We had a terrible drought in southern ohio this year. I hauled five gallon buckets to my garden (about 2000 sq ft and bigger next year) starting in May right after planting. My garden was wet from rain one time the entire season. For larger plants like tomatoes, peppers and vines I cut the bottom out of a milk jug and placed one next to every plant so that I didn't waste water. I ran a stick through the jug to hold it in place. All of the plants had plastic around them. The milk jug works great as protection for the small plants when they are first put out and speeds them up a little because of the heat. Then I turn them up the other way and use them for watering.

I may build a pond for watering but if I don't I am going to use rain water kept in tanks. I have an old well but it only produces around 60 gallons a day.

I live in Fulton County on the north side of Atlanta. I've used a drip hose on my veggie garden for several years now with good results, even in this year's drought. Not sure yet how effective it was in saving my roses and azaleas. By the way, Fulton County went off the even-odd system and completely banned outside watering a month or so ago; I believe the neighboring counties did also. But it's pretty much the honor system. Some of you may have seen the news about a local man in Cobb Co who used 440,000 gallons last month!!!
jg

Laxfan

Here's a rant about that horse's ass here in Georgia. I don't usually publically cuss, but I am about this guy. Chris George Carlos to cut his water usage

November 14th, 2007

After all of the outrage about the house in Cobb County that used 440,000 gallons of water in October[note, this figure appears to have been wrong, and it was apparently only 390,000 gals], the owner has said he plans to drastically cut his usage.

According to the AJC, his usage for the past week has been about 2,000 gallons a day, which would be around 60,000 gallons a month. Thats still very high, but itÂs far better than the 440,000 [390,000] from last month.

As many people suggested, it sounds like he had indeed been watering his lawn. These two snippets from the article seem to confirm that.

First, we have this: "He was very humble. It is my understanding he told his landscaper to stop all watering last week," said County Spokesman Robert Quigley, who called Carlos.

Last week? He shouldnÂt have been watering at that point. Also, the article says "Carlos was not doing anything illegal before Cobb limited outdoor watering on Sept. 20." That implies that he might have been doing things that were illegal after Sept. 20.

That still doesnÂt explain where all of the water was going, but itÂs nice to see heÂs cutting back. http://www.atlantawatershortage.com/ (Bottom of page)

This ass has been using enough water per month, apparently on landscaping, to supply 60 households. He's rich and owns a lot of land, none for farming. See this Google Earth picture of his city-"estate".

This is why you must keep after your local and state authorities to set up controls for water conservation. Some people are just pigs and certainly won't do it voluntarily. Unfortunately, they must be forced through penalties to conserve water in desperate times.

Anyway, I thought people might have some ideas about keeping a garden healthy without wasting water that we all might consider. Ohio_grower, good start with simple methods.

Laxfan,

I forgot to ask you. Was the prohibition on lawn-watering in the greater Atlanta area issued by Sonny Perdue's office or county governments?

What about industries in Fulton County? Coca-Cola and Pepsi (Gatorade) with their two huge bottling plants? Do you know if Perdue's office has subject them to restrictions yet?

We live a bit north in Cherokee County and have a well, so the county restrictions don't apply to our water supply. But even if they did, we use water prety sparingly and would be within any household guidelines.

Because I mulched heavily this past summer, I only watered the raised beds once or maybe twice with a drip system. I plan to buy a pre-drilled micro-drip system this winter to use next summer, since the one I've been using is patched, leaky, and cut the wrong lengths for any different planting arrangements. Next summer I also want to heavily mulch the tops of my self-watering containers with nutritious organic materials rather than a plastic cover. By the end of the summer, the container plants seem to be sucking up only water and a little bit of fertilizer, and there are few nutrients in the planting soil to begin with.

g'day anney,

here downunder we have been in a worsening drought now for 10 to 15 years someplaces 20 years.

what we do is manage our water very carefully, our main goal is to use all water at least twice.

we heavily mulch all of our gardens to help control water loss in those areas and this also keeps our gardens growing and fed as well.

we have a 25k litre water tank and 5 X 200 litre drums collecting rain water, the tank water gets used for general household, and the drum water gets used for clothes washing, we have opted for a twin tub washing machine as they realy are the most efficient in water management use, the 90 litres it takes for washing (45 litres) and rinsing (45 litres) gets used to wash 3 sometimes 4 loads of clothes, in order of grubbyness. we make our own laundry detergent that also gets used for general cleaning and hand washing.

we wash our dishes every second day in a basin in the sink and this water goes to potted plants or the garden, we use one of those earth friendly detergents. all kitchen scraps go to the garden.

we have 2 buckets in the shower to collect some of that water as well. same when the bath is used that water is bailed out and used in all the mentioned places.

all grey water either gets used to water plants or to flush solids in the toilet we don't flush urine.

we have our total daily water use down to less than 100 litres per person, mostly we use close to 80 litres per person, the water restriction requirement is 140 litres per person or 800 litres per day per house, so you can see unless people get serious the Gov' parameters are falling short. and even more so when they reward the average home owner for buying water tanks that are too small for the job, many properties have room for a substantial tanks but only have small 3 to 5 k/litres sizes installed.

len

gardenlen

G'day to you, too! I like your practice of using water more than once. I haven't done that, but I certainly could wash my dishes in a bin and then dump the used dishwater in the garden, and the same with a bucket or two in the shower. I haven't heard of a "twin tub washing machine" anywhere in the US. What I wish we had was a separate hose for used clothes and dish water that exited into an outside tank. I can imagine using a lot of water twice, at least.

I've heard the toilet-flushing advice you mention as "If it's yellow, stay mellow. If it's brown, flush it down!" Catchy little jingle, ain't it?

Apparently drought conditions are appearing world-wide. Here's an article written by a US blogger, How Dry We Are, about this phenomenon. Australia is mentioned, along with other countries scattered all over the world.

Some scientists are calling the drought-patterns a "desertification" of land, and the droughts are accompanied by high winds and wildfires. We've seen that on the California coast for several years now.

Thanks for the input of some very useful suggestions.

Anney, we have even been hearing about your drought problems in the S.E. all the way over here.

We have seen the (what to me is) ludicrous thing about the corps of engineers releasing billions of gallons of water from an almost empty lake where Atlanta has about a month's supply of water left in order to keep some fresh water mussels and some plants alive downstream toward Florida. What the hell are those millions of people going to do for water when the well runs dry??? I can't even begin to imagine the logistics of trying to truck or some how haul water in by tanker car trains to provide just emergency water to that many people. Then dispensing it. It would be worse than a third world country with them people carrying those big jars of water on their heads for several miles.
We had lots of rain earlier this year after two years of near record heat and drought. It certainly was a Godsend and welcome relief, it filled all our lakes (water reservoirs) to over flowing. For that I am grateful. It is beginning to get a little too dry in my yard and garden again now, but I know pretty well how to deal with it.

Lots of compost and other material in the ground, soak hoses and a good layer of shredded oak leaf mulch have enabled me to grow some very good gardens in spite of the heat and drought. In fact, there have been some benefits that I do not quite yet understand, like lack of BER and cracking or splitting, and the tomato plants kept on setting new little tomatoes at higher temperatures than I thought possible. I guessed that could only have been by the soil being kept at a consistent, cooler temperature than it would ordinarily have been.
We will keep you in our prayers and do not give up on the garden. Get your hands on some soak hoses and mulch and be ready when the plants are.
Keep us posted on how it goes.
Bill P.

Instead of water, water, water, it's MULCH MULCH MULCH! Drip systems are almost finished installing. Now all I need to buy is the timer for it. I hope to wean my plants off so much water as I believe in the infrequent deep method. Hopefully, I'll be able to get by with one deep soaking every fourteen days in midsummer. I'm going to seriously push it farther if I can. I want my plants to be tough as Marines and I'll pick varieties that share that desire.

My bathroom is high-techly equipped with a small bucket and an old mixing bowl by the sink and tub. When I warm up my water for the shower, the bucket catches the wasted water, the mixing bowl is for the sink when I wash my hands and face. :) Grey water goes to newly planted material which would need the extra. If I have any surplus, which was not often, it's stored in old milk jugs under the patio furniture.

Another bucket under the sink to wash dishes in and dump all that lovely grey water. :) Vegetable oil soap to mop the floor so I can use that water too.

I've made earnest efforts to deepen the soil with amendments and cover crops. Fortunately, my soil is clay so if I can get it porous enough and mulch it enough, it will accept and hold water was a good amount of time.

Future plans: Rainbarrels. I'm not a crafty person, I don't "build" things but it looks like I'll have to build some of my own or else find some empty 50 gallon containers and open the top. Mosquitos could be a problem there though.

Moisture meter. I can tell what needs watering and what doesn't. I'll also be able to better track how drought tolerant my plants are becoming more accurately that way.

gonefishing

I've just returned from buying 25 pounds of turkey to feed 13 people on Thanksgiving Day and still have leftovers.

I did want to tell you that it's the Feds, the Army Corps of Engineers, who are releasing that water from Lake Lanier. Here's one report issued in October: On Friday, Perdue's office asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water it drains from Georgia reservoirs into streams in Alabama and Florida. Georgia's environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions.

More than a billion gallons of water is released from Lanier every day. The Corps of Engineers bases its water releases on two requirements: The minimum flow needed for a coal-fired power plant in Florida and mandates to protect two mussel species in a Florida river. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21393296/

Since we're on well water and there's about a six-month lag in supply and replenishment based on precipitation, we'll not be in trouble until later, maybe next Spring or Summer. I guess it takes that long to filter into the water table. The worst case scenarios have 4.5 million people in the greater Atlanta area on city/county water "suddenly" waterless this winter with nothing to do but "migrate" elsewhere. Imagination makes it a nightmare, violence and fighting over water, people not having enough water to survive, people stealing it wherever they can, and the cost of water skyrocketing. I dunno. It's hard to imagine it, but even more difficult is imagining it for so many people.

=====

clumsygrdner

We have clay soil, too, and I think that's why I didn't have to water much at all this past summer. We had some springtime rain but almost nothing after then. Every time I checked, the garden soil under the mulch was moist. Another great mulch-help was the several layers of cardboard I laid out in the area in and surrounding my raised beds. The cardboard outside the beds was intended to keep the weeds around the beds down but it must have functioned as a moisture barrier for the earth surrounding my veggies, too. I punched or cut holes in the cardboard and planted or seeded into the soil below. I also mulched deeply with leaves and will again.

Gonefishing,

Sorry, I see now that you already knew the water was being released by the ACE. I suspect that Florida coal-powered facility for producing electricity is part of the Southern Company, just revealed to be one of the worst carbon polluters in the world.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3166414.ece

They have almost a monopoly all over the southeast. Here's an excerpt from the link: A single Southern Company plant in Juliette, Georgia already emits more carbon dioxide annually that Brazils entire power sector. The company is in the top two of Americas dirtiest utility polluters and sixth worst in the world.

They're huge. The Southern Company is the holding company for most electric companies in the south, and I think I recall reading somewhere that all or most of their electricity-producing plants are coal-powered.

Just to add some perspective--your normal annual rainfall in Atlanta runs around 50 inches(granted it is less during the drought). My annual rainfall runs around 5-7 inches. We've been in a drought for a good 7 years now, so we have been getting a lot less than that. My methods of conserving water have been to substitute sprinkler irrigation in the garden for ditch water (substituting an inexpensive source of water with an expensive one) and applying less water per irrigation, which works well earlier in the year when the garden is small, but later in the year I have been able to get some supplemental ditch water as it doesn't create the problems sprinklers do.

In a practical mode, the government can do only a few things--they can pray for rain, they can invest in water storage/efficiency to provide water during droughts or to use water multiple times before it leaves an area, or for public water systems, they can price the water realistically and progressively to encourage conservation. Simply changing the pricing of domestic water to provide an inexpensive base level needed for daily living with rising rates above that, you would be amazed at how much conservation will occur without the heavy thumb of government.

For best water conservation, you will want to mulch heavily, either with organic mulches such as straw, leaves, dried grass, etc. or with plastic over the ground to reduce evaporation. If you have to keep bare ground, keep the top layer loose and fluffy to inhibit movement of soil moisture back to the surface where it can evaporate. You can change your garden to using less water intensive plants, but that would probably eliminate some of you favorite vegetables/fruits.

In order to minimize water usage, I think the most efficient way is to use a drip irrigation system, either by burying drip irrigation tape in your garden or using soaker hoses or something similar under plastic mulch, the purpose being to never expose the water you apply to evaporation. This will reduce your water needs by 30-70% over sprinkler or ditch irrigation.

Regardless of the method you use, your garden plants will require anywhere between about 10" to 40" of water to produce a crop, depending on what you are growing, and you can either increase that substantially by having some of the water evaporate, or you can reduce evaporation so that the water use is limited to the evapotranspiration needs of the plant.

If you go to a drip type irrigation system, you may need to saturate the ground periodically in order to flush salts out of the root zone of the plants if you water contains any salts. Otherwise the salts in the irrigation water will accumulate until they damage the plants. In your wet climate, that really shouldn't be a problem.

A normal household doesn't really use that much water within the house, but if you start irrigating lawns or gardens, the use rises sharply. You can easily capture gray water and use it in the yard and use barrels to capture rain water runoff from the roof to use after the rain has dried up. Gray water will meet some of your supplemental water needs for a small yard or for house plants and is a great way to go. Still, remember that water is not destroyed. It is the evaporation that removes it from usability, otherwise it can be used over and over until all the moisture is gone from the water! Normally, water is lost by moving downstream from where you want it, so you want to use it as many times as possible while it is in your posession because once it has gone downstream, it is lost to you but still can support someone lower in the system.

Good luck. In a climate like yours, water needs are higher for maintaining a landscape or food production than in cooler or drier climates where the native plants normally survive on less water.

Anney, I don't have a huge garden 70 x 40' but almost the entire garden except for beans, corn, lettuce & radishes will be covered with cardboard next year.

Ohio_grower

That garden sounds plenty big enough to me! I've been practicing a modified version of square foot gardening to get more from the space I have available, planting things closer together, and as long as the plants have sufficient nutrition and water, they've done great!

Yes, for some crops, such as those you mention, you just can't use cardboard as mulch unless they're planted in rows. But you can put cardboard between the rows up close to the plants to slow evaporation from the surrounding soil. If you use very thick cardboard or several layers, it will last a good long time, dry on top but somewhat moist beneath. Cardboard has the added advantage of attracting earthworms, which apparently love the paper and glue that holds it together. I have heavy clay soil, but somehow the earthworms find their way beneath the cardboard in great numbers.

g'day anney,

with the twin tub washers you probably may have not noticed them if you aren't particularly looking for them but they will be there or available on request (the push is for these big water wasting auto's) all known machine makers make twin tubs, do a google.

the best way for a household to get an angle on water usage in their homes is to read the meter say one day then a day or a week later read it again meter reading weekly is a good part of water wise management, for the person who said most households don't use a lot of water if they don't water gardens that might be more a mythe than a reality especially without the knowledge of a meter reading.

over here the regulators have stipulated to save water all showering must be kept to no more than 4 minutes and that with speialy fitted so called water wise shower heads with restricters on the flow pressure.

who uses and insinkerator they can use up to 30 litres of water at each use, and evaporative air conditioners use up to 50 litres of water per hour of opperation.

and yes mulch mulch the garden but water by hand as that way you water each plant and not the whole garden, which doesn't need it. buy a good rain guage so you can better be able to work out whether rain fall has been sufficient to replace a watering period.

not recommended to store grey water use it as fresh as you get it.

len

Hi, I live in the north Georgia mountains and we are in the same drought. Our lake is way down, but its outflow goes north, not down towards Lake Lanier and Atlanta and points south.

One idea I read about that I am going to try next year for bell peppers and tomatos (two biggies for me) is planting them in a large can...the kind that resturants, schools, hospitals use for canned veggies.) Cut bottom out, partially submerge in the ground over baby plants...then fill with dirt/compost as the plants grow. Water only into the can so the water goes straight to the roots of that plant and not surrounding dirt/compost. This is also supposed to protect from cutworms.

I reuse as much indoor water as I can, don't flush unless it is "brown", save warm-up shower water in buckets, wash dishes by hand so that water can go out onto plants... This year I had 2 15 gallon cans to collect rain water...I now have a 55 gallon barrel I hope I can get someone to help me install under the gutter to catch roof run-off when we do get rain. I put an empty coffee can where the heat-pump condensate comes out of a pipe to recycle. I don't have a lawn...my yard is all raised beds for veggies and flowers. The perennials ignore the drought conditions, so I don't have to water them...most of the annuals are veggies and I restrict my watering to those. I can and freeze as many veggies as I can so I don't have to buy food shipped in from far places that do massive irrigation. Just a short walk to my garden can complete most of my meals.

Anney, I also have a few beds for crops such as lettuce, spinach, radishes and onion. This makes a lot more sense than having a row of lettuce or carrots with 2' or more on each side. I just created a new bed for Candy onion 40' x 4' They are sweet like a vidalia but can be grown anywhere.

Gardelen, very nicely put and explained the only enhancement to you information would be, if possible to use the soapy water to pour/spray on plants that are liked by aphids or similar.

How much glue is in the cardboard? Is it possible to till it into the garden without creating a problem

Ohio_grower

The glue is actually in corrugated cardboard, the kind that has a sort of pleated inner section. The glue holds the outer layers to the inner corrugated layer and the amount of glue compared to the paper is negligible.

Not sure about your tilling question but I'll take a shot. You can till falling-apart cardboard into the soil, I suppose, but if you put cardboard down on either bare or weedy soil in the Spring and then put more soil or a grow mixture on top of it, you can plant right down through it. When the cardboard's damp, it's easy to punch through it. Water the plants when needed, and the cardboard will deteriorate by the end of the season with the moisture and earthworms at work on it, adding goodies to your soil and bringing lots of earthworms in to munch on it!

Some people using this method don't even till the soil. I don't, though I do mix the fertilized and composted upper soil with the lower soil in planting holes. I have nutrient-rich clay soil, so the only problem is if it dries out and gets hard. The cardboard prevents that, and the earthworms keep the clay pretty friable.

This set up with a 5-gallon bucket yields a little over 4 gallons a day from our air conditioner during the hot humid summer. It's water that would otherwise go to waste. I use the watering can in the picture when it has been raining a lot and I don't need the water as bad. It's overfilled every day. It is more convenient than the bucket. Not much water for a big garden, but it is 'free'. I guess you could call it distilled also. No city junk in it. In previous years, I have had 25 feet of hose run across the yard to a tree. The tree LOVED the continuous water. I would just kick the hose end to different spots around the tree every week or so, so as to not cause root rot in any one zone.

You have to keep all parts of the hose at a level lower than the A/C. It won't drain uphill. A long stretch of hose will get clogged with mold over a few months, which can lead to a back-up at the A/C unit, so cleaning the hose once in a while is a good idea. Just unhook from drain, and flush with another hose. Also, make sure there are no leaks at the drain/hose connection. It does not take much of a drip here to squander much of you potential water reclaim.

{{gwi:118520}}

{{gwi:118521}}

And there we see the major reason for that Georgia power-plant mentioned earlier: AC.

We had quite a severe mid-summer drought here too, and are still way behind on ground moisture. I have sandy soil, so my specific garden drought may well have been worse than yours, Anney. I operate one garden with no irrigation whatsoever, and of course that one got badly hammered, but still I learned as always. Parsnips and beets were largely unaffected. Walking onions didn't even notice - they don't notice much. Costata Romanesca is the premier drought squash - all other squash varieties completely failed without irrigation. In my home garden, a very deep double-dug raised bed enclosed in hay bales was effectively drought-proof. I found that legume crops in general need very little if any irrigation if they are in deep soil and are well-established before drought. I guess that goes for all plants, tomatoes that were well-established in June before it got dry didn't need any watering hardy all through the three months of drought.

Of course, if we are talking about establishing plants in dry conditions, it's a whole different story. That's very difficult, and the crops must be selected very carefully. Everything might have to be started under cover to control evaporation. The south-east might be looking at that scenario for next spring, it seems.

dixielib,

i have pic's on my site on how we connected our drums to the down pipe worked a treat and easy diy stuff, we use an inline boat bilge pump coupled to a motor battery booster pack to pump out the water again all too easy.

we use lots of paper and cardboard when beginning a new garden and then mulch mulch mulch and more mulch like another poster says.

the only way to have rain water collection that will make a difference is with a rainwater tank.

len

dixielib.........I use the can method. I use coffee cans and went to the Italian restaurant that my son works at and got all of their cans from their canned tomatoes. Just put them over your peppers and tomatoes when you set out the transplants and set them a little into the ground so they stay anchored. Easy to fill can with water and does indeed keep the cutworms out.

Here in the Salt Lake area, we are have been in a 6 year drought.....last year not as bad......and with our hot temps.....upper 90's - 100's.......I mulch, mulch, mulch, with straw that I've let sit out over the winter....that seems to eliminate the weed seeds.

Does anyone use a moisture meter? If so, does it work and which one do you use? I don't have a water problem here because I'm on a well and the lots are large (10 acres or greater) but I don't want to waste so I'm using drip irrigation and plan on using plastic mulch to retain water. I would like to use a meter to make sure I don't over or under water if there is one that works well. Here's a diagram of my garden.

{{gwi:114574}}

Our average rainfall here is 15 inches a year, but it regularly varies from around 7 inches up to 21 (the year before last). I was in heaven that year -- it was the first I'd seen since I moved here nearly 20 years ago. Add to that, all our rain comes in the winter. You can irrigate or you can grow rocks and winter season weeds, mostly annual grasses, thistles, bindweed, mustards, wild geraniums,and oxalis. You can have fields of oxalis.

Native plants will also survive if you do not water, but there are few of them left and establishing a planting of them requires a different skill set than most gardeners have. You can make a beautiful landscape from natives, but you won't grow food or many flowers past the spring burst.

So most of us irrigate. My front yard is a garden of heritage roses and perennials and it is on spray. I experimented with drip but ended up replacing it. It was not at all robust. I can't have an irrigation system so fragile that it has to be repaired every time it is used. I fertilize once in the spring and mulch heavily. I have several other smaller beds that get the same treatment.

This year we are converting the vegetable beds to soaker hose. That should reduce watering a bit.

We dream of putting in a system to capture roof water for summer irrigation. Given that all our rainfall comes six months away from the time that we will actually need it for the garden, that would mean a very large storage tank of some kind, an expensive project, and one the city would no doubt resist. I hate dealing with the city. I really don't know why they behave that way. I long to move to a higher rainfall area, but my DH wants to stay here. So mulch is my chief weapon. I believe in mulch.

My, I have rambled a bit, haven't I! This is something I think about quite a bit.

The northeast is usually blessed with a good amount of annual rainfall, but some summers are much drier than others. This past summer, we went more than 60 days without rain. We keep a bucket in the shower & flush only as necessary. All cooking water goes out to the garden. Also the water used to rinse off fresh produce. The dehumidifier water gets dumped in the garden. We keep a 5 gallon bucket on the back porch for daily dribs and drabs: cooking water, dirty dog bowl water, ice cubes that have been dropped on the floor, abandoned beverages, etc. This also gets dumped in the garden daily. Our shrubs & flowers are heavily mulched with grass clippings, chopped leaves & wood chips, all of which I get for free. Our veggie garden is comprised of 15" high raised beds filled with lasagne. The lasagne really holds water extremely well and our veggies did very well during the long period of no rain. I have 1 rain barrel now, which I plan to install in the spring. I hope to get more. Also, I'd like to rig up a system so that my sump pump water would drain into a rain barrel. Some years, heavy spring rains result in my sump pump dumping huge amounts of water on my side lawn, water that I'd love to capture and save for late summer.

Hi Anney, I hope that you are getting some much needed rain today. Early morning T.V. here says that you may have trouble with delays in air travel around Atlanta due to heavy rain. This is the same system that gave us two days of slow soaking rain which amounted to a little over an inch and a half in my rain gage.

I know that would not produce any run off except on streets, parking lots etc. and would only be a drop in the bucket of what you folks need over there. At least it may reduce the fire hazard some and we can continue to hope and pray that it might be the one that breaks the drought for you.
Bill P.

Dear GF,

Yes, it's supposed to rain all day. Thanks for noticing. We've had 2.24" of rain since November 1, certainly better than nothing. The average is supposed to be 50" a year, and we've received only 24.8" since January 1. The northern part of the state is where the rain is really needed to fill the lakes and reservoirs that supply most of the state, though it's certainly needed elsewhere, too. We are surrounded by acres and acres of woodlands, primarily hardwoods and pine. California isn't the only place at risk for wildfires during droughts, of course.

Nature sure brings us either too much or too little rain sometimes, right?

For people living in Georgia, the link below has comprehensive information about rainfall, soil temps, soil moisture at 12", ambient temps, wind speed, degree days, frost dates, rainfall, transpiration, etc. An awful lot of information. Just enter your zip code.

I check it almost daily.

I just drove through southeastern Georgia this morning; it looks dry but not so dry as the upland carolinas. We drove through the shenandoah before that, looks fine. The first signs of drought were just south of roanoke, va.