Drought questions

@galinas,
Did you get any rain today? It looked like we would have gotten some rain for sure. With that misguided anticipation, I did not water my potted plants.

Well, it never rained. I should have known better.

We got a spray. Potted plants, especially when they large have to be watered even if we get rain. The majority of water runs from leaves to the ground, not in the pot. And my mature potted tomato takes at least 2 gallons a day, on very hot days even twice a day.

Here in S. NY we’ve been getting enough rain to keep things moist in the right soil. Quite a down pour yesterday- had to stop working by 1 PM- as much to avoid lightning as rain.

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I didn’t water my trees during the recent “drought”. Maybe 10 days of no rain. Unfortunately it fried two of my successful grafts. I didn’t think a stressed tree would get rid of the grafts first. Since they were growing fine to begin with. Lesson learned. Day after I watered my trees we got almost 2” of rain.

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Our recent 2 weeks of no rain only fried my grass. The only tree struggling was a newly planted bareroot persimmon. All my newly planted potted trees did fine even without watering. They must have grown enough roots since May to extract all the water they need. Only my figs and pawpaws were watered once every few days. Most trees continued growing during the lack of rain.

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Fay is on the way! I hope the rain doesn’t reach too far west. I’ve had too much rain and humidity the past 10 days. I don’t want my bush cherries exploding just before harvest.

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I’m seeing a lot of leaf hopper damage, including on grafts. No reason the grafts should dry up sooner than other parts of the tree by my guess. The bridge has been made and you should have a lot more than 10 days leeway.

Leaf hoppers are hell on grafts in my region (most tender shoots on the tree) and they are hard to keep up with- they show up and can kill grafts in, I don’t know, maybe 2-3 days. They turn completely brown with the very tips burning last.

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I’ve seen tons of small leaf hoppers on my trees. Didn’t think they could cause that kind of damage. Now I will watch out. Maybe it’s time for a round of spray.

The level of damage varies a lot from site to site and even variety to variety. At my orchard, trees tend to get hammered. I just noticed the damage 3 days ago.

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we are officially in serious drought here. been a very hot muggy summer. only got 1.66in. since june 1 putting us 5in. under for the dates averages. for the stuff I’ve been watering every few days, the growth has been phenomenal! b. currants are weighed to the ground with fruit. rhubarb has been putting out huge 5ft. long stalks and leaves. going to be a big crop on the raspberries also. strawberries are huge and delicious!

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Not rubbing in…but we just got 2” of rain today :blush:

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yeah my brother in CT says they’ve beeb getting some heavy showers down his way. seems the further north you go in new england the drier it has been. s. Quebec is in worse shape than us. fruit producers that don’t have irrigation will get near 0 crop. they have huge fields of honey berries , strawberries and blueberries that are failing or may fail if we don’t get rain soon! potato plants are half the size they should be for this time of year and the oats have mostly dried up or are stunted. seems to be a crappy year for everything!

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We got a piece of a tropical storm that looks like it might get up to your neck. The ground is now pretty soaked.

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sure hope so. got some thunderstorms coming over the weekend.

I am seeing predictions of a multi-week heatwave in the East. There will probably be bad drought for many.

I “bragged” early in this thread about how much rain we had gotten. We haven’t gotten a single drop since… Until today… About 4PM we got 1.5" in ~30 minutes. Washed my driveway some and here 4 hours later, still no power. Sigh, I should have known better :slight_smile:

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Sometimes the unreliability of long term forecasts is a blessing.

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