Tuesday, June 23, 2015

...and then came the last days of May...

Is it dry enough for you??? Suddenly and without warning, it seems to have sneaked up on people.. I drove around town lat .. yesterday and the number of lawns in trouble amazed me..  Honestly I didn't even know the sprinkler worked up until ten days ago..  and I'm still trying to remember how I watered everything.. Every time it rained I checked the rain gauge and did the figuring on it.. Ok after April and May we had around 15 inches total rain and we could count on getting rain almost every other day, and if you had anything planned it was going to rain that day.. Turn the calendar and June has seen the  water valve turned to the off position.. We last got rain of two tenths on the week of Memorial day.. Still in May.. and I was watching the font yard, the area that determined weather I should water or not. A couple days later it rained but under this big tree it was dry.. It has to rain a lot for it to make it to the ground there.. So that was the second spot that needed rain, with the first being in back under the clothesline.. And at that not a heavy watering..  Then two days later I started the keep up watering cycle.. I hate the catch up cycle watering, it seems to never happen where the grass is starting to burn up and catching up seems like a long way away. Truth is we are all three to four days away from having a burning up lawn.. Every lawn needs about an inch of water a week. To me, and I have a sprinkler I call the atomizer which simply put, sends a very mist like water droplets out.. I was after the closets thing to a sprinkler head, an automatic sprinkler head.. I tried this this a few years back, thought it wasn't very good then shelved it.. Later I tried it again and thought it was the best sprinkler I had ever used, and have sworn by it ever since even going as far as buying another one two years ago to replace it assuming it would eventually break or whatever..  Last week it did break, I was unclogging it and upon replacing the spray nozzle twisted it too hard and it snapped.. It was old, with the sun causing a lot of the age as with everything that is outside like that.. The biggest problem with this sprinkler is the water pattern.. It is circle as they all are, very anologue when you  think of it, there is no perfect sprinkler that I know of.. This is very wind driven.. Which is to say any wind will place water droplets ANYWHERE..  Sadly that means anywhere.. So when the wind doesn't blow it goes where I want it.. And when the wind blows I can water an even bigger area.. That can be good, but also not very good.. I have what I call a three head sprinkler that waters a very small area but waters it very thoroughly, so I usually spot water with it.. Yesterday I found the old drip irrigation system head to water a small area.. What I like about these heads is the water is only  a foot high, the wind doesn't effect the water nearly at all..

The lawn, and what the hell:   Ok so our lawn might not be nearly as perfect as I want it to be.. From a distance it's hard to visualize that it has weeds in the area that I fixed two years ago and then again last year.. One thing I have learned from this experience is to NOT til a very big area.. And in fact don't til at all.. Early in the spring, or rather the mowing season I scalped an area under the clothes line to seed and try that way.. It worked.. sort of.. Then another idea came along, try to spot seed.. And more to the point take the shovel and dig out the weeds and replace that with potting mix.. This idea will be employed the rest of the summer in both the front and back where the weeds are heaviest.. But not have them be any bigger than my hand, using bare spot grass seed to fill those spots in.. The grass this year... From reading various grass care sites, grass planting and care.. The lawn should all be set to grow as tall as the highest level the mower will mow.. Every other year that I tried this I was disappointed in the results.. Well this year I will mow at the highest level, mostly so the watering won't have to be as much.. I'd love to only have to water twice  a week rather than every day. I need to measure watering amounts.. I have a timer and that would make it so simple to keep under control..

How does your garden grow...::  Well my garden is limited. I decided, with prodding, to grow pumpkins in the pumpkin patch again, and in one other part of the garden to try pumpkins there too.. The main reason, I was going to til it every other week.. Was gonna be every Tuesday (til Tuesday, get it??  if you are very young ask your mother about that one). But then I got talked into doing pumpkins, all the while kinda thinking that the weather would do the selective process.. So far we have had no hail, but we also have had no rain..   Tomatoes planted in the new gas meter section.. I wanted to try something there since all that were growing there were weeds anyway.. I thought as many as four plants could go there.. There are three, with two being the roma and one other being the grape.. Everything is growing quite well.. The big find this year was the Caspian Pink variety tomato plant.. These can be huge fruits although extremely odd in shape, they aren't the perfect tomato for your sandwiches, they are perfect for eating. They taste fantastic..

Badge Henry

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