Watering, fertilizer and mowing

Yesterday was a "lugging water" day. Heat index peaked at 93F. I started at 8:30 and bagged it at 1:00 when I ran out of water.

I didn't get finished. I still have about 15 trees to water but will get them Monday as long as other chores don't pop up.

Rain is expected today. It is a system of T-storm cells and the predictions for both sites oscillates from 0.1" to 0.9". 

You may wonder why I watered when rain is predicted. Plants don't grow on promises of future rain. It MIGHT rain enough, but likely not. Point-of-fact is that zero rain fell for the last six days and the evaporation potential is running 0.18" a day this time of year.

Fun with (round) numbers

Fertilizing 100 gallons of water with 8 ounces of urea results in a solution of 285 PPM Nitrogen (as measured by agriculture types). 300 PPM Nitrogen is a level that often recommended for hydroponically grown lettuce.

3.5 gallons of that solution contains 3.8 grams of Nitrogen.

First cutting, grass hay commonly holds 12% protein by dry-weight. That is the equivalent of 2% Nitrogen (the actual ratio is 6.25:1). Since green forage is usually on the order of 60%-to-80% water, 3.8 grams of Nitrogen would be enough to support approximately 100 grams of new growth on an apple tree.

There are obvious flaws with this analysis. I used round numbers. Also, as twigs grow in diameter they really don't require much additional nitrogen so the analysis rapidly falls apart as the twigs exceed the diameter of pencils. Another place where the analysis falls apart is the assumption that the apple trees get all of the Nitrogen with none going to the weeds or leaching out of the reach of the tree's roots.

Nevertheless, it does give some basis for the amount of "pop" that one can reasonably expect from fertilizing. 

I mowed the Upper Orchard

I mowed the Upper Orchard with the lawn tractor yesterday. If you recall, the orchard had been brush-hogged. The bad news is that much of the bare ground was filling in with poison ivy. The mowing helped knock that back but I am likely to have many spots of dermatitis where clippings blew back against my legs, arms and neck.