It IS summer, isn't it!

I knew it was today but missed the exact moment. I think I could have done a little dance! The weather service says it was 77F today and will be well over 80F tomorrow. Summer!

If you want to know about what a cool start it has been up here at 48 degrees north latitude check out the link below. Spokane, WA is about 20 miles west of my large veggie garden, altho' it is actually a warmer location.

NOAA Growing Degree Days (click)
-- a measurement of heat accumulated through the growing season.

Spokane has been cooler than:

Caribou, Maine
Marquette, on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and
Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Need I go on??

I will! Try this link to Weather.com's Growing Degree Calculator and paste in Novosibirsk, Russia.

Novosibirsk is in Siberia at 55 degrees north! It is wonderful to live somewhere that has a colder growing season than Siberia! NOT!

Steve

Like I said about RM weather... things change... I would not go yanking out "No Hope" Tomato plants. I doubt Novosibirsk garden centers have ever seen such a plant!!! Hey the summer has just started.... KEEP OPTIMISTIC!!!!

digit I looked at the links and that is amazing!!! Are you sure some anti global warming group has not constucted a high tech tarp over your area to disprove GW :) !!!!!

No Dsieber, about the next coolest spring was the one we had last year! You'd think I'd be used to it by now . . .

A record cold April and a bottom of the barrel May has nearly slid right thru June, now! About the only thing I can say is that the last frost was not particularly late! It hasn't warmed up much but it hasn't been frigid.

I'm still optimistic. I was looking at some of my tomato plants today and thinking that they really look fairly good - nice color, growing . . .

What is especially encouraging is the new forecast for July thru September. It is normal or slightly above normal temperatures! I can hardly believe it!

For all my trying, the real life meteorologists are a lot better than I am at predicting the weather. As with all things gardening, hope reigns supreme.

Steve

Our friends on the south side of the Palmer Divide are not so optimistic as they aren't getting the rain we are up here, and esp the trees are suffering. We'll be seeing high mortality if the monsoon doesn't kick in.

Nonetheless, here, the timing and amount of rain has been wonderful. Now comes the heat.

Dan

We're doing the 40F-90F gig over here. Windows open at night, covered up in blankets. Of course in the winter, if the house was 40 F, we'd all be huddled around the fire. In the summer, trotting around in shorts.

Yeah I love the cool nights. We have a house in Phoenix, when the night time temps do not drop below 90 it is the pits, plus the thought of the $$$ going into the A/C!

OK, Dan, what is the Palmer divide? Down here in New Mexico we are having a similar summer but no rain yet. Looking to the monsoons , soon?
Very dry here. Gloria

mcfaroff see link I did not know where it was and I live 20 miles from it!

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/weather/14144667/detail.html

Way... Way north of the palmer divide up in SW Mt a jumble of seasons as so often the case in late June early July...persistant and regular precipitation with fresh snow falls still as of last week contributing ,evanescently to the snowpack of the higher elevations even as we climbed into upper 70's pushing 80 for first time this week...Stream flows high in our area, but not devestatingly so as in the central and eastern montana...light frost last weekend...soil temps finally getting to productive levels....we opted out of a spring barley planting due to wet cold weather and passing a point of no return with crop insurer. Tomatoes patio containers only this year...but the valley and foothill wildflowers are among the best I have ever seen....the adundance of balsamrhiza lend the green hills a yellow cast that can be seen for miles....delphinium particularily geyer and low larkspur fill fields with their incomparable purples blue lupines mixed in.... and even Iris missouriensis blooming with abandon.... really solid mushroom year

Mtny, morels? Gloria

YUMMMM Morels!!!!!!!

Here we are down to the final day of the month. I just went back and looked at the official calendar to see how it has gone. I wish the Weather Service would include "average" wind information because I think that might be interesting for this breezy June.

Just looking at the average daytime highs tell most of the story for this part of the world: Only on 7 days did the thermometer reach the average afternoon high. The forecast is for a high of 69F today. That is 7 degrees below normal so it must be that we fell below the mark on nearly 80% of the days.

Horsefeathers! Looks like a no melon year!

Steve

Yesterday was micro-burst day, apparently all over the state of Colorado. Thats when you get really strong winds coming straight down from the really high thunderhead clouds. Which every TV station was busy explaining.

Locally, my DD is working as a manager at the swimming pool, and yesterday was the big hoopla grand opening for the renovated pool with the spiffy new splash pad - the microwave burst hitting with perfect timing, the Mayor and City Council and associated fauna all holding paper plates with blerk cake and ice cream, and everything went flying - chairs, shade canopies, cake&plates, hats, tables, a few tree branches, and so on. She said it was pretty funny. They had to close the pool to clean it all up.

I was out picking peas when we got a microburst, the big, wheeled trash bin ended up several hundred feet away, and my hat should be in Kansas by now.

Just up the road one of those high base thunderclouds blew over and a couple claps of lightning and two bursts from two directions later, a couple airmen at the AF base got hit by lightning.

Anyhoo, Steve, what are they saying about the Frank Church this year? Good water up there? Think we're going backpacking there end of Jul.

Dan

...and today did a bike ride and had to wait out a thunderstorm in a car wash, lots of lightning.

Dan

Was going to make a Target run but the winds are blowing and drops are falling. Could turn into hail, must stick around to save as many plants as possible!

Right now we got red flag warnings, they had up and took down a severe thunderstorm watch, and you can't see across the valley due to the dust up from Arizona.

The sort of weather where you can hang your clothes out to dry, and they'll be dry in 3 minutes, but then you'd need to wash them all over again because they'd be covered in dust.

These high-base tstms rarely drop hail. Usually wind, lightning and a little rain. We had three go right over the house today and lots of lightning and brief gusty wind and ~.1 precip.

Dan

Hmmm, well definitely a cool start up here by out of Kalispell.The garden pics are showing about 3 weeks from flower times.I do not even have peonies open and my lilacs are are just about mid through bloom..Nice but kind a strange..Added plus we have had so much moisture this year the plants are huge..LOL so are the weeds we have not been able to get out and take care of...hehehe
Water garden the lilies are also lagging behind a bit.The fishes are still happy, the chicken wire went over a bit later since the cold seemed to slow down the osprey arrival
The vege garden well, flippin slugs everywhere because of the moisture.Okay they are also in the flowers but less noticeable.We tried starting everything in the greenhouses this year so they could survive the slug onslaught.Yes that has helped but the last couple of days of rain brought the turds back in full force..The actual plants are really doing better then most peoples in the area..a few days of heat should really help them out to kick into gear.Now the tomato and pepper greenhouses ummm they are going great, we have peppers all over the place some getting close to picking like the Pablono,, In the tomato house blooms and a few little maters in the garden however the tasty treat and oregon spring all have maters sitting on them,, not sure how that is working...
On the other side we have had rain both of the last couple months open garden days..I have to admit I have liked it,,,It has kept our garden visitors down to a level which for me has been great,I can handle them easier then when we have a crowd..So hey if anyone is in the Flathead area first Saturday of each month they are more then welcome to swing in and enjoy the gardens ask questions, share info etc,,
Mary and James

I've wondered about peppers in the greenhouse . . . Maybe leaving peppers in there thru the growing season would make a lot more sense than a few sprawling tomato plants or more basil than can be possibly justified!

Of course, slugs like it in there, too!

Posted by dan_staley
. . . Anyhoo, Steve, what are they saying about the Frank Church this year? Good water up there? Think we're going backpacking there end of Jul.

Dan

Mary's report from Kalispell area is probably apropos to your question, Dan. It would help to have a Missoula gardener look off to his or her southwest and tell us what is seen. On the Grangeville, Idaho side - one is still some distance from the wilderness area so contacting someone there may not be helpful.

Here is the official info site: Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness

All I know is of local news that access to higher elevations in this area is still hampered by snow. All of 47F with a 12mph wind this morning down here and I'm stalling before going out to harvest some things. We are promised light winds and some sunshine today with temps in the 80's tomorrow. Can't come soon enuf!

Steve

Steve,
My peppers in the hoop house in gallon and a half or larger pots produce in mass .Many have been potted up since the end of April.I have about 70 others to plant up who were not picked up when I offered free plants,,LOL,,Mostly the super hots,just cannot toss them to the chickens..so I am doing that today.In the greenhouse we will end up with about 200 pots of peppers when I finish plus a mud tub outside.Last year we picked the last ones with the tomatoes around Christmas time..When I do them out in the garden I get probably about a 1/4 of what I can harvest out of the greenhouse in a season..
Wait can one have to much basil???? hehehehe
We added a second house just for the tomatoes this year have about 72 of them in it.It is time to get the support system figured out there as well since they are chest high.
Stinking slugs with another cool year,,they do not seem to like the cedar shavings I like to use on the greenhouse floor to much.Just in case though I do have sluggo sprinkled around the perimeter and a bottle of ammonia water to spray them down.
LOL oh well they do give us a romantic midnight walk with a flashlight and a bottle of ammonia ,hmmm last night was chilly though..

Dan not sure if this will help or not but it is what we have going up in from the Missoula to Glacier.

Up in the Glacier Park area they are looking at one of the latest Going to the Sun openings since it opened.One of the hike in lodges just opened but they are saying very limited hiking around it due to the heavy masses of snow drifts still about 15 ft deep...In Kalispell there is still quite bit of high water moving through and some flooded areas.They are still monitoring the lake and running Kerr Dam open because of of high waters.My son lives on the Flathead river out by Buffalo much of which the bike trails and such are still under water.My other son lives down in the Missions just below McDonald lake area, Post creek is running off pretty high yet with some lower flooding there.
I have not been down to the Bitteroots area. But the Clark Fork moving through Missoula and over past the family ranch at Tarkio is riding high and very dirty yet..No one has mentioned any thing about the rafters running yet there..

Mary

Thanks all for the weather reports up there. Looks like we're going just south into the Sawtooths this trip, early August. We've been following the stories of the issues with the Missouri R flooding continuing due to the heavy Montana snowpack. Soon it seems we won't be talking about 'normal' weather any more.

Back OT, I see hints in the upper atmosphere that the monsoon wants to think about setting up, last night's system was a hint. Climate models think so too:

Hard to say whether it'll pan out, we are still in drought so we'll take whatever we can get, I guess, but I find I can actively manage the irrigation and keep it off more often than on...

Dan

I realized that the other thread I posted this morning, has information that would have been more appropriate here so I'm bring this up again and tossing in a picture (which would be much more appropriate somewhere else ;o).

{{gwi:1211043}}
Tomatoes for breakfast, anyone? And, there are so many more out there in the morning darkness waiting for their chance to ripen!

I stayed optimistic, Dsieber!

Steve

Ach - we're doing well re frost, and night-time temps are still in the mid-high 40's, and many more tomatoes may possibly come through. I stopped irrigating, hoping to stress them a bit and ripen up the fruit.

Last night, we had a thunderstorm that dumped an inch (for here, thats a lot) and going around this morning, it was enough to crack an awful lot almost ripe tomatoes.

Just got back from Breckenridge, snow levels Thurs morning about 11,500 feet, higher this morning. Fall's around the corner.

Dan