I'm sorry. I agree. People are that mean. I'm also sorry this storm isn't touching ya'll.

Like I've said before, most storms bypass us completely or we just catch the edges of them.

You know, the storm headed through El Reno looks to be headed straight to OKC. Yay!

My mother, also in Duncan, has begun to water harvest like mad. She's co-opted my brother's above ground pool and is also accumulating large trash cans she gets from Wal-Mart to store water. She's got lots in reserve now, but I still am going to dig up all her hydrangeas and take them to my house in OKC where we can still water.

Use all possible water normally going down the drain. Like dishwater, the water running till it gets hot in the shower, can be harvested in buckets, and used to water plants outside, using a watering can.

You can also, depending on where your washing machine is, divert the rinse water to go out, for watering what ever.

Conserve.

Moni

Warren, I am so sorry. I just hate to hear that. I agree with all the suggestions above about catching any rainfall you can and about recycling your greywater from the washing machine or catching shower water in a bucket. I hope you can at least somehow keep your fruit trees and berries alive. It is so frustrating to lose plants that take a long time to establish and to start bearing.

People are mean, though, and if you are using water captured inside and bringing it outside and using it, someone probably will lie and say you are using irrigation at night or something.

Maybe the weather pattern will change and all the storms that have been missing you will start hitting you....but only with nice, kind, gentle rain....not with hail and strong wind and all that.

Dawn

It's gotten a bit crazy, here. Some people w/ homes built decades ago have signs in their yards: 'Private well in use'. iow, they';e been reported enough times that they have to place signs in their yards.

Can you explain class 5 restrictions for those of us who live in rural areas?

Here's the 'proclamation'.

http://www.cityofduncan.com/pdf/other/Stage%205%20proclamation.pdf

Are you getting any of this rain? I was trying to watch the radar, but they don't show southern OK that much

We got the tail end of it. Just sprinkling a bit, now. though.

The good news is that I was finally healthy enough to get the grass mowed and the worst of the weeds pulled and hoed before it rained. (Pneumonia sucks)

Wow, it is crazy there. Imagine feeling like you have to defend the fact that you are using your own well water.

I cannot imagine what happens next if y'all continue to receive inadequate rainfall for the next couple of years.

Did the city ever reach a compromise with the operators of commercial car washes or are they just going to put those guys out of business?

I hope that they at least are allowing homeowners to water the soil around their house foundation with soaker hoses. Otherwise, folks in clay areas may see foundations cracking as the ground cracks and shifts.

I don't know what's happening wrt car washes, except I do know that washing your car is now verboten. The best I can tell, the city council has never really planned ahead or planned for a drought, in spite of the history of droughts in the region. e.g they have water rights of various sorts and kinds, but never built the infrastructure to bring that extra water into Duncan.

Last night we had enough rain to dampen things a bit, but that's about it. I still have a few beds to weed, so that moisture will make it easier to weed those beds. I went ahead and planted more veggie seeds, in spite of the drought. Just couldn't help myself. :) Thinking about planting some peas, although it's getting late for that. I do have a couple of beds where I just throw extra seeds into them and let them grow...or not. The rose bed now has cilantro, spinach, mint, lavender, daffodils, lettuce...lol.

I just bought a rain barrel through the City of OKC, was a special deal they arranged, paid $62 for one of these

http://www.upcycle-products.com/static.asp?path=3412

I'm now planning on how to divert my guttering to the barrel. ( and how to secure it, bout lost in the storm last night ) . If this goes well, I might buy a couple more.

I would plant seeds too because you just never know---the skies might open up and dump a lot of rain all at once and change everything. That sounds very far-fetched, but on April 29, 2009, a day I will never forget, we were expecting a heavy rain event of 3-5". Instead, the rainstorms kept training over our part of our county and we got 12.89" of rain in 24 hours, erasing the drought that had plagued us since the summer of 2008. Of course, we had tremendous flooding, ranch fences down, ranch water gaps breached, cattle out, roads washed out, homes flooded or in extreme danger of being flooded, etc. Despite all that, it was a grand event because creeks and ponds had water in them, water barrels overflowed, etc. We rejoiced at having plentiful water again and then we went about the business of fixing all the damage.

Even better than that one day is the fact that it seemed to signal a change in the weather pattern and we started getting rain several times a week. Of course, it was too much at once for a couple of months but it sure beat being too dry.

It is unfortunate than Duncan does not have the infrastructure in place to transport the water to which they have water rights, but lots of towns are in the same predicament---hoping they'll never have to spend that money. Several times since around 2010, there have been towns in Texas that had to spend a lot of money fast to put in an emergency pipeline to transport water as they were on the verge of running out. I don't know if they had the water rights, but they found someone willing to sell them water and just had to build a hasty temporary pipeline to carry the water to them until they could put in a larger and more permanent one. I've also heard of towns trucking in potable water and residents having to go pick it up in their own containers and bring it back home. I hope we never find ourselves in that sort of predicament here.

Now that Duncan is in Stage 5, I hope they are making plans to spend some money building the needed infrastructure in case things get worse instead of getting better.

Also, with all the soil improvement you've done the last few years, maybe your garden will tolerate the low rainfall and watering restrictions for at least a while. I didn't water my garden (and no rain fell) for a six-week period in 2011 when the high temperatures were in the 105-115 degree range and we were at wildfires virtually every day and half the nights, and some plants in my garden survived and went on to produce well in fall after rain began falling again. I never would have expected any veggies or herbs to survive six weeks with no water in those conditions, but they did.

Except for tilth, more than half of our nearly 4,000 sq ft of beds are in good shape. The soil is still a bit 'heavier' than I prefer. About half of the rest of the beds need no further improvements for their planned use - berry & rose bushes, etc. The fence beds in the back yard still need a lot of improvement - though I have amended them quite a bit from the original clay. The 160 sq ft bed on the north side of the house will probably be the last bed I tackle. At the moment, it's acting as a 'control' - mostly original & unimproved soil - to compare to improvements & productivity in the other beds.

Currently, most of the improved beds hold moisture very well, especially with the design I used and installed. The design is working very well for both drainage into the front garden, as well as out of the front garden when it over flows.

This year, if nothing else, I'll try to finish adding the colored mulch to some of the front beds. We have eight raised veggie beds, there, but the rest will be mulched for berries, rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus and flowers.

not sure if you can make this happen but I used to catch the condensate water from my central heat and air. I would collect 5-10 gallons of water per day in the summer when the AC was on a lot. that and a thick layer of wood mulch could get you by.

mike

Kc dollar, I have always been afraid to collect rainwater from my roof for watering edibles because I assume that composition shingles are loaded with toxins. I only use it for ornamentals.

I would not care. If I had a choice of water or no water ......................... its not hard to decide.

Have you had tests run on your roof run off ? Sounds like sort've an urban myth to me, even though there is a bit of logic to it.

draej, other than our shingles being old, you can bet that runoff ends up in the water tanks that are applied directly to our vegetables. It is very clear our vegetables prefer that to tap water ! they hate the tap water.

I have no qualms about using my roof water. My roof is old. Everything should be washed off by now. :)

There are recommended methods to divert the first part of the rainfall in order to allow the earliest rain that falls to wash off the roof., taking possible contaminants with it. You can google and find info on First Flush or diverter systems you can make or buy. Or, you can install a filter that will filter impurities out of the water before you use it for edible crops. Most states that have written information available about using rooftop collection water for edible crops recommend the use of such methods to ensure the water you're using will not be harmful. In many other parts of the world, rooftop rainwater collection is routine and they often don't use filters or first flush valves. Each person should choose whatever method gives them peace of mind. Some friends of ours had an elaborate and huge rainwater collection system put in professionally to catch the water off their huge horse barn and riding arena, and it came with a built-in filtering system (and a 25,000 gallon tank/cistern) so that their collected water is safe for human and animal consumption.

I have caught rainwater off our garage roof (it is metal) for years and have used it to water the veggie garden with no worry whatsoever. Some folks might not be comfortable doing that and, for them, a first flush diverter and/or filtering system might be the solution.