40% chance of showers

[4fire]

My rear end!
(broken image removed)
I put down new topsoil and planted grass seed a couple of weeks ago and it got pounded by two heavy rains. Therefore, I have grass coming up in clumps. Yesterday, I put some new grass seed down to fill in the bare spots where the previous seed got washed away. The forecasts said a 40% chance of showers over night. By this morning my grass seed had been hammered.

 

[Jack Straw]

Dryer than a popcorn fart around here.

 

[begreen]

We got a brief shower overnight, but didn't get any rain at all today. It was mostly sunny. I got a lot of weedeating and lawn mowing done.

PS: Nice berry patch blacktail. Don't worry, July 4th the big man flips the switch and summer starts here. You will be dry soon.

 

[rottiman]

At least I'm not wearing out the tractor/mower. Dry,Dry,Dry here as well.....................

 

[remkel]

Well, been dry here too. Fertilizer was put down on my lawn yesterday, and the Big Guy came through giving me showers over night to work it into the lawn. Going to have to fire up the lawn mower.

Blacktail- reseeded a large section of my lawn last year. I can relate to your frustrations.

 

[4fire]

PS: Nice berry patch blacktail.

The netting is keeping the deer out of the berries....so far. I have a few deer tracks in my new grass seed but not harm. They're passing through it on their way to the neighbor's raspberry patch.

 

[StihlHead]

Well, the sun is finally here for the summer... at least that is the forecast for a week to 10 days out. They say we are in for an 80 degree 'heat wave' on the PDX news. 3 years ago a heat wave was 107... go figure. BTW: I had a foot of rain here this June. More rain thean they get in an entire year in Southern California.

I have deer and deer fencing here as well to keep them out of my berries and trees that I am sizing up in large plastic pots before planting them (where they will become a deer buffet). They say that deer do not eat blueberries, but they do. I had to double my deer fenced area last year to include the blueberries, and they are doing far better this year. The deer always show up when the rains stop, and they are browsing here now. I cannot grow strawberries, even with deer fencing or netting as I also have rabbits. They like to hop under netting like that and eat the strawberry leaves. That has been the case in most places I have lived, up and down the west coast. Becasue of deer and rabbits I grow bamboo... they do not eat any of that stuff. The voles eat the bamboo roots and rhizomes though. Nothing is really safe!

 

[begreen]

Deer definitely eat blueberries. They are grazers and seem to sample almost everything at one time or another. Without deer fencing I wouldn't be growing anything. Our other issue is the birds. They love raiding the strawberries, so the get their own netting. Today we were raided by a flock of cedar waxwings and some robins. It looks like they have wiped out our sweet cherry trees.

 

[BrotherBart]

Yeah I need to check our produce. Gonna wait till the sun goes down and its cooler. The grocery store doesn't close until 9:00pm.

 

[StihlHead]

Deer definitely eat blueberries. They are grazers and seem to sample almost everything at one time or another. Without deer fencing I wouldn't be growing anything. Our other issue is the birds. They love raiding the strawberries, so the get their own netting. Today we were raided by a flock of cedar waxwings and some robins. It looks like they have wiped out our sweet cherry trees.

Yah, I had cherries in California and the cedar waxwings got to them every year. My ex-ex-GF down there uses nets and grows fabulous Bings, but they take a lot of work to keep the birds away from them. The Northern flickers get to my apples here in the late summer/early fall. They are good apples, but they do not keep long so I feed them to the neighbor's goats rather than attract the yellow jacket wasps. The birds are getting some of the raspberries now, but only a few on the outer top layers. They ignore the blackberries. I have so many blueberries this year I am having to stake and thin them.

 

[4fire]

They say that deer do not eat blueberries, but they do. I had to double my deer fenced area last year to include the blueberries, and they are doing far better this year.

I have two blueberry plants that I got from my grandmother's house after she passed away last year. They were loaded with berries. Last night the deer raided one of the plants and took almost all the berries off. That one plant had hundreds of berries and now there's about a dozen left. And they weren't even ripe yet! I checked this morning to see if I they were getting ripe and was surprised to see total carnage. They also took a few branches off my tomato plants.
The neighbors on that side have dogs and all the deer activity I've seen until now has been on the other side of my property.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Everyone got rain but us the other day. Starting to need it around here.

 

[begreen]

We are getting the first real rain in over a month. Storms have been around us, and several have dropped rain to the north, but not here. It's welcome even though it means the grass is going to start growing again.

 

[StihlHead]

I have two blueberry plants that I got from my grandmother's house after she passed away last year. They were loaded with berries. Last night the deer raided one of the plants and took almost all the berries off. That one plant had hundreds of berries and now there's about a dozen left. And they weren't even ripe yet! I checked this morning to see if I they were getting ripe and was surprised to see total carnage. They also took a few branches off my tomato plants.
The neighbors on that side have dogs and all the deer activity I've seen until now has been on the other side of my property.

That happened to me here last year. They dessimated the BBs in one night. Turns out they were eating the new branch shoots and leaves as well. Lowes sells deer netting in 7'x100' rolls for about $12. Cheapest I know of. I also got 4 t-posts and 4 10 ft. sections of PVC pipe, and pounded the t-posts into the ground for a perimiter and cut the pipe to 8' lengths. I popped the pipe over the t-posts. Then I drilled the PVC pipe and ran bailing twine along the top and bottom and tied the netting to that. I also tied strips of plastic from grocery bags to the netting and along the top twine so the deer can see that there is something between them and the berries that they want to dine on. My berries are lush and the plants are 5x better this year with deer netting around them.

I have seen deer eat just about everything, even so-called deer proof plants, like tomatoes, wysteria and rhodies. The only plants that I know that deer will absolutely not eat are bamboo, juniper, iris, and garlic. So guess what I have a lot of growing here? Same with gophers, I have seen them even eat gopher purge. I fortuantely do not have gophers here, but I do have voles, which are about as bad. My cat likes to hunt and eat voles though, and he keeps the vole (and mole) population to a minimum.

 

[StihlHead]

We are getting the first real rain in over a month. Storms have been around us, and several have dropped rain to the north, but not here. It's welcome even though it means the grass is going to start growing again.

Wow... I had 12 inches of rain here in June, and it did not stop raining here until July 3. It has been raining on and off since them as these thunder sotrms pop up every few days here. We had a huge storm this morning about 5am, and it rained and thundered a lot. My lawns are still green and growing... and I have only had to water the garden 3 times this 'summer'. The ground is still mostly damp here.

 

[begreen]

Wow, that's a major difference for sure. 12" in one month is huge. Is that a record for your area? Those numbers make me so glad we live south of the convergence zone.

 

[StihlHead]

PDX had the second wettest June on record, so I would guess that was surely a record here as well (the wettest or second wettest). I get a lot of rain here in the west slopes of the Cascades, about 2 times what they get at the PDX airport. Though this is still not as much as what I recorded while living at my ex's place south of Eugene in the coastal range. I measured rain there in feet, 8 feet one year, 12 feet another, typically she gets 6-12 feet of rain there a year. At that place we would get a 6 inches of rain in one weekend, and it flooded there A LOT. I put in culverts only to have them wash out and I'd have to replace them with even bigger culverts, and then the flows from those would wash out something else. The creeks there also backed up and flooded the roads and pastures a lot. I guess it is similar on the Oly Peninsula. Anywhere on the west side of the Coast Range along the Pacific gets a deluge. Then the west slopes of the Cascades wrings out what is left and the great basin on the other side gets next to zip in comparison (maybe 11 inches a year in Bend?). PDX gets an average of 44 inches, I get between 60 and 80 inches here, and my ex gets 70 to 140 inches+ at her place. The year I measured 12 feet at her place we may have gotten more, as my rain guages there were 50 gallon garbage cans and even those overflowed twice on me that year. Here I use 5 gallon buckets to measure rainfall, and I dump them at the first of each month. June was close to filling them, and we had douwnpour after downpour of heavy rain that month. My closest month to June was 2 years ago November when I had 10 inches. November is worse for flooding here though, as the trees go dormant and they do not suck up water like they do in June.

It is raining here right now... the Wx forecast was for clearing, but that is not happening today. Its gonna rain all summer here this year.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Deer definitely eat blueberries. They are grazers and seem to sample almost everything at one time or another. Without deer fencing I wouldn't be growing anything. Our other issue is the birds. They love raiding the strawberries, so the get their own netting. Today we were raided by a flock of cedar waxwings and some robins. It looks like they have wiped out our sweet cherry trees.

Your deer must be different. Deer are browsers normally. Wish we had some of your cedar waxwings. We see them only occasionally.

 

[begreen]

PDX had the second wettest June on record, so I would guess that was surely a record here as well (the wettest or second wettest). I get a lot of rain here in the west slopes of the Cascades, about 2 times what they get at the PDX airport.

It is raining here right now... the Wx forecast was for clearing, but that is not happening today. Its gonna rain all summer here this year.

Sunny here. SEA gets an average of 34" annually, I think. It gets some rain shielding from the Olympics. We get 17" on average. It's a local rain shadow microclimate.

 

[jeff_t]

Haven't had any measurable rain here since sometime in May. It has been all around us, within a few miles, the last few days but it seems like I have my own little desert. I'm enjoying the absence of mosquitoes, and thinking of all the gas and wear and tear saved from not mowing, but feel for my farmer friends. Not looking good.

 

[loon]

750ft of garden hose is saving our bacon right now

The old cow well is way behind the tractor and cant be drained

loon