How's your weather . . . 2019

[mskrieger]

My tomatoes transplanted out on 17 May, too. Saw a couple volunteer cherry tomato seedlings this weekend, that slightly cold hardier species that I planted in my garden once years ago and now is a weed. The weather's been warming and looking to settle. Still plenty of rain, but switching over to nighttime/early morning, then breezy sunny days. We're having the first warm, humid day of the season (temps hit 80F) but the rest of the week looks dry and high of 70, nighttime lows in the 50s. Extremely pleasant. Everything growing well in the garden, albeit a few weeks behind last year due to the cold and wet. No turnips yet!

[steev]

OTF, rainy Sat and Sun, showers light to drenching mixed with hail and slush; Sun was predicted clear and Mon rainy, but it was vice-versa; past five days 2 1/3" fell; total now 160% of normal.

[steev]

OK; once again, it looks like the rainy season is over, although Sunday was rainy.

[RpR]

We are getting warm/hot weather for a few days this week but on average it is merely wet and cool with night time temps. often in the 40s.
Lake and streams are in flood state in many areas with corn farmers hurting due to many not getting into the fields and the Gov. Insurance deadline for corn near, many are considering putting something else in.
My two gardens are mostly in .

The two Green Zebras I ordered from Piedmont Farms , went belly-up the day after planting while their Abe Lincoln is doing OK, so it seems my three year old Green Zebra curse has not left.
They are sending two replacements so I will see how that goes.

[steev]

With the ample rain this year, Cali is looking forward to another exciting wildfire season; actually, that's not quite accurate; apparently there is no longer a "season", since there hasn't been a month without wildfire somewhere in Cali since 2012.

[prairiegardens]

Hot dry weird weather here, river is as low as I've ever seen it at the end of summer, much less the beginnning. Last couple of days hovering between 27 and 31c dropping to 3 or 5c at night. Good for sleeping but hard on plants that like the weather to make up its mind, and nerve wracking re transplants, there is some talk about frost next week.
The municipality is busy shredding any trees or bushes within 30 feet of either side of the road, allowing ng the wnd to whip across the fields unimpeded. ( Also tearing out habitat for birds while doing nothing about the tick infestation but that's another story) .Many farmers who obviously never heard of the dust bowl have been busy tearing out the fenceline windbreaks as well. So no surprise one farmer said the other day on the radio that with the situation of continuing drought affecting both pasture and hay, owning one cow this year may be one cow too many.

[reed]

Why are they tearing out the trees? Making wider fire breaks?

It's been too wet down here, USDA reports corn and bean, especially corn planting is way behind. Here in Indiana is one of the worse with only about 10% planted. My corn is looking pretty good but I don't use a 10 ton machine to plant mine.

Our weather has been very pleasant last week or so with only a couple little storms and highs in low to mid 80s.

[steev]

Predicted 110F next Mon and Tues OTF; not even July yet.

[reed]

We just had a rather freakish storm. Lots of wind, lots of rain, spotty hail but very little lightening or thunder. Wind kept shifting in all directions. Lasted about an hour, generally just the leading edge of a storm has the really strong wind but this one just kept up. Corn, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, even lettuce is lodged over. I think most will recover, at least I hope so.

[reed]

Since the storm a few days ago where we got 3 inches of rain in an hour or so it has continued to rain almost non-stop. Mostly light, till last night when another downpour dropped another 3 inches or so, back to light rain this morning.

[prairiegardens]

Reed: One farmer rather snarkilly replied to my lament about ripping out the shelterbelts that the trees were old now and many were dying. It was interesting to me that the Russian Olive that was often a major component of these windbreaks has somehow managed to get designated as invasive by some agencies, ignoring the fact that they haven't spread enough even to replace themselves.

There was a free tree system set up by the Feds during the Dust Bowl that ran until the last Prime Minister abruptly cancelled it so now most would have to either learn how to manage coppicing or rooting cuttings or growing trees/shrubs from seed, or buy them, few are interested in doing any of those. But mostly it's because they think that the trees are somehow robbing the crop of water and nutrients and there's at least a couple of acres of land that they can't plant for crop or pasture if you figure 10 feet or so along the entire fenceline.

So now the ranchers are complaining that there will be no hay this year, grasses are heading out at 8inches or so in most areas, and we just had -4C last night so the crops that DID come up may be set way back from that as well as from the lack of rain. The wind that followed the rain last week had most fields back to powder dry the following day.

[steev]

Reed, don't hoard the rain; send me some.

As for ripping out trees, why would you want them? Don't you want them to not impede the wind? The sooner we eradicate everything from which we've not figured out how to directly profit, we'll be free to work on what's really important: the Afterlife! (Counter-snark!)

[steev]

Here in Cali, for many years there was a State program of nurseries to raise native tree seedlings (at least trees now common to various habitats) for rapid re-forestation of burned areas; the Governator Swartzeneggar oversaw the dismantling of those; an unnecessary expense, don't you know. Recent wildfire in the Coast Range, coupled with logging of damaged trees for salvage, has denuded lots of mountainsides; will there be landslides with potential further damage? Is the Pope in the woods? Short-term savings or profit is just that: short-term. A bird in the hand is not worth two in the bush; they will contribute to a stable ecosystem, whereas the one will contribute to a dirty hand.

[prairiegardens]

Solid rain for the past few days, 5 rain barrels full from a relatively small roof.. Gorgeous morning today with sun turned to thunderstorm and more rain with the added filip of a warning about possible funnel clouds. Farmers wandering around grinning from ear to ear . Apparently it's a bit patchy though, some say they still have had none.

As far as trees and any sort of water management, the plan appears to be to drain rain as quickly as possible and then whimper for government support when drought happens. Building soil to accept rain events and store the water in the soil is apparently an alien concept. One guy in North Dakota can apparently cope just fine with a 7 inch rain event without flooding or runoff so it decidedly can be done in this environment. I'd be astonished if anyone around here could cope with 2 or max 3 inches without erosion channels showing up.

[steev]

Unfortunately, my land drains like a sieve; my long-term task is to get organic matter into it for water retention, not to mention fertility; six" of rain barely leaves puddles the next day; this is not true at the south end where the clay is (I once got my p'up mudded in, then the tractor, then a tow-truck; it rained all day); there's run-off there, which I hope to eventually capture in a sky-pond for the benefit of waterfowl (domestic ducks, geese, and tasty migrants), table-fish, crawdads, and Italian poplars; I have a low-yield well there which will never be of much use beyond keeping the pond topped up, but that's important if I want these critters to survive, otherwise, it'll dry up every Summer; guess I could have lungfish; are they tasty?

I will continue my annual planting of Italian Stone pines for shade, pine-duff, and wind-break; maybe I'll live long enough to get some pine-nuts; pesto is good.