http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...

Science daily (.com) published an article Sept 13th about some cliams by Dr. Nir Krakauer, (assistant professor of civil engineering in The City College of New York's Grove School of Engineering) .

Prof seems conviced that the recent USXDA update of hardiness zones (usually 1/2 Zone warmer) underestimates recent warming. USDA averaged annual minimus over 30-yearsm (1976-2005). Since the warming has speeded up over those 30 years (and in the 6-7 years since 2006), Krakauer uses a mthod that gives more weight to recent years than it does to the 1980s an 1990s.

His map predicts that next winter in the continental US will be 1.5 to 3 degrees warmer than the latrest USDA Zones predict.

It will be interesting to see who's right. For one thing, if the last 10 year's trend is really a trend and not a long-lasting fluctuation, it probably menas we are now in a period of rapid climate change, not just random variation. I'm betgting that way: there have been too many records broken too consistently just in the last 2-3 years to seem "random".

So zone-pushing gardeners may have an easier time of it. As long as you live more than 10-15 feet above current sea level!

This zone pusher is sitting here with a yard full of tropicals, and a sign at the entrance of our subdivision stating one day only for watering. So, though we can grow things year around, we can't keep them watered because of the drought.

Ouch.

Are you allowed to fill a 55 gallon drum on that one day, and use a watering can in-between?

We have a 300 gallon rain tank. On our watering day, we can use sprinklers from 12:01 AM to 10 AM and 7 PM to 12 AM. We can hand water anytime during that day. If you work, or have any kind of life, hand watering can take up a lot of time. Ironically, the day after they put up the sign it started raining, hard. We've have over 2" today, but the sign will remain.

>> On our watering day, we can use sprinklers from 12:01 AM to 10 AM and 7 PM to 12 AM.

Hunnh! If lawn sprinklers are allowed for 15 hours per week, drip emitters or hand-watering pots with a watering can should be allowed for ten times as long,. at less than 1/10th as many gallons per hour. That works out to 6.25 days out of 7.

Pot drippers run at 1/2 GPH to 2 GPH.
I see lawn sprinklers in the 50-240 GPH rnage.

No one in their right mind would run the sprinklers non-stop, but this is Austin. Soooo....now some of the larger homes are drilling wells. Yep, drilling into the aquifer where our limited water comes from.
I believe the city is now conducting a "study" about whether to allow drip irrigation for vegetable gardening. At the moment, it's not allowed except at the designated times. Makes no sense.

>> No one in their right mind would run the sprinklers non-stop,

True. But if the law were about "gallons per household" or even "gallons per acre", you would be allowed to water your tropicals in pots!

Unless they measured the "acreage" of your pots.

Let's see: a 6" circular pot is 28 square inches = 0.2 square feet.
1 acre = 43,560 square feet

So a 6" pots is 4.51 micro-acres.
0.00000451 acres.

222,000 pots per acre.

As long as you're under a quarter-million pots, they "should" let you water them pretty freely.

Uh oh, now you've brought math into it. I can't keep up with that! We're in a MUD (municipal water district) and buy our water from Austin. We've lived here for nearly 34 yrs. The MUD has paid off all the bonds and it's free and clear, so Austin is going to annex us now. Surprise! Did I mention the city has people that go out at 3AM and check to see if your sprinklers are running on the wrong day, leaking, watering the sidewalk or street, and handing out tickets for $250. or $500., depending on the infraction.
Anyway, the restriction sign is still up and we just got over 5" of rain over the last few days.

>> Did I mention the city has people that go out at 3AM and check to see if your sprinklers are running

That's bad, but it would be worse if your neighbors were ratting you out.

It would tempt me to go stealthy with buried dripline. But I guess hiding tubing that went to each pot would be tough.

>> Anyway, the restriction sign is still up and we just got over 5" of rain over the last few days.

Gotta love government! Pick the least helpful thing to do, then enforce it ruthlessly.

P.S. You mentioned tropicals ... do they need to be misted? Dripworks has a 70 cent "Mini-Mister" that throws fog at almost any pressure down to 10 psi, and only uses 2 gallons per hour.

I have lots of tubing, misters connectors, etc. I was co-manager of the Master Gardener greenhouse a few years ago. We had a drip system there that constantly had to be tweaked. My problem is I move pots around to keep them out of the direct sun, and add to my collection every spring.
I don't mind hand watering, but some of our neighbors don't get home until after 7 PM, don't have sprinkler systems, have to feed their families and check homework. If they miss their night to water, it's too bad. And I forgot to mention the West Nile virus the mosquitoes are showing up with from dusk to dawn.

Rick, you DO realize that you're trying to put square inches into a round pot, don't you?

Woofie, you are a trouble maker, you know that don't you?

To get the square inches into the round pot, I just soften them over night in warm hydrogen peroxide, and then HAMMER them in , REALLY hard.

No problem.

Who, me?