Will,

Sorry to hear you are cold and damp. When do you want to trade?

At the other end of the spectrum here in Kansas City quite the opposite. 101 F. today and for the rest of the week temps in the 100 degree + range. No rain or even a cloud in the sky. Watering everyday. All my conifer gardening is done between 8 Am and 11 Am. Anything past that is heat stroke territory.

All B&B new conifers planted this spring are protected by shade cloth. All new potted conifers are doing well and everything else holding its own. Pinus strobus are for me the most susceptible to heat stress and have to be watched carefully. I lost 4 last August while on vacation for 2 weeks and these were established conifers. So far this year I lost one a small graft Dax gave me 3 years ago. Pinus strobus 'Hayden'.

Aside from the conifers we had a severe thunder storm with marble size hail last week that shredded most of my hostas.

Garden tours are on hold while on survival mode. Shade cloth rules the roost now.

Well, here's hoping things will turn around for all of us soon.

Dave

{{gwi:774278}}

St Louis has been wet and stormy this year until the last week or so. Since we have had a run of 90's and no rain. Even actually touched the 100's.

I actually drug out the sprinklers today and ran them in the front yard. Strung together four on a hose, it worked acceptably. Tomorrow I think I'll do the back, create rather a kiddy play area with three or four sprinklers going at once.

What I'm watering isn't the established trees but the transplants from the last two years.

Far as man made or natural climate change, I dunno if this is a result of that or natural variation and I do believe in man made global warming. Just I don't know if a degree or two difference is changing climates yet or just making our 94 degree days 96 degrees (f of course lol).

Eventually something is bound to give. Gulf Stream changes and England gets cold as some other lands as far north or somethin similar.

On a natural tree related note imagine the climate swings the old Sequoias and Bristlecones (Pinus balfourianae?) have seen and survived. Warm years, years w/o summers. Amazing.

98 yesterday...1/2" rain in the last 4 weeks. I could have grilled burgers right on the deck.

I'm having a blast watering my barage of new plantings with a full time job and a demanding 1 year old, lol.

This is why I hate summer.

You've seen my rants on other threads....Oklahoma is in a free fall.

After a very wet year last year, followed by the coldest winter snap in OK history seeing 10 below for a few days, we are now in a record breaking heatwave and drought. It's tough to be a plant in Oklahoma.

We're 12" behind in rainfall in the last 9 months. We haven't been out of the 90's since the first week of May. And now we haven't been below 100 for 5 weeks. It's an incredible heatwave.

The sun is now in a climactic lock. Without some significant rainfalls in this area to break the sun's energy up, the ground temperature is continuing to rise and dry out. Central and western OK are now in water rationing or restrictions. Lakes in this area are drying up and huge algae blooms are preventing swimming in many. Best guess by meteorologists for Central OK right now is it will take about 8-10" of consistant rainfall to break the drought cycle and move the drought line.

You can't win right now for plants......If you water a lot you drown them.....If you don't they fry. Currently for me it is similar to some of the comments above, if a plant has been in the ground for a few years they are hanging in there fairly well...mostly dealing with sunburn.

If it's a transplant from the last year or two - AND ABOUT 65% OF MINE ARE 3 YEARS OR LESS- you're in real trouble. I too have shadecloth everywhere.

mark

Guys, no experience with shade cloth but doesn't that dark color absorb and generate more heat in the vicinity?

Good point. Does anyone make white shade cloth? Or any other colors?

Sister's kids came over today. Used it as an excuse to get out the sprinklers and water the back yard.

"Guys, no experience with shade cloth but doesn't that dark color absorb and generate more heat in the vicinity"

No it does not. Trust me?

I usually shade south and west. North and east unshaded. East exposure not a factor.

Dave

The heat physics of the dark shade cloth would be to absorb radiation from the sun but the because it is not enclosed around the plant(like a car), the air rises and ventilates easy. The darkened shade area of the tree is of course cooler and thus the water evaporates from the soil and tree slower, creating a micro-climate. Now a black plastic garbage bad would be fatal, as this wouldn't allow convection and the heating would be increased around the plant.

Today we're literally *praying* for 70 degrees and Sunshine. It's been unbearably wet and despite very long days(16+ hours), I did not see the sun ONCE either Saturday or Sunday.

Meanwhile I am listening to a baseball game in Minnesota and the announcers said it was 94(!), 78% humidity and a heat index of 109. My god, that's incredible.

He also had a funny line, "Anyone sitting out in this scorching sun is going to be sunburned in 37 seconds...."

We'd KILL for some 80s weather and you want our cool/rain so hopefully the weather pattern changes and equalizes things out again.

-Will

Know how you feel . . .

Resin

Maybe the microclimates are just that varied here in the PNW, but (according to weather.com) we're on track or a little behind where we should be for average rainfall for the month, as is Seattle. Will, do you have a better source for information? I'd love to see something that shows a little more statistical data--my kingdom for a standard deviation.

It's 71 right now, nice low cloud layer to keep it from getting too hot with occasional blasts of sun, and the pork is on the smoker. 5 or 6 degrees below average for the high, and beats the heck out of the 85, 90, 100+ days we've seen the past couple of years. We also went 60+ days at a time without rain along with the high temperatures the last couple of summers, so getting some rain every week or so is fine and dandy with me.

After living in the SE US for most of my life, this weather is WONDERFUL. Our 6th summer in the PNW, and our favorite to date.

Your perpective and microclimate may vary.

Today turned into a wonderful day, mid 70s and sunshine. The rest of the week we're headed for rain including a particularly strong system given it's Summer later this week. More rain is welcomed for most gardens but most of us are used to MUCH more sun this time of the year. Lucretia, you may be in an area seeing more sun and less rain. I measure rain myself, digitally and analog and both register about 1.1 inches so far this month. Seatac is typically much drier then where I am(nearer to Bremerton).

I must say though, I'd rather have 65 and cool rain then 105 and humidity!

My wife and I were on vacation for three weeks. Our house sitters only had to water my plants in pots once. Only one suffered and I should have planted that Weigela before I left. It's fine now, but did lose some leaves. Not bad for several hundred pots.
I'm looking forward to that rain on Thursday Will.
Mike

I'm the same as Dave......either have large sheets of overhead shade cloth hung or shade smaller on an angle to the South and West.

I use a company called theshadeclothstore.com and use their knitted fabric at the 60% reduction level. They have lots of pre-made size options, the outside bands are nice and strong, and they come with nice large brass grommets every 2 or 4 feet......and most importantly they are the cheapest.

As to temperature, they claim it will reduce around 10 degrees and I can tell you when I walk under the big one I have up, you can immediately feel the difference. And nothing under the big cover cover has sunburned. So it doesn't look great but I'm a believer.

At this point pretty much anything in my collection that isn't covered has a sunburned top except one lone Hoopsi......don't know why it is soooo strong against the sun.

Oklahoma forecast for the next week....105 everyday.

mark

What really ticks me off is that weather.com had listed 100% chance for rain last night. It didn't even sprinkle. Don't tease us like that!

Will, makes sense...the heat absorbing and then rising.
I was thinking about those black top driveways that just radiate heat and would think that heat would naturally just radiate around the plant as well.

Will,

over towards Buckley, our average rainfall this month is about twice what yours is. Coming from a flat state, it's taking some time to get used to the effect mountains have on weather!

We put in several (for us) baby conifers this spring. They all seem to be loving the extra rain. And we're loving not having to haul water around.

Hey, Will, although I'm quite a ways south of you, we shared a wet winter and slow spring...
I didn't really get my garden started until June, and my coneflowers are just now blooming.
Like you, I've been spared the hassle of watering, since the rainfall left our soils moist.
The ferns, redwoods, cryptomeria, birches, osage, and other trees are in pure heaven.

However, we have passed the hundred degree mark on several days, and have spent a couple
weeks in the mid-90F's. Overall, though, this has been a very pleasant July. Weather
Underground lists my temp as 84F currently, but my thermometer reads 91F.

Josh

The gnarly weather continues today. More clouds, more rain and cool temps. The base I work on has a sign outside that says 62. The clouds are dark and we've had on and off rain. Yesterday we had an hour or two of sunlight, literally the only time the sun has penetrated the clouds for the last 4-5 days. It's supposed to improve by this weekend, all the way into the 70s, but we're not holding our breath. Definetly the most unusual Summer I've ever seen here.

Here near Maple Valley and Cedar Falls, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, I get a lot more rain and cloudy weather than Seattle. I love it! (Except the moss that grows on my back and that I have to put slug bait in my downspouts to keep em' clear.)
Salt water to the west is less than an hour away and ski resorts less than an hour away to the east. Also to the east, less than two hours away, is semi-desert in central Washington State. I don't ski, but I do like to hike in the mountains.
We do have dry summers here though.....all two weeks of it. ;-)
Mike

{{gwi:774281}}
Foxglove in a Metasequoia glyptostroboides, 'Ogon'.

It finally rained here. 1.5" through the night. Temps were of course off the charts.

Awesome foxglove. I bought 500 seeds of 'Candy Mountain' a few weeks ago.

Dax

A bit late for Foxgloves here, but they're some of my favorites.....

Josh

They're good to start now in an outdoor bed and then next spring move to other locations.

Dax

Frost forecast for tonight :-((

Resin

Well Will, you've got your 80 degree weekend. Hope you are enjoying it! After a giving everyone who needed it a drink this morning, I'm hiding out in the dark, cool house. Too much sun today for my battered old hide.

Just checked the temperatures at my old hometown in Florida--after 7:00 at night, and the heat index is 106--"dangerous--outdoor exposure should be limited". This is on a barrier island with "cooling" breezes from the Atlantic. (Of course, the heat doesn't slow down the mosquitoes.) Counting my blessings that we now live in the Pacific Northwest. For those of you living in areas suffering from severe heat and drought, may you soon have cooling breezes and soaking rains.