Surviving the heat

I actually looked into getting artificial turf because I couldn't grow turf because of my 3 dogs. But it was horribly expensive and had to be replaced every 5 years. For a small area it was more than 5,000 dollars where sod would have cost 400 dollars. I decided that I'd rather take a cruise in Alaska every five years.

Ahh just think the hard, hot feeling of artifical turf on a set of bare feet early in the morning. The complete lack of dandelion bursts of color, the absence of the dancing Robin catching its meal giving joy to the watcher, the dissapearance of freshly mowed grass odor after vaccuming, yes artifical turf what a joy to the gardener who lives to create, grow, and design live and beautiful palates of life in their garden.

Yes, but if all you have is mud due to 12 running feet and nothing grows but bindweed it looks tempting.

Surely we could invent a use for bindweed. It grows so aggressively. Does it cure anything? Does anything like to eat it? I am tired of that stuff. Maybe we could water and mow it and it will look sort of like grass?

My gardens are a front yard and a back yard, pretty small, but lots of stuff. I dug up our lawn in 1990 and I'm still after the nasty old grass out front. I hand water and use a soaker hose on the fruit trees. I also use water from rain barrels and sometimes run grey water from my washing machine. (I use organic, almost edible laundry products.) Maybe bindweed could be made into fabric! Like hemp!

I wonder if goats would eat bind weed? They eat nearly everything else, including kudzu and poison ivy.

I bet goats would eat it, but I can tell you right now that some of my neighbors would not like the goat. However, if you live where you can have goats, I recommend you try it. I like the fabric idea. Salads?

All you lurkers out there, attencion!
In the denver metro area (Denver, Aurora, Centennial, Littleton & environs) you really don't want to astroturf your yard. You may get a fine from the city, county, and/or the Storm Water Authority. Just mentioning it, because we actually had to research it (yes, some pinhead suggested it as a way of saving $$ on landscaping!)

I was entertaining a fantasy that roly-polys like eating bindweed, or bindweed roots, but they probably only like the shade of more densely growing ones. There you go, bindweed prevents your roly-polys from drying out. ;) (Yeah, and so does the compost pit.)

Too bad bindweed isn't diversely edible, like dandelions. Or maybe it is, and I'm too mentally disturbed by it to find out.

Looks like there'll be another "cool off" (low 90s and high 80s) around the 4th. At least in the Denver area. Still futilely wishing for rain, I think I'm in the one little patch of Colorado that doesn't get any rain while the rest of the state does.

We haven't had rain in 2 weeks -- despite big threatening clouds that pass over every afternoon. Such a tease!

What is rain, please remind me?
I am quite literally in the place in the state that doesn't get the rain.

Like my friend says of veggie burgers : "If you don't want to eat meat, why are you faking it?"
My opinion is the same of false turfs, as well as any artificial plant at all, I find them bloody offensive to real plants.
What is worse than astroturf and painted dead lawn? Perhaps a nice overwatered living lawn?
Xeriscaping is so great, I don't understand why more folks don't do it.
Tree gardens and shrub gardens are perfectly acceptable, I'd like to see more (if any) of them.

I bet bindweed would find its way through fake turf, since it seems to succeed in doing so with "weed barrier"/landscape fabric. Yuk, I hate that stuff. The weeds themselves, too.
Do you folks have bindweed mite on the front range?

The only plants I've personally had sowbugs/rolly-pollies eat are Hostas.

Roybird, your garden sounds nice, could you be convinced to brave the heat long enough to take a picture?

Do we have bindweed???? Is the Pope Catholic??

We haven't had any rain where I live for weeks! First there was enough to drown out a number of my plants, now back to the usual summer drought and watering my container plants once or twice a day. It's HOT here!!

I keep complaining about the heat, too. It seems very hot and the usual dry weather is keeping me busy with watering. I guess I have become a wimp about heat though. After growing up in Louisiana and Mississippi where it is both hot and muggy, I checked the raw temperatures from the weather bureau, taken every 15 minutes, day and night, here in Los Alamos. they haven't recorded a single temperature in the 90's and the night time temperatures seem to be mostly in the 40's and hit 39 one night recently. No wonder my tomatoes aren't setting!
I have redefined hot over the years, I fear.

I think Jamesco meant do we have the bindweed mite that eats bindweed. It's a mite being studied by a scientist here in Colorado (Grand Junction, I think) to control bindweed but I haven't looked into getting them.
http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA/PLANTS/index.html#http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA/PLANTS/bindweedmite.html

Well the weather in Montana has been in the blistering 70's and it has rained a couple of times last week and this week. Everything is green and beautiful. Yes I still Irrigate but now I am doing it 2 X weekly. The columbines are happy and healthy. We got our jet stream back that you stole last winter.

Thanks, JamesCo, I don't have a digital camera, though I suppose I ought to. Maybe I'll get one for Christmas. By then I'll be complaining about the snow, I hope! Right now it is very cloudy and muggy here but not raining. I don't hear thunder...but if I do I'll be out of here quick! My garden is kind of a jungle/jumble. Now, it is getting to that sticky, seedy time. I had to pull all my kale out of the pots where they were growing with chard and artichokes because the little caterpillars ate them. they have not eaten much of the chard which I like better anyway.

I had never heard of bindweed mite, but I am all in favor of them. I don't have a problem with bindweed, but I sure have some friends who do. I think bindweed grows in disturbed soil. Mine is either planted or in its natural state with lots of native grasses and a few wildflowers and lots of pine needles. I see it a lot in gardens which people have quit tending.

Here it is dry, dry, dry and hot by my current standards. I am delighted to have my drip irrigation now or I would be unable to keep up with my plants' water needs. This year, I am expanding it as I add new plants. I now know how to do it myself thanks to the good fellows at the drip irrigation store. It really is easy.

I have a drip system as well and just put a mister under my patio umbrella! I LOVE IT! And I am watering every other day now because of the high temps. If I go and check the mail at around 3pm there is none out in my neighborhood - too hot! This has been an unusual year - weather wise. First we had an unusual cool spell, now, an unusually hot one.

My garden is small. Never the less, hand-watering it took me 3 hours this morning and that is typical during the hot weather. We are on permanent water restrictions here and I can water on odd days. (Because I am odd!) We have to water before 11:00 or maybe it's 10:00 in the morning and after 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening. I'm more of a morning waterer except in deep drought situations. This year is unusual but my too-shaded back-yard roses, Penelope and Henry Kelsey, are having a ball! And Sally Holmes, facing west, is going nuts! even in this heat. So far, it hasn't been too windy. I want some rain!

We are on the same water restrictions in Los Alamos. Don't know why. We have never had a problem with our water supply. I guess they figure that if Santa Fe does it, we have to do it. I will say that there hasn't been any enforcement here and I gather there has in Santa Fe. At least they are getting off the artificial turf for parks number! I cannot imagine what an artificial turf park would look like after 3 years. Yetch!

Whew. It's 4:20 p.m. and just hit 100 degrees in the shade in Albuquerque. We do have water restrictions here too -- no watering between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. That's better than last year when we could only water on alternate days, determined by your street address.

June

Wow. I have friends coming for a cook-out tomorrow afternoon. I called them earlier today to suggest we not grill things. Standing over hot coals just seems like too much. I'm going to do as much as possible tonight. One friend said he thinks it will rain tomorrow. Any bets?

Roybird - Betting on New Mexico weather is too risky for me! I was hoping for some rain but will postpone my wish until after your cook-out tomorrow.

We bought a gas grill and have been using it almost nightly, rain or shine, even during winds and rain. Our patio is covered and it won't surprise me if my DH is out there this winter grilling while it snows. The charcoal grill we had just seemed too much time and work and we rarely used it.

June

They weather has been pleasantly cool this year - I don't think we've actually made it over 100*F yet, although we hang out in the high 90's. 60's at night. Squash is growing 6 inches a day, as well as a sweet potato that I am growing just because it wouldn't die in the house and I felt sorry for it - now, of course, it is trying to take over. We get a lot of intense sunlight here, and I think that that helps compensate for the realatively short season. I was really worried, moving to the desert, if I would really be able to garden or not, but I have found - if you mulch it and water it, it will grow. It helps to add organic material to the sand, too.

Re: gas grills - we love ours. We don't have a covered patio yet, but we don't get much wind or snow in the winter, so DH will grill outside with temps down to about 25* if it is sunny and still out. Probably because his wife doesn't cook and every now and then he would like to eat real food!

I should have bet. We got that rain! If we grilled more I'd get a gas one. My sister-in-law grills all winter with her gas grill on a covered deck. It seems like a little much. They love it, tho.

Well, we got the rain and high winds last night, and some areas actually got hail. DH braved it out and finished cooking the ribs. Then, of course the rain stopped.

I don't like to cook and I especially don't like to cook every night. It is my own selfish best interest that I encourage DH to grill to his heart's content. ;-)

June

Every woman deserves a husband who cooks. Unfortunately, I didn't learn not to cook until after I was married. I got my husband hooked on the kind of food I like to eat -- home grown, well seasoned, fresh everything. But frankly, he appears to have to aptitude whatsoever for cooking.
I would buy him any number of toys to help him cook, but I am afraid he is not likely to take it up even so. We have various grills, charcoal and gas. We don't use any of them. I think I would like an outdoor wok with a big burner so it can get hot enough. My home stove doesn't cook as hot as I would like it to for a big wok.
Anyhow, I am cooking more simply all the time and maybe I don't really want any more fancy cooking toys. Turns out my husband doesn't insist on fancy food. I am the one who loves it.
Our rainfall went from 10 drops the day before to a slight wetting last night. I am ready for a nice big rain. Temperatures have dropped though.

110*F yesterday! And, of course, the a/c in my truck is not working. DH, a professional diesel mechanic, has been promising to fix it for ages... so, until then, well I figured out how to expedite the service... I'm driving HIS truck until mine has climate control again :-) He has a BIG diesel pickup truck and I 'bout need a ladder to get into it, but hey, it will keep the cab at artic temps if I want!

Don't need fancy cooking for fresh veggies - raw, 1 second from the plant, is my solution to the "it's too hot to cook" delema (or the "who, me? cook?" attitude). Nothing like sun warmed cherry tomatoes right off the vine, maybe wiped on the shirt, before being popped in the mouth!

I have one of those husbands who cooks, cleans, does laundry, sews, got up with my daughter in the night when she was a baby, and has a good job. ;) I had a terribly unlucky life and needed some absurdly good compensation for it. He's actually my 3rd husband, but we had our 10th anniversary in March. Glad I eventually got it right. Now if only he liked plants! He helps, I direct. His Dad was a forester, and his Mom loves plants, so I'm not quite sure what happened there. My Dad literally can't even keep a cactus alive, but my Mom loved plants and it was contagious for me.

Bindweed mites sound great. I probably need to wait. I'm being evil and poisoning Ailanthus right now (first time I've resorted to poisoning anything, so I'm having guilt issues) and sometimes bindweed gets hit in the process.

It would make sense if bindweed grows in disturbed turf. The previous owners of this house had at least one dog in the backyard, which I assume explains the sod over weeds. I would've been happier without the sod (not a lawn lover, very much in agreement that healthy over-watered lawns aren't so good -- I feel bad enough about having 3 bushes that love water, though it's kind of amusing that all 3 have rings of green grass around them). It mostly died because we weren't watering and it was hiding the weeds, but I know it would be difficult to sell a house with a weed lawn.

Buffalograss is nice on the not watering front. I grew it at my past house, too. When conditions aren't good, it simply turns brown for a while without dying. The main problem with it is that it is a paranoid and cautious grass, so seeding and waiting for it to spread can seem like an endless annual chore. Many people don't like it because it turns brown. Any other grass (not counting a few broad-leaved wilds) seems to ultimately turn brown and STAY brown for me, so I don't mind at all.

We finally got rain on the 4th, and minor drizzling on the 5th, so I'm pretty happy about that. It had been several weeks (only one insignificant drizzle since May, if I remember correctly). One day last week it made it up to about 106 degrees in my backyard, and even my oregano finally started scorching. Normally the oregano couldn't care less about any dire condition. I never thought I would look at days in the low 90s as a blessed cool off, especially this early in the year. It's been ridiculous. My drought tolerant plants need too much watering, and my veggie garden completely fried. I'm glad the veggies were the only annuals. And of course the heat makes ME crabby and listless.

Hopefully the threatened cool off of tomorrow will happen. I'm out of the house all day on Sundays for my Go club, and it gets depressing to come home and see what all fried this time every week. At least the Ailanthus and bindweed seem fine with the weather. ;)

That's the other possibility with bindweed. Feed and water it and claim it is the latest in lawns! I doubt if you would have to water it much.
Actually it can be irradicated by covering it with old used wall to wall carpeting for a couple of years. I have seen that done. It really works. The trouble is you might not like looking at it while it does its job.
I have a particular grudge against bindweed because it taught me an unwelcome lesson about weed killers. I had a major infestation of bindweed on one side of my house. The bindweed had even started climbing up into the apricot tree. I had never used round up before, but I knew that the idea was to spray it on the leaves and the poison would travel down to the roots and kill the plant. Mind you where I sprayed the bindweed, with a hand squirter, was not under the canopy of the apricot tree, but slowly but surely, the bindweed died, and then the apricot. I was devastated. It seems the plant sucked up the poison, died, then released it into the soil around the apricot tree.
So I now hate both Roundup an bindweed with a passion.

Hi Paja. I don't know why they still sell Roundup anymore. It seems so dangerous. I think apricots are particularly sensitive to that sort of thing. Our neighbor sprayed elm trees with something about 17 years ago that killed the elms ( which have since come back ) and caused our apricot trees to be susceptible to some sort of disease which is slowly killing them. The tree man who came to look at them told us we could sue the neighbor for that. We won't. It was too long ago and he probably knows better now, anyway.

I don't use roundup or any chemical poison anymore after two of my dogs got cancer within two years of each other. I read all about it and according to them it was supposed to be safe. But there have been a lot of reports about cancers in dogs and glyphosate (roundup) causing cancers in dogs.

madamecp, I just pulled up some Six Hills Giant catmint because some of the other plants needed room and I feel bad too when I pull up a plant like that. It's weird when we start empathizing with a plant!

Mobi, I know just what you mean. I cut down a very sickly hollyhock and some walking onions today. I felt wastefull. On the other hand, everything else looked happier without being crowded. Sometimes I dig excess plants up and put them in pots to give away but if they don't find homes I end up watering them forever. Sad to hear about your dogs. A good friend of mine has a dog who is currently dying of cancer. She may have to have him put down tomorrow. He is 12 years old, so not a Very old dog, really. Dogs are so close to the soil they are probably likely to get in to poisons on lawns or gardens.

Thanks roybird. It is hard. One passed over but the other one is still here and going strong. She is considered cured.

I am watering every other day now and I am still getting wilting plants!

I noticed that the vinca in my backyard is starting to go brown and dry out on the edges. I don't water it much because it usually is so tough. Lots of things going to seed now. It's muggy tonight and the rain keeps missing us.

Roybird -- same situation in Albuquerque. I've been watering daily, sometimes twice a day, but to little avail. I have fried petunias and my vinca too is getting crispy around the edges. We had a light sprinkling of rain on the 4th, but otherwise it's just hot and dry.

June

We has a hard and brief rain last night. It was nice, but one is never content with just a brief rain. Wilting will happen even to well watered plants in the heat of summer- they are OK as long as they perk back up to turgid in the evening.
I have been otherwise engaged, and not able to do anything in my garden for some time, I am amazed at how well the deep layer of wood mulch has kept it moist.

Sure it's been hot, but I'd like to think I top everyone: I've been babysitting a large gas-fired kiln for two days. A balmy 1860F.

Kenton,
You win the heat contest in the Rocky Mt. Forum. Babysitting a large gas fired kiln has got to be hot! Is it outdoors? I hope so. Hope all goes well for your art projects. We look forward to your pictures when you are able to get home again. It isn't really all that hot here, all things considered. We get to 90 and 91 some days. Other days we stay in the high seventies and low eighties, which makes tomato growing tough. Nevertheless, my plants are now setting tomatoes. My lilies and daylilies are blooming and life is pretty good.

I am heading home to the blast furnace of Montana from the cool climes of Juneau AK. Lots of rain and lots of cool weather. Today is sunny and beautiful and a sweltering 58F high. I have enjoyed the hikes after work in the cool drizzle of SE AK. I just lined up a job today where I will be living in a lighthouse on an island across from Sitka during the down pour of October. I will have to commute by boat to work each day. Kind of neat.
Kenton you need to make many sculptures to wow us with your beauty and talent of art.

Wow! That's impressive. We'll expect lots of photos of lighthouse and surroundings.