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Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
34,705 posts, read 58,031,425 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LoriNJ
260 days of drizzle? I think I would lose my mind.
We get lots of slugs here in NJ. How BIG is BIG?
I lost me mind 30+ yrs ago when, as a prairie / farm kid I ended up in We_tern WA... (then along came kids (3 weeks later) and some more kids, and by then I couldn't get them out of PNW (they claim to like GREEN... I am content with BROWN for 9 months / yr). When we drive back to Colorado for visits, it seems everything is miniature / short. trees / houses / buildings... (We have 300' tall trees in our backyard forest in PNW)/ I cut one last yr with a 7ft dia trunk. (it was dying, and I didn't want it to fall on my cows or fence (or me) They weigh about 100,000# and can do some serious damage to your house in a windstorm after a heavy rain (smoosh).)
Gardening is pretty extreme in PNW. stuff grows HUGE. I can grow a 15 ft Christmas tree in 5-6 yrs. (I dig seedlings from the county ditch bank, before the evil mower shows up)
My Slugs are only 5-6" ~ 1" dia tho I have seen some over 8" (2" dia) at the coast.
They sure like dog food!
and NO I do not like gardening in the rain. (but it has to be done, or it won't get done...)
Last edited by StealthRabbit; 12-09-2015 at 10:29 PM..
I lost me mind 30+ yrs ago when, as a prairie / farm kid I ended up in We_tern WA... (then along came kids (3 weeks later) and some more kids, and by then I couldn't get them out of PNW (they claim to like GREEN... I am content with BROWN for 9 months / yr). When we drive back to Colorado for visits, it seems everything is miniature / short. trees / houses / buildings... (We have 300' tall trees in our backyard forest in PNW)/ I cut one last yr with a 7ft dia trunk. (it was dying, and I didn't want it to fall on my cows or fence (or me) They weigh about 100,000# and can do some serious damage to your house in a windstorm after a heavy rain (smoosh).)
Gardening is pretty extreme in PNW. stuff grows HUGE. I can grow a 15 ft Christmas tree in 5-6 yrs. (I dig seedlings from the county ditch bank, before the evil mower shows up)
My Slugs are only 5-6" ~ 1" dia tho I have seen some over 8" (2" dia) at the coast.
They sure like dog food!
and NO I do not like gardening in the rain. (but it has to be done, or it won't get done...)
We don't get slugs that big! And I guess all that moisture makes most plants and trees happy, happy, happy -- so they grow, grow, grow! Wow.
My sister went to Oregon some years back. She came back raving about how GREEN Oregon was, compared to New Jersey, and how lovely all that green was. I reminded her that the price for all that green-ness is a lot of rain. For some reason, the older I get, the more I need sun. I was looking at the PNW for retirement because of the laws regarding independent nurse practitioner practice. (I plan to practice a couple of days/week, even once I am "retired".) But I looked at how many days of clouds and/or rain there were per year and said, maybe not. I do think having 300' trees in the backyard would be awesome, though, and I'll bet your wildlife is a lot more interesting than the usual skunks, squirrels and raccoons we have here in NJ! Any really wonderful birds you see that you can tell me about to make me jealous?
I tried doing it when we first moved to the Piedmont but the red clay sticks to everything when it's wet, so that was the end of that!
But afterwards, yes!
I started reading this thread and wondered how anyone could enjoy gardening in the rain. I grew up in the Carolina Piedmont. It not only sticks to you, but you can get stuck in the garden. I've had to peel out of my boots when they got mired in. That red clay is no fun when wet.
I do not like gardening in the rain. Here in Denver it gets cold when it rains - mid-summer temps can easily fall into the 50s and it can feel downright FREEZING after an afternoon in the 90s. A light sprinkle I can totally tolerate, but a downpour, forget it!
I wil say, though, that I do love gardening AFTER the rains - if they end early enough in the day for me to get back into the garden. The smell, the calm, the renewed warmth.. there is absolutely something undeniably soothing about post-rain gardening!
We figure it's a good tradeoff. We don't get copperheads that climb trees, and that's fine by me.
When I lived in south San Jose, my soil was pure clay. The only time you could garden was when it was raining, because there was no way you were gonna dig in that hard soil any other way.
I would dig a hole (a small one), throw in a handful of peat moss, and then plant whatever I wanted to plant. What wouldn't grow, died. What did grow, went berserk. Over 200 marigolds from a handful of scattered seeds, cherry tomatoes that practically took over my yard, strawberries gone wild, huge watermelons, and transplanted California poppies (I took them from the back pasture) that covered my walkway and had to be waded through. The next garden I have is going to be 90% clay.
We had some slugs there, too, not as large as in the PNW, but we also had rattlesnakes. There is nothing better to get your blood moving on a cool morning than picking up the end of a piece of cardboard that's blown into your yard, only to find what you think is a rattlesnake under it. Then comes that haha, very funny moment when you realize it's not a rattlesnake after all, and you lift the cardboard up to throw it in the trash and behind that snake is another snake - a real rattler this time, and he rattles his rattles at you.
When I climbed down off the telephone pole, I decided gardening in the California hills wasn't for sissies, and since I was obviously a big sissy, why was I gardening?
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And I guess all that moisture makes most plants and trees happy, happy, happy -- so they grow, grow, grow! Wow. 
