The drought scenario rears its ugly head

For where I sit, it looks like we're in for a repeat of last year's horrid summer. Here's what the Weather Network shows for the next two weeks:


Note to U.S. readers: Temperatures are in Celcius
I've always believed the country gardens in particular need tough plants, and lots of natives fit the bill. And, of course, that's what I've planted here, lots of native trees, tough perennials and ornamental grasses. But drought is so disappointing when you want your garden to thrive, not just survive.

I've just ordered my first truckload of water for the season, so I can water my shade garden and my four-square garden (see picture in previous post). These two areas have irrigation now, which should make them easier to water.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Winter just won't let up...

Today's snowdrift in front of our hoophouse
We tend to get our hopes up for an early spring when the calendar hits March, and the past few winters have lulled us into thinking that the "real" winters of yesteryear were no more.

No so this year: we're getting record amounts of snow. Today's headline in the Toronto Globe and Mail says it all: "Old Man Winter pumps up the volume." We've had snowstorm after snowstorm, and the current one is about the biggest of the season. Some are calling it "the winter from hell."

It certainly is that for snow removal budgets, and there is now so much snow that a quick thaw could bring serious flooding to parts of Ontario.

The snow removed from Toronto streets
Photo by Boris Spremo, The Globe and Mail
However, I'm happy. This snow pack is a god-send for our poor parched landscape, not to mention the water levels in the Great Lakes. If you recall, last summer, we had the worst drought in almost 50 years, so all this preciptation is manna from heaven, as far as I'm concerned.

Fortunately, there's a breath of spring in the air: the Canada Blooms garden show starts in Toronto next Wednesday. I'll be there to see what's new.

© Yvonne Cunnington, Country Gardener

Unbearably hot, but we got a bit of rain

It was bloody hot yesterday, about as hot as it gets here on the worst days in mid-summer, about 90 degrees F. But with the humidity, it felt a lot hotter: just what our trees needed in the face of the long drought of 2007, which still ongoing.

We have many patches of dead lawn now, and we can only guess how much permanent damage there will be to our trees. One bright spot: a thunderstorm last night brought 4/10ths of an inch of rain, and the cold front promises to cool things down a bit beginning today and tomorrow.

Temperatures for the next week will still be above seasonal norms. I long for sweater weather.

More of the same: hot and dry continues

It may be September, but the hot, record dry summer continues. It's going to be around 31 degrees C today and tomorrow (that's almost 88 degrees F). We had only one good rain in August (it was the one good rain of the ENTIRE summer). And fall forecasts predict continued dryness.

According to the Toronto Star, Environment Canada's senior climatologist David Phillips is predicting a less than colorful fall leaf display because lack of rain has put many trees in distress. This means that many leaves just turn brown and fall earlier. Those that turn will offer a less than spectacular display of seasonal color.

Rats: fall is my favorite season, and it now looks like the gardening summer from hell just won't let go. The Agriculture Canada drought map above tells the continuing story.

September = new beginnings

As September arrives and the gardening season begins to wind down, there's beauty in the fading away, such as these prairie coneflowers from our meadow. I belong to a camera club and a few of us got together on Sunday morning to try to photograph monarch butterflies at the meadow. Alas, the butterflies eluded us, but the fading flowers were lovely. This was my favorite picture from that morning.

I haven't posted much lately, as we have started a major house renovation. We are getting a new kitchen (very exciting, as I've never had a great kitchen ever).

The complication is that we are moving the kitchen space to another part of the house and what was the kitchen until now will become a bedroom.

For various reasons - the kitchen move, repairs, updates, space for the fridge - five rooms are involved. We have done a lot of moving in the past few days, and the only livable space right now is the study, where we are sleeping and the living room. I have converted the main floor laundry room into a provisional kitchen, with microwave, kettle and coffee maker.

The old range is going down to the furnace room tomorrow, so I will be able to do more than microwave dinners. There are some nice garden fresh tomatoes begging to be made into sauce.

Wish us luck: by my birthday in mid-October, we should be ready to move into the new kitchen and updated bedroom.

PS: As for rain, we are still in drought mode. There hasn't been a drop since the wonderful rain on Aug. 25. The extended forecast shows dry, dry, dry to past mid-September.

Lack of acknowledgement of the drought

Precipitation Compared to Historical Distribution (Ontario Region)
Map: Agriculture Canada (See key below)
Featured comment: T Gordon said...

Finally! The drought has made the evening news. Only because it is the worst drought since 1959, so worth reporting. I feel some validation. All summer I have been frustrated by the lack of acknowledgement of the drought. Several times I have mentioned the drought only to have people say, "Oh really?" If it were not for your blog, I might have thought I was imagining it. It helped greatly to have it. Thanks!

I wrote about this very thing in an earlier post: I guess it's just a reflection of how uninvolved most people are with growing things.

Partial Key to Drought Map
Red = Record Dry
Brown = Extremely Low
Orange = Very Low
Yellow = Low

Hanging in there through dry August

It's record dry, but the beds look as colorful as ever. The picture here is of a bed we call the "well bed" (because that's where the house well sits, not far from the blue spruce at the left). Now, I've been watering this bed every week or two. It's the bed that gets watered from the pond with the firehose.

Past the well bed, there's a dip in the land in which lies the pond. The pond is now quite low, maybe down five feet (1.5 meters), but because it's 12 feet deep (3.65 meters) it still has a lot of water in it.

Beyond that in the distance is a bed that I've given up maintaining. It's full of grasses and native perennials like Rudbeckia subtomentosa, a nice tall black-eyed Susan. This bed now has many weeds creeping in, but all we do is mow around it. (Our ambitions proved unsustainable.)

Amazingly, this bed is full of life and color, record drought not withstanding. Meanwhile, in our two acres of meadow, the plants are quite stunted, about half their usual height due to the extreme dryness. However, they are still blooming, but not staying in bloom as long as usual.

Below is Agriculture Canada's drought map to Aug. 14. As you can see, the red area marking record dry conditions keeps expanding.

Precipitation Compared to Historical Distribution (Ontario)

How dry can it get? Evidently, much drier

Yesterday's rainfall amounted to 4/10ths of an inch in total, but it stayed cloudy, cooler and dampish all day, which was a blessed relief.

Here's the Agriculture Canada drought map for southern Ontario again, now updated to Aug. 6. Red means record dry, and brown extremely dry. (We are in the record dry patch under where it says "Toronto" - close to the tip of Lake Ontario.)

We're now in the middle of a heat and humidity wave that looks like it won't break for another five days. After that, the 14-day forecast shows warm and dry to August 22.

I hate to go on and on about drought, but unfortunately this summer it is the issue that dominates my life. I haven't given up fighting back with the hoses. Sure, my garden beds are filled with mostly drought-tolerant perennials and ornamental grasses, but even those plants can't keep going (let alone look good) when it doesn't rain for months. But what's really heartbreaking is what this extreme dryness is doing to all the trees and shrubs that I just can't water.

The bottom line: I can't wait for winter and a good, long break from all this. What a cruel summer for plants and gardeners! Of course, the farmers have it much worse. At least we gardeners don't depend on rain for a living.

News headline: Scorched earth

I always find it interesting that drought conditions rarely make the news. The radio and TV weather people seem oblivious, continually trumpeting that it's going to be another nice sunny day.

I guess it's just a reflection of how uninvolved most people are with growing things.

The southern Ontario drought situation finally made the local newspaper yesterday. The Hamilton Spectator reports that this summer's dry weather has indeed been record-breaking. We have had the least rainfall since record-keeping began in 1959, only 40% of the normal amount. Outside the city, I believe we had even less than that. The city counted nine days when some rain fell; here, it was only six days.

The Spectator quotes David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada, saying the rains were "just enough to keep the dust down. They were two-bit rains, not the million-dollar rains conservation authorities and farmers need."

Drought update: Not whining, still watering

July precipitation report: We had more rain this month than in June: 6/10ths of an inch in the first week (in two showers), the same in week two (three showers), and the same once again in week three (delivered in two showers on one day). But over the past 10 days to the end of the month, we had only one small shower, with 2/10ths of an inch.

The cumulative effect of the extremely low rainfall since mid-May has now put us into "record dry" territory. (See the second dot near Hamilton on the map: that's roughly where we are.) I've never had to garden in a drought like this. It was almost as bad in 1998, the first year we were here, but at that season, we had no gardens yet.

Despite the bad news, I've been in good spirits lately, probably because it's been reasonably cool, especially at night, and at least until now we've been spared the nasty humidity that we normally get. I'm no meterologist, but I suspect that the dip in the jet stream that we've had over southern Ontario more or less all summer long has kept both the humidity and the big thunderstorms at bay. Both have certainly been plentiful south of the border.

Semi-circular perennial bed at the end of July
At this point instead of whining, I simply keep on watering. The end result is that the garden, which I've designed for maximum color and interest for this time year is actually looking pretty good.

Lawn and drought: how to keep the grass alive

Here's some great advice about drought and lawns from Kevin Frank, a turf expert at Michigan State University.

Many homeowners choose not to irrigate their lawn and about now the concern becomes whether or not the lawn might be suffering and possibly approaching death. For Kentucky bluegrass lawns (which are the majority of lawns in Michigan), there is usually no danger that the lawn is going to die unless water is lacking for six to eight weeks. However, there are really no hard fast numbers for predicting whether the turf will die as many other factors will come into play such as high temperatures and traffic.

Even if you are not an irrigator, it might be a good idea to give the turf a little water if the turf hasn’t received any water for a month. Apply about a 0.5 to 1.0 inch of water just to make sure the lawn makes it through this cycle of drought. The goal of this irrigation is not to turn it green, but just to prevent the turf from completely desiccating (severe drying out) and possibly death. If we continue in this dry spell, I would continue to give the turf a drink every three to four weeks.

His other tips:

• Avoid mowing during the heat of the afternoon, which can result in tire tracks or foot prints on the lawn that may be visiable a long time.
  
• Mow during cooler times of the day, early morning or evening, and keep the mowing height high.

I've been following this advice, just putting the sprinkler on the lawn areas near the house and my most important garden beds, and it does help the turf quite a bit. Unfortunately, we have a lot more lawn than that, so a lot of our grass has to weather the drought on its own.

You can find Kevin Frank's full article at the Michigan Landscape Alert: look for Drought stresses turf.

More rain than we've had, but still very dry

We were off on holiday last week, so it was nice not to worry about rain, or lack thereof. It did rain here twice on Thursday for a total of 6/10ths of an inch, the most rain we've had in one day since about mid-May.
The map above (from the Agriculture Canada site) tells the story of the continuing drought. The red areas indicate record dry, and there's red spot close to Hamilton which is showing up where we are located. Brown means extremely low and orange very low.

There's no rain in the forecast for the coming week. If there is a silver lining, it's the relatively cool weather we've been enjoying. In New York City where we had our holiday, it was hot and steamy.

Pathetically grateful for quarter inch of rain

We had another thundershower tonight, and unexpectedly this one gave us some rain. I had invited my neighbor over for dinner, and just as we were going to do a quickie garden walk, the rain started. So we took our wine glasses to the front porch and just watched it come down.

It was a heavy rain, but didn't last very long. Still, after a couple of showers early in the week that left an unmeasurable trace, we were both pathetically grateful for the quarter inch we got today.

Totaling up what has fallen so far in July, I figure we've probably had one inch of rain if you count the couple 1/10th of an inch sprinkles that we got earlier this week with passing thundershowers. The total for the month is now over what we got in June (we had only 7/10ths of an inch the entire month!).

I've never experienced a drought like this. I felt quite depressed and down-hearted this morning, as yet again I began hauling hoses and setting up sprinklers before breakfast. I actually had to tell myself to stop moping and just get on with it. I'm trully sick of watering and worrying about all the trees and shrubs that I can't water because the place is too big.

Since we haven't had a decent rain since mid-May, I have been watering all my major beds using trucked-in water, or watering from the pond with the fire hose. I've even been filling the barn cisterns with water from our well, which I really shouldn't do because our well isn't the most productive. But I let the water dribble in over a day, and the well hasn't run dry yet. Because of these efforts, the garden beds still look nice, although the surrounding lawn is toast. I'll try to post some garden pictures in the next day or so.

Drought watch: July catching up to June

Could the drought pattern be breaking? Already in July, we've had almost as much rain we got in June. (Mind you, what we got in June was almost nothing.) Yesterday, a steady, soft rain in the morning netted 4/10ths of an inch, and this morning we had a similar kind of rain that brought 2/10ths.

With today's hot and muggy weather, there might even be more later if a thunderstorm actually makes it to us. One small storm cell passed frustratingly close at noon: close, but no cigar.

This adds up to just over half an inch for July, and the month has only just begun. Considering that the total for June was about 7/10ths of an inch, things must be looking up. Right?

I sure hope so. All this hose wrangling and buying of water has got me down.

Dormant lawns can't take traffic or mowing

If you're worried about your crispy lawn and drought stress, here's good advice from Pam Charbonneau, a turfgrass expert at the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, University of Guelph:

Just a bit of information about the lack of rain, a lawn requires 2.5 cm a week of water to keep it green and from going dormant and of course we have not had any significant rain for several weeks now. To add to this, many municipalities are starting to impose watering restrictions. There is no real problem in letting turf go dormant. A lawn or turf in general can survive for several weeks without water. It will recover when the rains do finally come. It is just a bit more fragile than a lush green stand of turf. Some general things to keep in mind with drought stressed or dormant turf:

• Try to keep traffic off of dormant turf
• Don't fertilize or mow dormant turf

As I expect at least 150 visitors at our Open Garden day on Sunday, July 1, I have actually been watering the lawn around my most important garden areas. I don't usually do this, but with a drought this severe, the added stress of foot traffic on the grass would probably kill it off - plus the greening-up of the lawn makes the garden beds look better.

And, thank goodness, at least the nasty humidity won't be plaguing us for a few days. The forecast is "mainly sunny." Heck, what else would it be when it never rains???

Drought update: watering with the fire-hose

Still horridly dry: the map above tells the story. Yellow means low, orange very low, and brown, extremely low. The full map with legend is at the Agriculture Canada site. I added the dot for Hamilton, Ont., close to where we are in the "extremely dry" territory.

So far this month we've had two rainfalls. Both came with thunderstorms and both were a huge disappointment: the first brought 3/10ths, and the second 4/10ths of an inch. This puts us under an inch of rain for the month. I've never experienced a June as dry as this one.

There is another cold front coming through and there's a 60% probability of precipation, according to the forecast. But the rainfall will be likely be spotty; they say 2-4 mm, which is nothing, when you need at least two inches.

I watered quite a bit during the day today, drawing down the cisterns, so that they can collect rain water if it does indeed come.

Here I am wielding the fire-hose.
This evening we decided to get out the pump and fire-hoses and water a couple of huge beds around the house from our pond. It's a lot of work taking the pump to the pond, priming it, and getting 150 feet of heavy-duty hose set up, so we don't do it until necessary; plus we don't want to draw the pond down too much.

Let me tell you: there's a lot of satisfaction wielding a fire-hose to water the garden: you can just pour it on! On the off-chance that we do get one of those thunderstorms that bring two inchs of rain, the pond will fill back up again. Right now, it's only down a couple of feet, but there's still a long, hot summer ahead. I think we took six inches of water off the pond this evening.

Drought update

Well, we got a little rain today with the thunderstorms and cold front coming through southern Ontario.

But these systems are pretty spotty, so the bottom line is that we didn't get nearly enough rain. The total was about 4/10ths of an inch. Add that to the 3/10ths we got on about June 8th, and here we are coming toward the end of the most important growing month of the year with under an inch of rain. Ideally, you want an inch a week in June.

All I can say is: It's a good thing we're not farmers. At least making a living doesn't depend on the rain.

Drought watch

This map (click on the picture to see a larger version), which I found on the Agriculture Canada site shows the areas of extreme dryness for this season in southern Ontario.

We are located to the right of London near the tip of Lake Ontario where the yellow (low) and orange (very low) regions converge. The long range forecast shows that there may be a chance of rain on June 24. That would make it roughly a month since the last decent rain, which brought only 2/3 of an inch.

I ran sprinklers this morning and evening and so far I've used up 2/3 of the water from the water truck, which delivers about 40,000 gallons to the cistern. The gardens that I watered are looking very grateful indeed, as it got up to 32C today (almost 90F).

I have to admit that in spite of all my grumbling about the weather and no rain, the garden looks wonderful early in the morning and positively magical in the evening. I must sit out more, and get away from the computer and the hoses. Don't ya love summer?