Al and Nathan, I hope that you don't mind my sharing a humorous story about Turface, that really highlights your points and underscores how respected a product Turface is in the industry. My son is a Turf Grass Agronomy major at a large Southern university, and did an internship last spring/summer at one of the major league baseball spring training facilities in Florida. Turface is used for excess water on the fields that occurs during rainstorms, especially those "popcorn" showers (downpours) that occur frequently in Florida. It has helped prevent many a game "rainout" due to its effectiveness. It takes many bags of Turface to do this (for one game), which can become a bit pricey---so it's a protected commodity in the baseball industry. During one sudden torrential downpour, the Grounds Crew quickly pulled the tarp over the infield, and then took cover in the visiting team's dugout to wait out the storm. The Turface bags were kept to the side in the visiting dugout, near where the Grounds workers were standing. The visiting team's pitcher had a bad inning just prior to the rainstorm, and came into the dugout kicking and throwing things, as they sometimes do. As he looked for things to use to vent his frustration, he eyed the bags of Turface to the side, and the Grounds workers caught his glance, and could tell that he was tempted to kick them, also. They immediately, in *unison*, said "don't even think about it!". Throw your glove, knock over some bats, kick the bubblegum containers over, but don't mess with the Turface...unless you want to take on the Grounds Crew... :)

Young trees and vines are an entirely different matter than well established ones. They need more frequent water. Like an inch or two once a week on newly planted. If big trees are nearby or weeds are present maybe more. Grapes are one of the most drought tolerant fruits. So that is a good standard gauge for watering needs. The nuts will need more water than grapes for best nut size and fill. There is no upside to shorting water on nuts. Peaches, nectarine, and plum after getting well rooted can benefit from some water deficit. The benefit comes in the form of sweeter and more flavorful fruit at the expense of some fruit size. I'd say water those about like the grapes. If they aren't dropping leaves or the fruit isn't shriveling they aren't too dry. Cherries, pears, and apples probably need a little water than grapes. Cut the dry periods off a little sooner.

I probably could dig down 4" in the garden, at least in the raised beds. I'd expect to find moisture since I've been watering deeply about once every 4 or 5 days. No matter how deeply I water, it isn't enough and dries out really quickly, but I'm just trying to keep things alive until rainfall returns. Outside the garden? Everything, clay and sand alike, has deep cracks and is rock hard. I'd have to use a jackhammer to dig down 4". I suppose I could stick my finger, hand and arm down into one of the cracks in the ground to see if I could find any moisture, but I wouldn't dare....I've seen snakes glide down into those cracks and disappear. July and August have been really disappointing, moisture-wise. No rain here in 5 weeks and, while I am sure we have good soil moisture a foot or more down, we don't seem to have much in the upper portion of the soil. Even the Johnson grass and crab grass are withering and turning brown....which isn't a problem, of course, and the lambs quarter leaves are all rolled up, drying out and falling off. The pigweed (sadly) still looks fine thought the foliage all wilts at mid-day and then perks up again over night. Normally we have better rainfall in August than we have had so far---we average about 2.6 or 2.7" of rain in a typical August. At our house so far this year, we've had 0.02". Of course, August isn't even halfway over yet. Since the butterflies love the heat, we have butterflies everywhere, so at least there's that. Chris and I mowed the front pasture 2 or 3 weeks ago and it showed no new growth at all for well over a week. Now, a few grasses finally are putting up new green growth but it is pitifully thin and sparse. There's nothing wrong here that a good 2 or 3" of rain wouldn't fix, at least for a while, but there's no meaningful rain in sight, and our KBDI goes up daily. Robert, the KBDIs near you are scary-high. My garden is looking pretty pitiful and I have been watering. It's just been hard to water enough to fight the sort of heat we've been having in combination with no rainfall. I am hoping this week's little cool spell helps. It is drier across the river in Texas than it is here, and there are some disgruntled fire chiefs in the county across from ours because their county commissioners declined to enact a burn ban at last week's meeting. Oddly (don't tell my fire chief husband), I don't think we need a burn ban (and doubt they really need one yet either) because I don't think the fires here are bad enough to merit that. I think we're months away from possibly needing a burn ban and I expect El Nino' autumn rains will ensure we don't reach that point. We are, though, quite a bit drier than we normally are in August and that could mean problems down the road until rainfall materializes in a decent amount. Had I not been watering quite heavily the last 4 or 5 weeks, I expect my garden would be largely brown and dead. I base that on all the gardens around us that are exactly that....brown and dead. A lot of people have mowed their brown gardens down to the ground, or plowed them under. I can't do either because I have perennial herbs, veggies and flowers in my garden that I'd like to keep alive. Between the 2+ months of incredible flooding and then the quick onset of dry conditions once rain stopped falling, it really hasn't been an very good year for gardeners in our county, though I know some folks had a great melon year or a great tomato year or a great bean year. It is just that it wasn't that great of a year for everything overall. A friend of mine has told me every day this week "I'm ready for September to get here." I understand exactly what she means and I feel the same way. I guess if September doesn't bring relief, we'll start looking ahead and hoping for October to hurry up and get here.

The word of the day is "Let the buyer beware" . How many here would call someone and say "I want a new car. Get me one and I will pay you what you want"? Why do we do that with soil? So often we see here someone bought some soil and it was not what they wanted, or expected, because they relied on the seller to give them what they wanted and that happens seldom. Someone wanting to purchase soil needs to determine what they want and go and look for it., same as buying that car. Do not rely on someone's description of soil as "topsoil" (a meaningless term), or "garden soil" (also meaningless), but go and look at what is being sold. Look at the soil, smell the soil, feel the soil, ask for a one cup sample of the soil for testing as described in "Soil test for organic matter" above. A good soil mix for a garden is one with about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay and 5 percent organic matter, soil some maintain is improbable to get. If we all demand that mix it will become available if those selling soil want to stay in business. If we, as buyers, demand quality we will get it. kimmq is kimmsr