Posted on 09/18/2009 4:05:37 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
The predicted low temp here for monday is 27F with snow. I covered some of the garden with tarps, but don’t have everything covered. Oh well, it is about time to rip everything out and plant garlic. I picked up bone meal to mix in before planting the garlic.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/80403?from=36hr_topnav_business
Do you have to water your garden or does the rain suffice and do you have a well of springs? Our water rates will double next year due the last pulp mill closing. They were paying the bulk of the overhead for the water district because of the millions of gallons needed in the pulping process everyday. We already have some of the highest priced water in the west and I will be looking to drill a cheap well or develop a seepage in the gulch soon. We get very little rain from May 15 to Oct 15 so irrigation is a must here.
MM has a great year going and he has a fine attitude about racin and his life in general. I actually felt sorry for Jr and his last laps crash although I’m a JJ fan. Do you participate in the FReeper Nascar threads? I gotta run and do some cleanup...
The rain here is really variable. This June it rained almost every day and then only occasionally after that. I have a gutter drain set up with tubing to take water to the garden and I can move it if it gets too wet. I have a well so no water and sewage charges. I have a timer-controlled valve and soaker hoses set up, but with the rain the way it was I never set up the timer and just turned it on manually when things got dry. In winter it snows alot. This year we had a wet spring storm that dumped 4 ft and brought down several pine trees in my yard. A few years back there was a March storm that dumped 5 1/2 ft over four days. It took snow plows a week to make it up here. In winter and spring the wind can be really strong as fronts get squeezed over the Rockies. A small community less than a mile away set a Colorado state record two days in a row for highest sustained wind speed during one winter storm; 118 mph for both days. The snow drifts that wind like that can pile up is incredible. Of course you have to wait until the wind dies down until you can see the drifts due to white-out conditions.
Winter is here. It is 32F and snowing. About half an inch so far. My tarps survived the wind that preceeded the storm. I used the aspen poles to make a lean-to against the fence to hold the tarps off the ground and used rocks (no shortage of those) to weigh the edges down.
My First Wife saw a show on the Toob today about Colorado going from summer to winter. Her sister in Coors County is coming to visit in mid Oct. She hasn’t been here since 94 but the photos I send to her have piqued her curiosity about the Bander’s estate. We continued the fall cleanup today so tomorrow is a free day...
We had about 6 inches of snow Monday and the low temp was indeed 27F overnight. Had a business trip to Albuquerque and left home at 5:30 a.m. and got back at 10:00 p.m. MST. Was just starting to snow again. Today there is a new winter storm advisory with snow totals for elevations over 6,500 ft (we are at 8,500 ft) estimated to be up to 16 inches in the next 24 hours and snow continuing through Thursday. The apples and cherries were bent to the ground until I knocked the snow off with a broom. Like my liberal, retired, social worker neighbor says “If this global warming does not stop, I don’t know if I can get my car out of all this snow”! How I can always suppress laughter until I get back home I do not know!
Brrrrr...snow...what’s snow? We had fog thick enough to cut with a fork this morning and the whole day was dismal. Never went in the garden at all but I did take my real camera over and took some updated photos of our Church gardens. We are blessed with a small core of dedicated gardeners and my wife and I help with our skills when we can. I also changed one of heater filters and checked on security issues.
I hope to shred the corn stalks tomorrow and make some hot compost...
The tarps seem to be holding up over sections of the garden even with several inches of wet snow. I have not pulled tarps back to see if anything survived. I think the most important thing I learned this year is that the ground remains cold late into the summer up here at 8,500 ft in the Colorado Rockies so I need to use clear plastic early and black garden cloth at planting to warm things up. My beans did not sprout until late summer and tomato did not start growing until late summer either. All in all this year was a gardening experiment for me. I planted cold tolerant and sensitive just to see what happened. Cold tolerant all did very well. The sensitive was mixed. Tomatoes were slow to start growing again after being transplanted from indoors (I think it was cold soil temps). The bush beans and pole beans started very slow, but produced like crazy recently. With the same soil heating methods, I am sure I can get earlier production with the beans. The Wal-mart drip hoses were very inexpensive and worked well.
I hate the cold and snow is beautiful for the first 48 hours and then I start whining. Wife doesn’t like heat so we live in Eureka. We had a cabin in the hills N/E of here on the Klamath River and grew hot season goodies there for 20 years. Then our kids grew up and went on strike and then my wife joined them so we sold it and the acreage that it sat on. I had accumulated tools and equip to make and sell firewood when I retired but. F/W sells for $350 a cord here today because of the restrictions and just a few sawmills remaining and that is Doug Fir.
I have a compost thermometer that doubles as a soil gauge. You can buy them on eBay for $20. They last forever unless your helper buries them in the compost pile
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