Re: Rain Dances

I know what you mean - water and water and the soil is dry.  This has been
hitting me lately and when I was doing research for current article, I
found this interesting info....loosely paraphrased...

~~Water penetrates the soil so that it has to fill up the top layer before
it goes down to the next layer, so if your plants need x amount of water to
thrive and you provide only half that amount, it will never get past the
top layer and soil below that will be bone dry.  Plants need enough water
to keep their cells turgid, for them to transpire, plus the amount of water
that evaporates out of the soil from the action of the sun.~~

Another interesting factoid I discovered was that a mature deciduous tree
can pump something like 250 or 300 gallons of water a day through its
system and transpire it out of its leaves....no matter how much we water
our borders, if they have a lot of trees in them, we can never make up for
what those trees use a day.....WE NEED RAIN  and lots of it!  MD has
started water conservation - voluntary at this point, but expected to
become mandatory, as we go into our 2nd or 3rd year of drought and the
worst one in the last 30 years.....cummon Ma Nature, cut us some slack!!

Marge
where about 15 drops of rain fell today, but the rest passed north and
south of her garden and her Ostrich ferns are blackening and crisping up:-(

Marge Talt, zone 7 Maryland
mtalt@clark.net
Editor:  Gardening in Shade
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----------
> From: Peggy L Kinnetz <pkinnetz@JUNO.COM>
> Date: Sunday, August 01, 1999 2:08 PM
> I have spent the weekend watering like mad.  I dug down, and it was dry
> at least 6 inches, and I had spent all last weekend watering too!  I was
> surprised that it could be that dry, given all the water that I had
> given. So far, nothing has been lost, I don't think. But I did notice
> that several things had gone into dormacy:  Soloman's Seal (except for my
> new one, Gene),  Jack in the pulpit leaves, but not the green berries,
> Mayapple.
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