Early watering of trees before a night time freeze ABSOLUTELY does give some protection in a "dry" climate or in any area of the country, for that matter, during a period with a low outside relative humidity. I would do exactly what Jose did to INTENTIONALLY increase the relative humidity around my little in ground trees. Water vapor is by far the largest green house gas that we have....man made or other wise....(Al Gore and his Global Warming crowd & our news Media would prefer that you not know this science fact). By increasing the water vapor in the areas around these trees, you WILL effectively trap some of the ground's "radiation" heat around those trees. What is trapped by this added water vapor is some of radiation heat that is quickly lost to the atmosphere after the sun goes down. Ever notice how hot a desert is in the daytime......and then how cold it is at night???? This large variation in temperature occurs simply because there is no humidity (water vapor) in the desert air. If there was some water vapor in the air, the daytime and night time temperatures wouldn't swing as much. If you could somehow increase the relative humidity of the desert air, it simply would not get as cold at night.....nor as hot during the daytime. I do agree, however, that there is also some good benefits to watering at the time of coldest temperature (closer to sunrise)....due to the latent heat of fusion effects that occur right at the freeing point (melting point) of water as it starts to change from the liquid phase (water) to the solid phase (ice). Too, it is because of this same latent effect that provides protection to fruit trees that have ice already on the branches. Keep the water sprinklers on even when you see ice (or frost) on the leaves and branches and this latent heat will keep the temperature from dropping below 32 deg. F.........that is a warm enough temperature to save a lot of trees from severe damage. Too, if somehow you can't prevent plain ole frost from forming on your trees (which can easily occur at temperatures as high as 40 deg F in my area)..........get at them with a sprinkler or hose pipe as soon as you see it and you WILL PREVENT some damage. I can get these kinds of "surprise" frosts in my area once in a while when the weather man was a bit off with his forecast..... Dan

Ask ten people what your watering schedule's should be and you will probably get ten different answers. Thing is each growers situation is unique, and that's really something each grower figures out whats best for their plants through trial and error. But for that type of system where the roots will be hanging in mid air I don't think I would want them to go more than 15 min between watering. If it were me I would get a timer with 15 minute increments and start with 15 on/15 off, and go from their. As for connecting the flexibly hose to the 1/2 in pvc, in the irrigation section of most hardware stores they sell connectors that are barbed on one end (for the flexible hose), and threaded (to connect to the pvc) on the other end. I find here Lowe's has the best selection. Unfortunately I can't post pictures in this forum without going through too many hoops but I have pictures of the ones I used in another forum here: Third system (scroll down a little to see the images, and you can click on them to see the full size image) "I'm not sure of the terminology but i plan on flooding the top of the pipe and letting it drain back down to the resevoir. should i do this once evey hour and one time at night? " I'm not sure how you can flood the top of a vertical tube, but it sounds like if it truly is a vertical tube, you plan to use sprayers at the top, and let it rain down through the tube watering the roots on the way down. If so the 15 on/15 off cycle is what I would start with. It wouldn't need to be on for 15 minuets, but you will be limited to the timers settings. You may find a cycle timer online that you can set a particular on and off cycle (like 5 min on, and 15/20 min off), but I doubt you'll find them in any local stores. Digital timers have customizable settings, but most likely wont have enough settings to last through the day. At 3 on/off cycles per hour (5 on/15 off) that's 6 settings per hour. In a 18 hour period that's 108 settings. I have a digital timer that was supposed to have 144 settings, but I found out is over a 7 day period (and includes sunset and sunrise settings). Bottom line is it really only has 14 settings per day. 7 on and 7 off. So be careful and ask questions before you settle on a digital timer. At least be sure you can take it back (mine was on clearance so I couldn't).

things to check on: there are new rules on demo in some states. in CA you cannot just demo without testing for lead and doing abatement if it tests positive. check on this now so you fully understand the scope of what you need to do. not sure how old your building is. is there risk of discovery of dry rot and termites? that could add time to fix unplanned repairs. keep in mind if 1 vendor misses their schedule or a worker calls in sick and you are scheduled too tightly you could have a domino effect of delays. keep a bit of flexibility in your schedule to allow for the inevitable surprises and random delays like sick days. this sounds like a small job for these vendors so you may get bumped around a bit and will need to be able to accomodate for this. re: hardwood, make sure to have the vendor deliver the wood early so it is on site in advance and can acclimate to the conditions of the site, otherwise that time does not seem sufficient. you are coming up on summer when workers take time off- you may be crossing memorial day, 4th of july and labor day and into thanksgiving depending on length of your project and start date. check on this as well. is this going to be a permitted job? allow time for inspections between tasks. do you need to add any insulation? add time for a vendor to do this as well. where is your priming and painting of walls before the cabinets are installed - add to schedule. any need to move any HVAC venting? hope this helps.

Amy, Tim and I were joking that the single red branch might be turning red because it is dying. I don't think we're right about that, but I have pondered why only one branch has leaves that have changed color. I do see quite a bit of red poison ivy in the trees along fence lines when I walk the dogs. I don't care if it is poison ivy (not our property, not our problem), I love seeing the red foliage. Seriously, though, on trees whose leaves turn red, those trees need the specific combination of cool nights and bright sunny days to make red leaves, and some years we don't get that combination so we don't get much red foliage. When one branch or one part of a tree turns red and the rest doesn't, scientists believe that the part turning red first just happens to have the perfect microclimate. I am not sure I buy that explanation. Why one limb on a tree that's 30' or 40' tall? Why not 2 or 3 limbs or 6 or 10? (sigh) Mother Nature has many mysteries we really do not understand. Today we went to the CostCo in Southlake, TX, because I wanted to go to Central Market just up the road a bit after that. I'd forgotten how gorgeous that specific CostCo's landscaping is. You can tell their landscape architect must have specified trees that have good autumn color because most of the trees planted in the parking lot medians have great autumn color already---mostly Chinese pistache is what is red there right now, but also some sort of cypress trees, sweetgum and maybe some Shumard red oaks (that aren't red yet) along the perimeter. I was looking at the pistache trees today and loving their foliage and red berries. Why haven't I planted Chinese pistache here? I'm going to plant 2 or 3 next spring. Amy, I still have a lot of Red Creoles that haven't sprouted yet. Also, Copra, Highlander and Red River. Those are the Dixondale varieties that store the longest for me. That's how I get in trouble, by the way, with planting too many---picking all those long keeping varieties means I have a lot to plant in order to have a lot to store---and then we have more than we can eat fresh even after I've made tons of salsa and chopped/frozen tons more. I need to have more discipline and pick just one long keeping type each year instead of several. I think Nelson is getting scarce because a lot of places sold out of it in 2017. I think Jung still had it the last time I was looking at seeds on their webpage. Who knows if the sellers that sold out in 2017 will have it again for 2018. It could be that there was a crop failure at the seed production level since many of the USA retailers all buy their seed through the same big wholesalers, who in turn buy their seed from overseas producers. Nancy, George (MacMex) lives near Tahlequah and he posted a photo on his FB page of a cabbage covered in frost (cabbage is fine) this morning and said the low there was 25 degrees, so he must have gotten some of your cold if your garden escaped relatively undamaged. Maybe the cold didn't make it quite to your place last night. We're supposed to be about 5 degrees warmer tonight that we were last night. We'll see. Rebecca, My garden is toast. It is okay, but I will miss the Lima beans our big lush plants would have been producing for about another month. I thought about covering them up, but the trellis is 6' tall and about 25' long and I didn't want to wrestle with getting row cover over that trellis and weighed down along the egdes in yesterday's wind. I hope giving your back some extra rest today is helping it, and the fact that OSU won couldn't hurt any. We had the game on the radio while we were out running errands and doing grocery shopping. You're like me. No matter how many seeds and containers you have, you always need more. It is a peculiar affliction we gardeners have, of always "needing" more. lol. I'll tell you what makes me feel old---my nephew has a 14 year old stepdaughter!!!! Yikes. I am not sure how that happened. I believe her mom was very young when she had her, but still......it seems like the nieces and nephews themselves were graduating from high school just a few years ago (been more than a decade though, even for the youngest one) and now one of them has a stepdaughter in high school this year. That sort of freaks me out. However, the rest of my nieces and nephews' kids range from newborn to about 10 years old, so they're all ages. Still, I do feel old age creeping up on me. Jacob, That pepper plant really is a champ, or is in a perfect microclimate. I miss the green already. Everything here has gone the color of wheat except for the tree foliage. I cannot believe the difference in how everything looks now compared to just a few days ago. Rebecca, There you go, you enabler you! Go, girl, go! If you and I are going to have far too many seeds (and you know that we do, and probably Amy too), then everyone else needs to have far too many seeds as well. Perversely, not that my garden is frozen, I want to plant something. I probably won't though. Maybe I'll sow some lettuce seeds indoors. It was nice today to walk wherever I wanted and to not have to watch out for snakes beneath my feet. If we have any days that go back up into the 70s/80s, I will have to watch. They don't necessarily go down for the count after the first freeze, and will continue to be out now and then either hunting for food or capturing heat by lying on concrete until we get good and cold and stay there. I'm watching TCU play Iowa State right now, and TCU has not had the lead yet in this game. I'm wondering if ISU is going to pull off another upset and beat the #4 team in the country. It could happen. I hope it doesn't. Dawn