Wendy's Weather

Wendy might be getting some of the best fertilizer from the rain gods, I hope you do Wendy. At present we are to get upto 10mL on Sunday, have a look at this link,
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We've a little - others in the area will have received MUCH more than us.
I'm always in two minds when it comes to summer rain - sometimes the negatives outweigh the positives. (Our area is traditionally dry for summer)

We have a had a reasonable steady 20mm each week for the last few weeks. 5 km away they have had 40-80 and one of the guys I work with yard is a quagmire.

Of cause yesterday we cleaned up a few of our roses that have been neglected over the past 12 months and gave them a feed with some organic fertiliser expecting showers through the night or today and I wake up to a beautiful sunny morning.

Gary from "old times", the time to fertilize is when it is raining, you get both advantage, the rain and fertilizer work together. Rain coat/umbrella works well. A very good friend that comes off the land sprays for weeds prior to rain or as soon as possible after, as the plant will or has become receptive.

We've had over 30mm now. Tomorrow might be the day I go out and do some fertilising and stuff. Depends how hard it is raining!!

A lot of good advice comes from the "old timers".

Like us Doug, 

So far we have had 5mls yesterday and the same so far today with the promise of upto 20mls today, with the prospect of more on Tuesday, we will take whatever the  :storm:gods wish to give us

The Lazy Rosarian wrote:Gary from "old times", the time to fertilize is when it is raining, you get both advantage, the rain and fertilizer work together. Rain coat/umbrella works well. A very good friend that comes off the land sprays for weeds prior to rain or as soon as possible after, as the plant will or has become receptive.

Thanks for the advice old timer. I must be one too because I never fertilise unless I know it is going to rain or it is raining.

Though I should mention the proviso that probably only applies up our way, is that if is going to rain a lot then don't bother because it will be washed away either over the surface or through the soil.

As of now we have had another 11mls since 7am

Yesterday we had 27.2mls and so far this month 42.2mls.

As of yesterday we have had 57mls, Sunday ended up with 21mls, The promise of 10 to 20 from 6pm tonight will be graciously accepted as well. I happened to be outside yesterday and dug down to get rid of a certain weed(khaki weed), the moisture had not even got down an inch(25mls) into the soil. This is why the rain "hopefully" that is due this afternoon is welcome.

We had 42mm overnight and 130mm since about 9AM when I emptied the gauge and it is still raining. Spent the morning in the rain throwing around some organic fertilizer.

Gary there are words for people that get that much rain without sharing. Our rain gauge registered 1ml the other day and just on 1.5klms received 11.5mls. Do you want to share some down towards Mudgee please.

David

After walking around the place this arvo you can have as much as you like.

I would take it if at all possible Gary, we have only green surface tinge here, no sub surface water at all.
Just out of curiosity does it drain away or does it sit on the surface, I guess I am asking what is the local soil type and/or types.

Our garden area is basically on the side of a hill with flat areas that we have created (eg the latest reno). The garden more or less stops where it hits the flat horse paddock.

We have had to put in ag drains near the bottom of the hill in places to drain away the water that comes out of the soil at the bottom of the hill. The water gets drained into our dam for reuse but some goes into the rainforest area as the drains are below the level of the dam.

Surface drains and some stormwater pipes take care of some of the surface flow but I have found that the pits get silted (more leaves and grass clippings than dirt) up in the heavy rain. A bit better garden design would have probably minimised that though.

Our soil is a sandy loam and it does drain quite well (too well in some places). We don't get puddles sitting around for too long after the heavy rain but soakage from higher ground has been an issue but we have just about got that solved. After all the rain yesterday I could go out and mow the grass with the ride-on today no problems (except it is still raining)

Just checked our bit from the  :storm:gods, 3.5mls

The Lazy Rosarian wrote: I could go out and mow the grass with the ride-on today no problems (except it is still raining)
This is a bit from your post Gary, I do not think you are playing fairly, if we had that rain, we could not mow for a week

Does have its problems. If you don't mow each week you have real problems with the amount of grass growth and it takes three times as long to mow.

fair dinkum, I mowed yesterday and this morning it almost looks like it needs it again.

After the last batch of 8.5mm last week it's gone dry. More like summer. LOL I'll be interested to see how February goes because the weather at the moment is more like end Feb/start March.

Roses aren't complaining too much. A bit of BS around but the wind and dry now should steady that up.

I really should have got out there to do some fertilising.... Maybe tomorrow....

Penrith's rainfall for January 86.4 mm to date which is just below the last 18yrs average.

That's interesting Wendy, I thought you had had more down your way. Just have a look at this for a second, Gary gets 170mls over a day, you mention that your place is dry Wendy. I just checked ours for the month 101mls which is up on the average by 20mls. The top is green but we have no sub surface water, go down 50ml/2in it is dry, when you look at Doug,s he is a bit behind for Penrith, other suburbs are well in front for thier average. To be honest I would like some more so the soil profile could and hopefully get some to give us moisture upto and over Winter, which we have not had for a while. We have had an early start to Spring with good water then it died again leading into Summer.

In Penrith we have 43mm in the last 24 hours so after 28 days of January we have had 129.4 mm. On my recollections when we have rain like this in January followed by warm weather the roses tend to produce more water shoots than normal.

I didn't say the soil was dry, David. Just the weather is dry for the moment. Am quite happy to cease having Qld weather! Not so good for sheep...

Our water table was in darned good shape after the WET winter/spring we had. We have a few weeds up but also all the perennial native grasses are doing well. Our grape vines look great too. (And the grapes are yummy).

and here we are going for around sixty days without rain.....thank God for bore water.....