how established are these plants????

anything but new transplants.. should be able to cope ...

best advice ... get a case of beer.. or wine.. and pull out the barbie ... put the hose on trickle.. and place it at the base of every plant THAT NEEDS IT ...

and each time you need a beer ... change plants ... presuming you arent a chugger ..

the only downside to this plan ... is that you will probably be crawling out to the 20th plant on your hands and knees.. so start out far.. and work your way back ...

sooo .... how established are the plants ... and normally ... LAWN sprinklers do not water deeply enough ... to overcome drought at depth .. and thats your real issue ...

ken

Hemlocks were here at least 20 years, Magnolias, 7 years, assorted shrubs 1-7 years, BC and DR about 4-5 years.

In excessively dry conditions, any plant - including those well established in the landscape - can require supplemental watering. It may not be immediately obvious - drought stress does not necessarily show up immediately - but it is something you want to avoid as it can contribute to a variety of insect and disease issues down the road, if not die back and stunting of growth.

A general rule of thumb for watering trees during drought periods is to supply 10G of water for every inch of trunk diameter. Watering does not need to be frequent - once every couple of weeks is usually sufficient - but it needs to be slow, thorough and penetrate deeply, at least down to 12". Newly planted trees and shrubs may need more frequent watering.

As ken notes, automated sprinkler systems are hugely inefficient in this situation. The hose left in place at a slow trickle at the drip line is a much better idea as is a soaker hose or drip system. And mulching well will help to slow soil moisture evaporation, so make good use of mulch.

Your more mature trees and shrubs don't need to be watered in times of drought. It seems we always have one or two droughts a summer here in SE PA. This is our second one this season and it is getting old quick. Now for the less established plants, water as suggested by the previous posters. I use a soaker hose for some of our new shrubs and I just leave it on over night. It seems to get things nice and moist. Unfortunately, for my two perennial beds, I have to use the sprinklers as there's not really another easy way to do it. Perennials have shallower root systems so it's not as big a deal. I leave that on for 2-3 hours when watering.

Yeah...it's been incredibly dry here in south central PA....it rains like once a month...and it's always a hard, tenacious 2" rain that comes and goes. It all runs off anyway. My grass is so dead. I haven't mowed it in like a month, lmao. And when I do, I can't even tell what I mowed and what I didn't. It's terrible.

Where you at in south central pa? I'm in the Lancaster area and it seems like every time it rains, we are getting missed or get significantly less than areas closeby.

Hummelstown area...Yeah...it is getting old for sure...there isn't much relief in site neither..

Everyone gets married in the spring or summer, and they all pray it won't rain. They don't think of the consequences for farmers.

I love the people (non-gardeners) here in MD saying "but it's rained so much this summer". Yeah, in June it did. July was OK, but August has been dry. A few areas 10 miles from me have been hit by every storm, and therefore have gotten 4-5" this month, but for me, maybe 1.5" total all month.

I'd water the Metasequoias first, those seem most sensitive to dryness. The Taxodium is probably the least sensitive of that list.

Yeah it's funny when you look at the NWS MARFC departure from normal maps and I see that Lancaster county actually shows near average for the last 30 days. In reality this is only because certain parts of Lancaster county have gotten great rain while other parts got little. We've gotten 2.69" since July 16th with practically no rain forecast for the next 10 days. It's just enough to keep the grass green but certainly not enough to keep the perennial beds happy. I have a metasequoia in the front perennial bed and it has been sucking the bed dry. It's about 28' with a 12" caliper so it's big enough to steal all the water from my perennials.

2.69 inches is a LOT of rain for some areas!! We haven't had that much in total for all of May, June, July and thus far in August. 1.5 inches in August would be considered a pretty wet month in this area :-) We are always dry in summer but we are well below average rainfall for the entire year to date. A weak system is supposed to push in tonight to relieve record high temperatures and provide some precipitation but no significant amounts are predicted. Let's hear it from the damp, drizzly Pacific Northwest - NOT!!

Yeah but the thing is....we've probably got like 4 inches total the last 2 months. But guess what...it's from like two pop up storms that dump 2 quick inches of water in 45 minutes. It all runs off anyways..

The drought monitor is excellent, especially when it is enlarged to show specific parts of an area. It confirmed my experience that my area (eastern ma; Boston environs) has been exceptionally dry. (ref. my q. about hose drip irrigation)

Thanks so much

Wow. Just checked out that drought monitor. That thing is a joke, lol

jalcon, you could say more......

I suspect all those "spotty/irregular showers" confuse the results. One town can have rain dumped on it while the one next door gets nothing. Oddly, my parents had a drought in early Spring, but have had a very wet August. All those spotty showers seemed to hit them. They are irritated but it has been good for my planting projects...

Summer rainfall in the East, South, and Midwest, is convective by nature. Actually, that's true of the interior West as well. Therefore, by its very nature it is spotty, but that effect is amplified in certain years for various reasons. The grass is much greener at my office than my house 10 miles away for that reason this summer.

Marie...it's just that according to that we are having a normal season...most of PA is...well it's been years since I've seen trees and grass so dead as they are around here in the midstate from lack of rain this year.

Ok, I see. Here there has been nary a word about d.......Yet we know who's pulling that damned heavy rubber hose around and running out every few hours to move it Some towns on well water have had summer restrictions for years running. Long enough so they have signs- like directions- as you enter the town about water restrictions.

A couple of nurseries have used email to remind customers to water. But not enough. I think nurseries who make use of email could be more proactive about horticultural advice, in addition to shilling the newest, bestest and minimally tested cultivars of old plants. Maybe I'm naive, but if I'd spent thousands on plant material I wouldn't mind information about drought and watering. However, I;m not so naive to think more than a few people would actually follow advice (much less open and read an email from a nursery)

And wouldn't a nursery want to minimize complaints next spring about their plants not leafing out? How is a new gardener to know that rainfall is several inches below average if the local newspaper says nothing, they don't read gardenweb and no body tells them? Just my thoughts on dissemination of information. I hope no one in retail reads this as blaming the industry for a drought or for some gardeners' ignorance or laziness!

"P.S., Hairmetal, non-gardeners are CLUELESS about the natural world; sure they think tomatoes grow in the fresh produce aisle."

SO true LOL.

We better hope Erika is able to hold together as it moves up the coast, and that a cold front doesn't push it out to sea before it gets to the mid-Atlantic. That's our next significant chance of rainfall, and with the tropics not look very active this year, might be our only one until we switch to a different, wetter synoptic pattern...which could take a long time. hairmetal, the other thing you notice about our rainfall is the chances for convective moisture start drying up (for most people) in August, and definitely in September. Rain in those months depends increasingly on tropical storms, and the rare instances of early shifts to the winter-type synoptic rainfall patterns. (Which usually doesn't happen until the second half of October or so.) If no tropical storms show up, you might not get any rain. That's why the driest month I've actually had here was a September: Sept. 2007. Really did a number on my plants, killing my prized Daphniphyllum that I'd moved from my NoVA garden. The days were only about 78 F, very comfortable; it was deceptive how dry the ground was getting.

Erika seems to have fizzled away already. Just spoke to people back from the Caribbean and the word is DROUGHT, so don't know how much we can depend on moisture from the 'deep tropics' in this El nino year (with drought also in Central America and Colombia). Maybe more support from more local seas that are pushing 80 F. already. Yeah, September and October are both dry months here, then precip picks up in November. Irene was the big FLOOD maker for us (year of the basement swimming pool); Sandy was mostly WIND damage. Again, no body says the D word in local media and local meteorologists seem gleeful to report a coming week in the low to mid 90's and nothing but sunshine.

" report a coming week in the low to mid 90's and nothing but sunshine."

Right it makes me sick when they post a graphic of nothing but sun symbols and say we have a "perfect" week coming up. If you think that's perfect, move to Arizona! In Baltimore, Tom Tasselmyer is the only one intelligent enough to occasionally acknowledge a need for rain.

Darn, they were saying Erika could fizzle over Cuba but re-form in the Keys and eastern Gulf of Mexico...now the NHC is acting like it's a goner. Time to stop posting to gardenweb and start watering outside!

Yeah, David, I agree. Don't get me started....

Wind-shear/dry air is killing tropical systems in the Atlantic/Caribbean this yr. Little chance of tropical moisture for the mid-Atlantic states. Most of the tropical systems are shifted over to the west of Mexico in the eastern Pacific.

If there's one saving grace to this thread, it is in seeing how many of us are dealing with dryness. My area is in no official category at all yet to me, most of this growing season has been a bit too dry to way the heck too dry, punctuated by ferocious precip events. Available moisture is the real item, not how much precip has landed in a gauge somewhere. And that's a function of precip intensity, duration and frequency divided by temps, soil conditions and wind.

Agree-those not involved in horticulture in some meaningful way are crazily divorced from the natural world around them. Like somebody said above, a weather doofus (not really sure how to spell doofus!) all happy because somebody's golf game will go off uninterrupted while the landscape continues to bake......utterly clueless.

+oM

tom, I really like the term "weather doofus". I'm going to start calling some of the weather forecasters I see on tv by that name.

"Available moisture is the real item, not how much precip has landed in a gauge somewhere."

Also humidity. I've found my plants dry out faster if we have a spell of low humidity. One reason is around here, when it is really humid, it's so humid the haze in the sky cuts the sun intensity down a good bit. So combination of hazy sky + moisture in the air + still air definitely seems to dry stuff out less than clear blue sky + dew points in the 50s + wind. Even if the day of the former conditions is say 5-10F hotter.

David, funny about "haze" -- not often seen in western MD any more, even when it's hot & humid. But it used to be the rule in summer for decades. You still see it, being near the Rt 95 megalopolis.

Agree about the kinder conditions following a good rain....if humidity doesn't leave town immediately! We're in exactly that situation here this early week, having had soaking rain over Fri. night and Sat. It is remaining humid all this week and the soil is not drying out the way it sometimes does.

Years ago-I watch TV stations (if I watch at all) in the Green Bay market-there was one meteorologist that really got it. I still remember his name-Bob Thomas-and he clearly had a connection to the plants and soils and waters around him. That guy would say things like-this during a period of drought-"we might be able to get something" or words to that effect when a storm system approached. He stuck out because so few of them come close.

Even people who don't know or think they care about "nature" often also feel better after a good rain. You'd think it would soak in (Buh-dum-bum).

+oM

Unreal. Forecasted 90's with no rain in site all week here in PA.

beng, Interesting point about the reduction in haze. Never thought about it before, but I think you are right. Of course, probably a good thing if linked to a reduction of pollutants. I think I remember a few years ago, they were saying there was going to be an improvement in NJ air quality due to more coal mine shutdowns or reductions in Pa.. Not helping today as I believe most of the state has some kind of hazardous air quality. No rain yet, there is a forecast of a front with showers but lately these have been non-events and it rains in someone else's backyard, somewhere. After the front, seems like more hot, high pressure and bermuda high conditions. I know that much of eastern precipitation is convective (air mass thunderstorms in the hot/humid), but it seems to me that the typical, afternoon thunderstorm has become strangely rare. Getting back to changes in sky conditions over the years. Anyone notice how much longer airline vapor trails linger in the atmosphere. This has encouraged some paranoid-prone individuals to assume that the government is spraying into the atmosphere (just google chemtrails) for some of their 'interesting' chatter. Of course, 'contrails' have become more prominent (more flights...., AND more water vapor in the atmosphere).

P.S., If I read one more post about someone just having planted a tree or a shrub in this bone dry, hot weather and the thing is dying and they don't know why, I think I am going to scream.

So...I just transplanted a ten-foot sugar maple in my yard and now it doesn't look so good....................haha....JK, JK

+oM

I'd like to bump this and say that where I live, near Harrisburg PA..this has been the dryest summer I've ever remembered in my entire life. I kid you not, EVERYBODY'S lawn in my development is dead at this point, and probably half of them get their lawn professionally serviced. It's gotten ridiculous. I mean a single drop of rain is few and far between. There may be a few areas outside of my town in particular that have had pop up storms, but we have not.

And what do you know, that joke of a drought map still lists everything as "normal conditions" around here...LOL.

So, in the span from the weekend to right now-Tuesday roughly noon-ish, we've gotten right around 4 inches of rain in this town, some areas much more. Seems to me, heavy precip events can happen with relative "ease" or frequency, but inbetween, soils get dry....too dry for good plant growth. This BTW fits in perfectly with the models generated by all those ignorant climatologists who suggest a bumpier time is ahead, one with more extremes. Great....

+om

Today, September 8th was actually the hottest day of the year at 97 f.. Record number of days above 80 so far..., and still, no rain. Getting browner and crispier. I can't wait till the rainy season begins!

I finally hit 90F just a week or two ago for the highest summer temp. Still, that's below the avg high summer temp.

The highest all-time temp in MD was set nearby in Cumberland in July 1936 at an astonishing 109F, for comparison.

Here in the Puget Sound area of the PNW, the land of the "cool, mild summers", we have broken records for the number of days this summer it hit 80F or above and the number of days it hit 90F or above. We did have a low pressure front move in late last week that dropped temps down into the low 70's and even the 60's for a day or two and produced some rain (and very high winds) but not much. But we are cranking back up into the 80's again this week with no relief in sight.

And while we have managed to accumulate nearly normal YTD precipitation totals, this area is still considered to be in severe to extreme drought. This is due to an extremely dry winter with no significant mountain snow pack and a very dry period extending from April through midAugust where we received less than half of normal rainfall for that period (including one of the driest July's on record with NO measurable precip!). Then we received two major rainfall events on 8/14 and 8/29 that pushed August into the 3rd wettest on record. But 2 days of rain - even heavy (for us) rain - out of 62 does not exactly break a drought!

This the first time I can remember actually looking forward to a fail chill and the start of the rainy season :-)

Here in north Florida we are swamped, literally. Torrential rains every day or every other day. I have many plants rotting and mosquitoes are intolerable. I wish I could give our rain away for a month or so...but on our sand, we are 3 days away from drought at any one time.

Yes, and Sal, if I'm not mistaken, is not S. FL, at least the Miami area still bone-dry?

+oM

I think Miami Metro had some rain from a tropical storm but they are still in deficit as the summer rains were just not normal this year and the normal drier season is approaching ('winter'). Here in NJ we are getting some rain but the deficit is 7 inches. I hope we see more rain this weekend as predicted because the extended is for more summer heat after the rain. What's odd is that August and September have been much warmer than June and July.

In my little area of Wisconsin, this has been the best summer ever...we have had maybe 15 days of hot, humid intolerable weather spread out over 90 days, the longest stretch of no rain was 2-3 weeks at the end of June/beginning of July, and my hostas suffered very little slug/insect damage until this past week. If only every summer could be this way!!! And if only winter will be as nice!

If we have a 'normal' El Nino winter, I think Wisconsin should be milder than normal. We are in for a lot of rain and/or snow..., which is fine for me, I hate the big dry.

Very few 90 degree days this summer...pleasantly cool summer. Dry but cool Spring. A lot of spotty showers in the summer that dropped rain on one town and ignored the next...just happened to all hit my parents. We had a weird September heat wave, which made me fear for my September plantings. Today my parents got two inches while I got a sprinkling an hour north.

I'm with you, sub, in that I tolerate all weather variables quite well: too hot? that's okay for a while. Too cold? Hey, this is Wisconsin! But I really do not like drought or even the hint of drought. and I fear the baby (el nino) is going to deliver us a lot of nothing this winter.

+oM