gravitylover

Cristobal is a really good looking storm.

Gotta love the cool dry days, makes it so much nicer to do heavy work around the yard and you get so much more done. I'll take a few dry days after the recent wetness and I like the idea of cooler mid month.

Nah I like snow and cold. You?

What happened to that storm line? It was about to dump on me and *poof* and now there isn't a cloud in sight.

I'm hearing lots of stories about people encountering timber rattlers and copperheads all over the region, bad stuff... I deal with pretty much most critters pretty well but snakes, NOPE.

Why am I not believing the local forecast showing the next 4 days being near perfect weather? It seems to me that a disruptor like a tropical storm running right into the middle of the country ought to screw things up a bit, no?

Yup lotsa birds, many didn't leave for the winter. Lots of insects too but that's because of the persistent dampness. What is way down is bees and other pollinators.

Heh, no softener here. We're all about hard water. This creates another set of problems though... My attention span wanes after basic soil testing for pH.

Persistent dampness is all plants need to thrive, unfortunately it's even moreso for crawly things. I'd much rather have really dry, I'm on a 400 foot deep well that won't run dry easily so I can water but the bugs go away.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/v5qLLPgozJWdZJUb8 I don't know if this will work.

Our biggest expense was decent soil. I figured if I was going to go to all of the effort to make the beds and spend all the time it takes to actually grow food rather than flowers I should start with good soil. Unfortunately I think a lot of the bug problems I'm dealing with came with the soil which kind of sucks because most of them weren't here before. The most recent find is much much better, Coast of Maine organic certified so that's most likely what I'll use going forward. Copper fungicide? I'm just learning about all of the different things I need to do to make it all worth it. I found this for caterpillars https://www.bonide.com/products/garden-naturals/view/252/captain-jacks-dead-bug-brew-conc and this for slugs and snails https://www.montereylawngarden.com/product/sluggo/ I'm trying to only use things that are food safe and organic. I also planted marigolds and borage scattered around the beds but it's not as effective as I'd hoped. I really do think it's just too wet for real success.

Good morning everyone! I've been on slug patrol and spraying bacteria to eliminate the caterpillars since 6am. Ooh ooh fun with bugs

So when you want the models to be right with an event they're not... for the last couple of days it looked like I'd be on the northern edge of the precip for this one but now it looks like it set up shop to be streaming over here rather than the city. 50 miles, all I wanted was 50 miles. Why couldn't anything set up like this in the winter? Why o why o whining just a bit here

For how thoroughly soaked and soggy everything is you'd think we had inches of rain but nope, 1/4" of precip and many hours of fog is the culprit. For a year that's actually relatively dry it has been very wet, there have been more wet days than the numbers would lead one to think.

Well that's weird... I got home and all of the wilted plants are looking like nothing ever happened. It was back to cool(ish) and cloudy which was nice, means it barely got into the low 80's so summer still isn't here.

I'll get some pics when I get back home later. For some reason the site won't let me post pics anymore, says I hit my limit so pm me an email to send them to. Cutworms would suck, any other evidence of them to look for? No it never got that wet, the bed drains really well.

So what are the chances that stays with that orientation and it stays dry up here?

Oh no, this morning the garden looked awesome. Everything was standing tall and visibly gaining then the sun came out and nearly everything wilted and flopped almost to the ground What the **** happened? After my post yesterday when it looked like we might miss the rain I went ahead and watered, could the extra heavy rain we did end up getting drown everything? Is it just that the dark green greens like kale, cauliflower, broccoli, brussell sprouts and collard greens don't like the hot sun after such a nice cool start to their growing season?

Lots of wind but not terribly strong (comparatively), plenty of thunder and lightning and torrential rain, ~.5" in 20 minutes or so. Good storm, it was nice to see the heavy rain but I would rather it didn't come all at once because it flattened part of my garden and broke off 2 sunflowers

Damn boyz that was some rain! Looks like it was only about .5" but it sure came down hard for a few minutes there.

Had some drizzle, no wind. Looks like the sun will be out in a few minutes.

Looks like that's the case. It barely drizzled hard enough to wet the ground and the back edge is minutes away. Time to go water the garden...

It rained but not enough to wet the ground under trees or even plant leaves. I didn't water the garden yesterday because that batch of rain looked like it was going to matter. It didn't. Today sure looks more certain but if it gets hot and it misses to the south I have plants that are gonna cook.

Another beautiful day in the 60's here. We had a few sprinkles that didn't even wet the ground.

I got lucky and stayed warm enough I only lost a few flowers that were at the end of their cycle anyway. So I put stuff on the grill for a long slow burn and turn around to look at the garden and realized that the sky is ugly. What's with this incoming wetness? I guess I should've paid attention... Speaking of garden mine is killing it! Holy greens batkidz, I've got the best one yet. I had a little ant colony in the potato box problem but a 70% vinegar mixture splashed into it took care of things nicely. Apparently it's toxic to ants. Who knew. Even better is it shouldn't affect the newly forming potatoes at all. Did you know that a vinegar and lemon juice cocktail kills termites? Organic ways to eliminate crawlies without affecting your garden