wxeyeNH

Storm looks ova up here.   Total 1.20"   Month  3.25"    Seems like the axis of heavier rain was further SE than models had it yesterday but first good soak since April 25th. Now onto the heat.. 

Radiational cooling can be amazingly variable.  I have my Davis station which is on a pole.  About 20 feet high so that the anemometer can catch a bit more wind.  I also have my wifi thermometer at the correct 2m height.  I calibrated it to the Davis station.  On calm nights I have noticed a 5F difference at times.  I bet at a foot or two above the ground at garden height it would be a degree or two more.  So the slightest change in elevation is huge.  Just checked last night's difference was almost 4F.

Alex at Bretton Woods NH sent me this picture.  Another frickin frost  32ish this AM.  Amazing for June 26.  Basically, 6 week growing season in his deep valley.  

Nice,   .57" over the last 2 days.  Brings me up to 2.81" since May 1rst....

74/48  Deep blue skies light breeze.  Highest sun angle of the year.  Top 10 up here!

4 hours ago, dendrite said:

Man what a day. Top 10er.

75/53 but broken high clouds off and on so I give today a 8.5.   Also really enjoying watching a turkey hen and her 7 chicks in my pasture.  The chicks hatched about 10 day ago and she and the family are staying around the pasture.  They are getting bigger by the day and now have feathers.  I assume they can fly to low branches at night.  I guess turkey families stay together for a couple of months so I am putting off cutting the pasture so they have high grass to hide in. 

Alex at Bretton Woods sent me another bear picture this AM and wanted to share with the group.  Love this picture.  Guess the bear was hungry and wanted to start up the grill.  Living in C/NNE is the best!

7 minutes ago, eekuasepinniW said:

Powderfreak was posting pictures of snow so I had to stay away from this thread.

Don't worry, I'm keeping a close eye on your obs and pond depth reports. 

Eek,  i was just asking where you had been.  Yeah, you keep me honest on those pond depths.  It went dry during the big drought a couple of years back.  You corrected me that it had never gone dry before but you were right it did at least another year.  I think during the big drought it went dry in late July.  By August I was able to mow the base of it.  It went from full pond at the end of April to almost no water left in it so if this dry spell keeps up it will be dry pretty shortly.  Now that the ground is so dry even a couple of inches of rain will not bring it up.  We will see what happens...

Act 2 gave me some nice showers late evening.    Total rainfall ended up being  .38"  Seems like most people got some beneficial rain but not everyone.

40 minutes ago, alex said:

Woke up to this visitor. My cat was intrigued 

Talk about a Wedding Crasher. When you rent out your property for those weddings this summer wonder if he'll show up? 

3 minutes ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Had a chat with God tonight. 

Wow.  Details please after you calm down

1 minute ago, wxeyeNH said:

Very cool!  If it was to drop seeds you would see the pods growing on some of the branches.  They flower white in May and now my hybrid has the pods growing that will be seeds.  In the meantime prune a few branches and try to get them to root.  Now I'll be asking you for one!

Edit,  I bet 9 to 1 that the owners don't know its a chestnut.  Most people just think its an ugly tree and if its in the way would prune it down.  Amazing that you found this right in your hood!

2 hours ago, dendrite said:

Wow. Pretty cool.  Does that tree look large enough to be dropping seeds yet? Maybe I'll have to take a walk by there and see if there's any saplings around. Maybe they'll let me root prune one and then transplant it in the fall. I wonder if the owners even know what it is.

Very cool!  If it was to drop seeds you would see the pods growing on some of the branches.  They flower white in May and now my hybrid has the pods growing that will be seeds.  In the meantime prune a few branches and try to get them to root.  Now I'll be asking you for one!

17 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Saw this tree on my road tonight and grabbed a pic from the truck. The leaves looked interesting...

Is this some variety of chestnut?

 

Brian,  looks like it could be an American Chestnut.  Maybe the parent tree was killed with the blight and this is an off shoot?   Here's a picture from the web, my leaves look like this too

Yesterdays 72F under a dark blue sky was a top 10 day up here.  ( after the early AM clouds and very light rain).  Today the score is lower on any scale.  A high cirrus deck is mucking up the score but I'll take 76/54 and high overcast as a top 40 day,  you guys are doing better down there...

72/51F  A "10" day!  Dark blue skies and just about the highest sun angle of the year.

Where is eek?  I miss him keeping me on the straight and narrow with my obs.

Wow,  what a difference between now and then.  If your soil was dry before the .25" I doubt that amount of rain would get down to the roots.  A good 1" rain would really help.  I'm not a lawn guy but keep us posted.

4 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

Fertilized last week with Lescos. Thought about drilling separate well for irrigation, but it's a lot of money to have a green lawn. We also got some pretty lousy loam during the lawn install. I actually slit seeded last Sept and used high quality KBG, but it all died off after only getting to ~0.5" in height. I swear nothing grows on our hill except weeds.

I mowed this past Sunday, but that will be it for awhile. The far right side actually has decent growth, but much of it is clover which I'm ok with since it acts as a natural fertilizer for grass. The rest might as well be a desert.

I am not mowing our fields at all until we get back to a normal pattern of rain every few days.  We mowed the lawn yesterday for the first time in 10 days  but set the tractor at 4" instead of 3.5".  Longer grass is best during a dry spell..

Lava, maybe your fert. is just sitting on the surface and waiting for a good soak to drain down to the roots.  You'll get there.  I never thought I would have a lawn again after our big house move 5 years ago!

One more lawn post.  Here's a picture of the lawn.  Lots of watering and organic fert but still losing the battle to the drought.  2" of rain since 4/25/18 will do that.  CD's seem to be working with the woodpecker  (only been up for an hour).  Also off topic but there is my Prius Prime plug in.  Love that car.  About 25-30 miles pure electric and then the hybrid motor kicks in.  Even after the electric is drained the hybrid motor has been giving me about 70mpg.  Only problem is the car is not 4 wheel drive and low to the ground so you definitely need a 2nd "winter" vehicle.

6 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

So I'll just say our $10K lawn project last Fall looks terrible. Pic tells the tale.

Looks like you desperately need rain.  SE slope getting maximum sun, drying out soil.  My lawn is green because we water up to 4 hours a day, as much as the well can handle.  Guess you have too much lawn for that?  Hopefully, fingers crossed you will get some light rain over the next 36 hours and then some good T storms with fropa next week.  Too much rain however looks like it could cause erosion.  Are you applying fert?  We use Agway's 15-1-10 "high organic".  Applied every 4-6 weeks.

Speaking of Chestnuts all of a sudden over the past 3 or 4 days two Downy Woodpeckers have found my Chinese/American Chestnut tree in my front lawn.  They have done a number on it.  Very brave birds.  I can almost walk up to the tree and they don't fly away.  I have that black tar tree healing stuff and filled in some of the holes.  Then I applied tree wrap.  They still kept  coming.  We have 3 cats and we have this spray that keeps animals away from furniture.  Has a bitter spray.  So I sprayed the tree.  Woodpeckers could have cared less.  Then the idea of a  fake owl and set that up but they learned within an hour it was not a threat.  Just hung old CD's thinking maybe the wind will scare them.  Neighbors will think I'm nuts!

7 minutes ago, alex said:

Well, the damage from the several consecutive days of frost and freezes has gotten pretty obvious. Even perennials suffered, and my super duper hardy grape vines are all nice and crisp. Everything should recover but when you have such a shirt growing season to begin with, it's definitely not going to be a great year for the garden. Oh well... There's always winter.

Alex,  you should really think about a greenhouse.  Take the $ you save on AC and buy one of these.  https://www.amazon.com/VINGLI-Greenhouse-Reinforced-Gardening-Galvanised/dp/B07CYS8DPB/ref=sr_1_26?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1528823364&sr=1-26&keywords=greenhouse

Tamarack,  you had said that American Chestnuts are really great at regrowing..  Like I said in a previous post I had another small 10"  saplings and stupid me ran it over  with the lawn tractor this spring.  Right to 1" of it coming out of the ground.   I walked into the pasture and checked and its sprouting a couple of new small leaves. Soil is bone dry but I gave it a good watering so maybe (hopefully) it will continue growing.

2 hours ago, dendrite said:

Another 32F for BML. Should be a 50F range there today. Thoughts and prayers to Alex’s tomatoes. 

Poor Alex at Bretton Woods.  3 nights in a row of 32F or below.   I believe.  31.2F, 31.6F and last night 32F.   Get those plants growing again,  I think your safe till about August 15th up there in your cold hole!

41 minutes ago, tamarack said:

I would not prune it, as even the tiny wounds on that small tree would offer an opening for the spores.  Near that Topsham lot I found years ago a healthy chestnut 7-8" in diameter on a private lot.  A couple years later I saw that, during a timber harvest, that tree had been pruned on one side to make room for a logyard, and was stone dead.  I can't help thinking that all those wounds led to its demise.  Another example is some chestnuts planted adjacent to the Maine Forest Service entomology lab in Augusta in 1969.  For nearly 30 years they grew straight, tall (60'+) and unblemished, until they lost many of their limbs in the 1998 ice storm.  In two years all were dead. 

I've read that the fungus can live on oak trees without harming them, thus keeping the disease present.  One of my co-workers (now retired) found some chestnut on a public lot about 25 miles NNW of BGR, AFAIK the most northerly natural-origin specimens in the Northeast.  He had patchcuts made to the south of several of the larger trees (12-17" diameter) to encourage their regeneration.  The tactic has succeeded, but the largest and (formerly most vigorous) of the overstory chestnuts has been blighted.  Those half-dozen or so chestnuts were in closed-canopy forest probably dozens of miles from any other of their kind, and upwind of them all.

Great info thanks so much!  100 years ago our forests must have been so much diversified.  Large elms, chestnuts.  Now the ash will be gone.  Guess it fits the pattern of decreasing wildlife of all kinds...

Talk about climate change.  What is the chance this could happen in 2018?

June 10 1842..

" A late season snowstorm struck New England.  Snow fell during the morning and early afternoon, accumulation to a depth of 10" to 12" at Irasburg VT.  Berlin NH was blanketed with 11" inches of snow during the day.  Snow whitened the higher peaks of the Appalachians as far south as Maryland".  (From David Ludlum's Weatherbook)