots of squealing, screaming, and thrashing around on the ground. And you should have seen the puppy!
We read that dawn dishwashing liquid would do the trick and it did!! Bought a big bottle of dawn, my hubby squirted a big amt of it into the hole at night, adding a bucketful of water with half a cup of dawn, and then finished with another big squirt. The hole was big enough to let in the entire bucket of water despite all the recent rain so it was pretty good sized.
A check the next morning revealed no yellow jackets visible. I did see one arrive later in the day and try to enter the nest to no avail. What a relief.
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Rain drains exceptionally fast here, so at 48” on the year it’s hard to say it hasn’t been dry. I water everything daily still, sometimes twice a day like today with it being 90. But we have the “KDH split” where the towns to our north and south get dumped on but we get minimal rain seemingly. Not the drought many are having. I’d be happy with like 1/2” of rain daily at about 8am. Then I wouldn’t have to water at all. But like most others we got .10” of rain all June. Very little on July, with august finally getting decent rain, September has also been ok with almost 6” of rain.
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I wanted to do that when I had a nest of wasps under a medlar, but was affraid to kill the tree. I ended up filling as much of the underground network with a watering hose and covering the exits until they either gave up or got swallowed overnight by some fast growing mycellium.
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Drought is my friend trying to grow fruit in the river valley. The orchard on glacier drift hilltop soil does better in wet years. It pays to hedge your bets in Kansas. Not only in the types of fruit you grow, but location.
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We finally have gotten some rain in SW Ohio. It was over 3" a couple of days ago and has been slowly raining since then. We desperately needed it. Maybe a little more rain expected the next two mornings.
Horrible to see water damage in NC and SE USA. I pray for all those effected.
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There was so much water going through I think it will be ok but time will tell. It rained all day the last two days so that might help. My significant other wanted to pour gasoline so I won out.
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