Today I started to prepare for what appears to be a drought that could get worse by mulching my fruit trees. My water bill this summer was about 30% higher than normal and the attached article by National Geographic indicates that we may be in for a much longer and deeper one than we are accustomed to. My mulch project will eventually bark chip mulch all of my trees out to the drip line as shown in these pics I took of todays work. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/the-drought-in-the-western-us-could-last-until-2030#
Before todays work I had mulched only the persimmon tree in the left of the pic
After todays work the plum tree in fire ground, peach tree in middle and the persimmon tree are all now mulched with about about 5” to a foot of chips.
I’ve been waiting 3 months for my chipdrop to mulch all my thirsty trees. Water bill has been very very high this year! And while our water supply here in Seattle is nowhere near empty, it’s quite a bit below normal, and if El Niño means low precipitation this winter, I’d be worried about next summer:
It’s the big trees behind your fruit trees that are sucking up 90% of the water. Mulch won’t stem their thirst. What you’ve done is nice but it’s a bigger issue than a few tiny fruit trees.
i have a elder planted within 10ft. of a large black willow. bad choice as the willows love water and so does elder. its stunted at 3ft. and barely fruits despite it being well mulched and watered occasionally.
Exactly. That’s why farmers remove fence lines and trees in/around crop fields whenever they can. It’s very obvious that corn/soybeans/alfalfa/whatever become stunted when grown near large trees.
If these 3 were my property and not my neighbor’s I would have removed them long ago, but my neighbor is a tree lover having been raised as a child in drier eastern Washington so he is not likely to change his mind, he would rather just pay the water bill. I manage his fruit trees for him since he has heart issues and is too disabled to do this type of work, nevertheless the mulch will help a lot to conserve the water that I give them. I use my neighbors hydrant for his trees.
Normally from Aug 15 until Sept 30th I am fishing for salmon on the Puyallup river as Wynn indicated Seattle’s water supply shortfall, life is not much different here. This may be my first year since I lived here to not go salmon fishing, there’s simply no river flow to support the migration from the sea!
I would say that seems obvious but maybe it’s the kind of thing you don’t notice if you live in a place that’s usually wet. An expression about business that might apply: “Not until the tide goes out do you find out who’s swimming with no shorts on”.
I couldn’t read the Nat Geo article because it’s blocked behind a subscription, so I don’t know what their basis is for predicting a longer term drought. But weather predictions beyond a week out are pretty useless in my opinion. Especially for a specific location. They might even be correct that the drought continues on average over the west. But within that area there will be wetter pockets and drier pockets depending on how the dice roll and where systems end up tracking.
The predictable weather changes are the ones everybody already knows. I predict it will be winter in three months!
Not in the northern hemisphere either. Not technically anyway. To me winter should be Dec, Jan, and Febr. In that case it will be winter in three months.
