Funky weather and other stuff...

This is the normal winter view up the drive. Nothing like that this winter! First, I'd like to say thanks to all my new followers! I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to read what I have to say. I try to answer all comments as a reply in my comment section. We have been having some funky weather...of course, the entire winter has been pretty odd. I was warned as early as last winterthat we could expect odd weather patterns at least through this year. The weather service said it was something like El Nina. Ns time of the year, we have quite a lot of snow. We are in New England and in the mountains! While we had a huge storm at the end of October, mostly what we have gotten is little bits of snow here and there. A bit of ice, some cold, but until this week, nothing extreem. I'm sure we will still get hit by a couple of whopper snow storms, but with this little precipatation and lack of snow "pack", we worry aboutthe possibility of drought in the summer. We put up a gutter system on the front of the house, where we could let the rain collect into barrels, but I think this is the year we will put one on the back as well. We have lots of fruit trees that will need watering and a big garden. How do you handle a lack of water? We are lucky to have a pond down the road and a small brook by our drive, so if we needed to we could get some from that (although the brook might dry up). This is always something we need to be aware of, even if you aren't in an area prone to drought. What would you do if your water ran low or if it was shut off? Water conservation is becoming more of an issue throughout the country. If you garden, there are a few tricks you can do to help. Mulch- a good thick mulch will help keep water in the soil. Often times, when it does rain, the mulch will get drenched and retain a bit of the water, helping to water the plants and breaking down and composting in place. This adds to the nutrients your plants are getting. #10 Cans- when we had a 4-H group, we did garden experiments each year. One thing we did was collect #10 cans from the school cafeteria. We punched holes in the bottom half of the cans and put a handful of compost or straw into it and then sunk it into the garden. This acted like a drip irrigation system of sorts. Sometimes the rain filled it up but sometimes we had to keep them full. Soaker Hose- A soaker hose is much better for your garden than most other types of irrigation. It's a kind of drip irrigation. You have a thick spongy rubber hose and the water leaks out of it onto the soil. If you put mulch over the top of this hose, all the water will go to the plants and soil, reducing evaporation and sunburning of the leaves. It also uses reduces the spread of viruses and mildew in the garden. I would dearly love to have a soaker hose, but if our water has to come from barrels, I'll have to put the barrel on a stand so it's higher up and then figure out how to connect hoses so I'm not watering between the beds. I know there are all kinds of gadgets out there for this, I just have to find them, order them and get it done when the weather gets better! For those of you who are interested in preparedness, try and catch my radio show. SHTFradio.com Thursday nights from 8-9 p.m. eastern time! We have a great chat room and you can add comments or ask questions while the show is on. We also keep the shows archieved so you can listen to them later. We are starting this week to talk a bit about gardening and will continue to do so each week through the season. I hope you can join us!