Summer Rain

This summer, our garden is lush.
Double-click for a full-screen view.

It rained yesterday afternoon.  It was a glorious thunderstorm that dropped better than a half an inch of rain on our garden.  As this is written, the skies are overcast and there is a promise of even more rain this evening.

Our four rain barrels are
full, and are augmented
by twenty-plus re-purposed
cat litter jugs, each
holding three gallons.

Last year at this time, we had four empty rain barrels across the back of our home.  Those rain barrels were at the receiving end of an elaborate system of gutters, diverters, and underground drain pipes to collect and carry away rain water.  It was a beautiful system; intelligently conceived and built with back-breaking labor.  But without rain, it was also pointless.  We went weeks without a drop of rain in the summer of 2016.

So, instead, with a new garden filled with plants with limited root systems, we scrounged water from every possible source.  We doled out that water with a figurative eyedropper, conserving every pint.  We watered at six in the morning to ensure no water was lost to evaporation.  The garden made it through that long, hot summer but we were exhausted by the effort.

This year, our four rain barrels are completely filled with 220 gallons of neutral pH and chlorine-free water, and an additional reservoir is stored in twenty re-purposed, three-gallon cat litter jugs.  We lavish water on container gardens to keep them blooming and on new perennials to encourage root growth.  What isn’t collected flows directly into the wetlands behind us via six subterranean conduits.  As a result, the vernal pools that were dry in April last year are still filled with water at the end of June.  It is a sign that we are, at long last, beginning to replenish our watersheds.

Diverters allow us to
switch from filling barrels
to directing water into
the wetlands behind us.

A return to more normal rainfall has an unexpected benefit as well as a drawback.  The benefit, as reported by the University of Massachusetts Extension Service, is that all this moisture has activated the maimaiga fungus.  Why is that important?  The fungus is deadly to gypsy moth caterpillars.  Caterpillars die before they can lay the eggs that would otherwise wreak havoc next spring on our oaks.  It means the devastation of the past two years will likely abate.  The downside to the precipitation is that the woolly adelgids are hatching.  They primarily attack hemlocks and the drought kept eggs from hatching.

June 2017 yielded more than five inches of rain in Boston; more than an inch above the long-term average.  We’ve had 26 inches of precipitation so far this year – four inches above normal.  This week’s Drought Monitor map shows no area in New England as being even abnormally dry.  Last year, all of New England except extreme northern Maine was in at least a ‘Stage 0’ drought and much of the region was in a moderate drought (which would become ‘extreme’ by summer’s end).

Our elaborate system of
drains is also designed to
look attractive.

We learned to cope last year.  An absolute lawn watering ban in our town (Medfield) reduced summer water usage to winter levels.  Lawns went brown.  Then, to the surprise of many homeowners, cooler weather in September and October, coupled with a little rain, caused those same lawns to green up.

The question is whether we learned any lasting lessons from the summers of 2015 and 2016.  I fear the answer is that we did not.  Driving around town this week I saw automatic lawn sprinkler systems pouring water onto bright green lawns in mid-day.  I saw other sprinkler systems operating in the rain. 

Rain is not guaranteed.  It is a gift to be cherished.  Being stewards of the land means also being stewards of our finite water resources.  It’s an imperative that ought to be obvious. All those lawn sprinklers tell me that, sadly, lessons have been too easily and quickly forgotten.

Long Summer Days

This has been an awful summer for New England gardeners.  It wouldn’t stop raining in June and three weeks of July were blisteringly hot and dry.  Much of what we first planted in our vegetable garden never germinated and the blooms of many of our perennials were dramatically truncated first by rain, then by heat.  Only the weeds flourished.

It has taken until now for some semblance of horticultural equilibrium to be restored.  Only a third of our first square of corn broke the earth’s surface but our second square has ripened nicely and the third is already tasseling.  Our green bean harvest was awful and our lettuce bolted too quickly (leaving us the humiliating necessity of making our July salads with store-bought lettuce) but our beets are luscious, our zucchini is firm and sweet, and hundreds of tomatoes are growing plump.  There will be chard until the first frost.

This is the inner and outer sidewalk beds as they
looked on August 1.  Double-click for a full-screen image.

Around our home, the Orienpet and rubrum lilies as well as the rudbeckia and helleniums have exploded.  The clethra shrubs are heavy with their bottle-brush flowers and the phlox stands tall and proud.  White and purple Stoke’s asters and yellow coreopsis and corydalis are spreading into every empty space.  The hydrangeas are voluptuous.  Ferns have run amok.

Gardening is about being patient and rolling with what nature gives you.  We replanted our corn not once but twice and kept our green beans under row covers until what was underneath bulged against the fabric (the bulge turned out to be mostly weeds and the bean beetles managed to sneak their way into the crop despite our best efforts).  But we are now enjoying four ears of corn a day; a pace that seemed destined to last into September.

Nature has also held some surprises in reserve.  Our astilbe is usually a June and early July event.  This week, there are still an abundance of purple plumes.  An unusually large number of hostas in their glory at the beginning of August.  With all these blooms, the bees and butterflies are having a field day. 

Tomatoes are ripening
daily.  These are about
two weeks from picking.

After two lean months, this August appears to be shaping up as one of excess. It is almost too much, really.  The late crop of lettuce and spinach has already sprouted and will be pickable by mid-month.  We will soon have more tomatoes than we can possibly eat or process and so our local food cupboard will be the beneficiary of our excess. The flowers in bloom today are built to last through both heat and heavy rains that define this month. 

Most of our annuals are in containers. They were planted in May and early June and, through the incessant rains of June they suffered; stunted and sullen.  Then came July and they grew rangy.  In the past two weeks they have been trimmed and shaped and now, finally, they are fulfilling their promise.

Finally, there are the ‘winter’ crops – winter squash, principally, but spinach, kale, carrots, turnips and beets as well. The winter squash vines are still relatively modest – a product of too much rainfall and too little sun, but they have taken off in the last two weeks.  As quickly as we pull out spent corn stalks, the squash vines claim the empty space.   Last September, we picked dozens of huge Butternut squash that filled several wheelbarrows. Stored in our cool, dry basement, they were a tasty reminder of summer until April.

All this bounty will all be over too soon. The New England flower gardening season is effectively over shortly after Labor Day because, here at 45 degrees north latitude, the daylight starts to shrink at an alarming rate.  Perennials turn their attention to putting food into their roots to provide the 2014 season’s display.  Because frosts appear with impunity in September, any evening could be the final one for tender annuals.

So, I intend to enjoy this excess of August.  It’s the payoff month for New England gardeners.