Oh, Larry, I'm so sorry. But, on the bright side, think of how much spare time you'll have now for your up & coming male swimsuit modeling career!

Diane

Yep. The self proclaimed shy ones always land the magazine covers.

Sorry to hear it Larry, but we are scaling back and letting some things go too. Peanuts, the baby popcorn that I planted 3 weeks ago still thinking it might rain. And I don't know whether it is worth watering the pole beans that were just starting to twine good, 2-3 ft up the wire, now that the deer ate most of the leaves off them last night. Venison, anyone?

Larry, I am sorry to hear you've having to pull the plug, but I don't blame you at all.

Our water bill arrived just this morning and it was 8 times as high as it was the previous month (which was a very wet month). So, I am contemplating pulling the plug too. I think it likely that I'll keep watering the peppers, southern peas and okra and just let everything else sink or swim on its own.

Unless significant rainfall occurs, I won't plant anything in July or August. Maybe in September or October I can plant some cool-season stuff.

I'm pretty good at knowing when to pull the plug during drought. I did it during the drought of 2005, 2006, and 2008 but that doesn't mean it is an easy thing to do. I didn't pull the plug in 2003, but I should have because I watered a lot and it just didn't really help in terms of getting a better harvest. The garden still produced poorly.

Hopefully next year will be a better year for our gardens. It shouldn't be this hard!

Dawn

Diane, I have been outside hanging upside down on the fence tanning the bottom side of my wrinkles so I will have a smooth tan for my Photo-shoot. Being a model is almost as tough as gardening.

Larry

Larry, I forgot to say I am sorry, but I also think you are smart. Even with plenty of water, my garden is looking sad, because of the heat and wind. There's not much else to do.

However, I have been thinking about a couple of mister-coolers I have buried somewhere. They were mailed to me in Houston by a well-intentioned Oklahoman. They cool the surrounding air when the water evaporates. Of course in Houston, with 99.99999% humidity there is no evaporation. It has crossed my mind to run them in my garden. Over head water goes against everything I know, but I'm wondering what I really have to lose. And I'm also remembering the summer of 1980 when we had 50 days of over 100. My parents still had a lovely garden. The only watering option they ever had was an oscillating sprinkler. Maybe there's time and a place for everything. I'm giving it some thought.

Seedmama

P.S. Glad to know you won't need to be airbrushed.

Larry, I'm so sorry to hear it. So far I've kept my garden going, but we're on a well and I'm so afraid that we might run it dry. We have no access to any other water. The pastures are all dried up and I hate to think of having to go out and buy feed for the animals.

I've managed to keep my bush beans going by suspending a shade cloth over them, tall enough that I can squeeze under it, and using a lot of mulch to conserve what water is put on them. This morning all my strawberries were gasping in the heat. Even the tomatoes are not doing well. They have barely begun to produce. Naturally, this year I planted a lot of them. The only thing that seems really happy is the squash!

Pat

I pulled the plug on my garden yesterday, also cost us a new ac unit :( My fail garden didn't seem to have a chance, biggest thing I grew was a grasshopper (it was huge).

Ya'll are scaring me....I haven't even seen my water bill yet this month. However I happened to check my water account online today and discovered I underpaid last month's bill by 40.00. ACK. I prepay my water bill, I guess I didn't check the bill when it came in. I paid a hefty sum for this month, and now I'm afraid I underpaid it again.

I didn't put in too many new plants this year after I saw how hot it was going to be, but I have to keep up some semblance of water because my gardens are perennial flowers. I can't afford to let them burn up.

Lisa

Yes Lisa I agree that the investment in perennials makes for some different choices about water.

Our former school librarian used to live on the main residential street of town. She is a Master Gardener, and her front annual borders were always lush and gorgeous. Whenever she'd "pull the plug" everybody else knew it was time to give up. Its one of those summers. We are in the "moderate" drought area, so I still have some hope.

Lisa, Underpaying hurts the next month, but overpaying can feel really good. During one wildfire year when we were going out to fires almost daily, I was watering a lot to keep a big green zone around all our structures, and they are a a bit spread out, so I likely was watering an acre or more. A huge water bill arrived one day. It was for $340 or $360. I had expected maybe $100 or $120. It would have been more, but I'd already cut off the water to the garden and let it go. Tim and I agreed it was likely the meter reader had misread the meter and just paid the bill. We were too busy with fires to worry about it and figured it would work out in the end. It did. We had a water bill of $0.00 for the next two months, and a small one in the month after that. So, in effect, we had prepaid for several months.

When I stop watering, it is the veggie garden and its flower border that I let go. All the flowers there are reseeding annuals or very hardy perennials.

I never stop watering the beds around the house because we can't let the soil near the foundation get dry enough to crack or there's a risk the foundation will crack with it.

When the water bill arrived this week, I thought it was too high and decided to cut back watering. Tim looked at it, shrugged, and said it was "not bad" and he didn't want me to cut back on the watering. I should have touched his forehead to see if he had a fever and was delirious. And, now....the rest of the story.

One of his coworkers also has clay soil. He lives in a very dry portion of Texas which I believe is in severe or extreme drought. His clay soil got much too dry and his foundation cracked. Right now, he is in the process of spending a little over $10,000.00 to have a foundation repair company come in and put in steel piers and some sort of cables, to prevent the repaired foundation from cracking again. That's why Tim was so relaxed about a water bill that I thought was too high....he'd rather have those high water bills a few months out of the year than to have to do the whole cracked-foundation-repair thing. Oddly, it seems like someone he works with has a foundation crack every single year. Don't these guys learn from what happens to the folks they work with? We've always watered the soil around our foundation to keep it moist. We have soaker hoses 100% of the way around the foundation and water year round if rainfall is scarce.

I'm usually the last person here in our area to stop watering the veggie garden. There are some folks who have a well who will water later than I do in a dry year, but they usually stop watering the veggies in July regardless and focus on keeping their lawn and flower beds green.

The bad thing about having a nice green space around your yard is that all the grasshoppers flock there as the surrounding areas dry up. That is irritating!

Dawn

My bill in May was about 6 times higher than normal. I piled on the mulch and changed watering strategies to more frequent, shorter waterings, since I'm mainly trying to keep the roots cool. I was able to bring it down from $350-$250, despite a much hotter month in June. Huge sigh of relief!

HOLY COW. You all are scaring me too!

My normal winter water bill is in the $30 range. During the summer it increases to anywhere between $50-$90. I figure watering my garden costs me an average of $25 extra per month, 6 months per year. Still, if I manage $1000 of produce out of my little garden, I consider it a win.

I am starting to wonder if I'd be better off letting my garden die and just getting a real job. :)

Jo

All,

I have a well and a relatively small garden, so "pulling the plug" for us comes from a somewhat different perspective: Is it really worth the effort?

I was thinking about starting some seedlings this week of brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, Chinese cabbage, and Brussels sprouts) for fall harvest and got to thinking: Will the two of us really enjoy these enough to spend the time and effort to grow them, since even in the best of weather conditions they are not even close to a sure thing (especially since in mid-August, I can reliably plant and expect a harvest of kale, collards, mustard, turnips, radishes, carrots,lettuce, chard and less reliably beets).

I made mid-summer plantings of the more standard brassicas the past two years and one year was a complete failure and in the other the production was really not worth effort, in our opinion.

Anyway, my decision was not to do it, even though I have the seed.

I'm a fairly new gardener. When I got out of school about 10 years ago, I took a job down on the Mexican border and learned a lot about frugal gardening: Grow what you eat and, more importantly, learn to eat what you can grow.

I think I still spend too much time and effort on trying to grow everything possible, instead of what really works for our climate and diet. However, new things are fun and frequently rewarding. When I came back to the farm in the Panhandle, I never dreamed that garlic would be so easy and productive or that I would enjoy kale so much or I could overwinter spinach or onions.

Your thoughts?

Tom Logan in the Texas Panhandle where the overnight low was a more nearly normal 68 and daytime high of 95 with a few clouds and thunder this afternoon.