Category Archives: summer

Twice blooming fruit trees?

Posted on July 16, 2013 by jkmcintyre

The past few years I have noticed something unusual. My fruit trees bloom twice. Once in early spring, when I am expecting it, and once in mid-summer when I am not. I noticed it first in our pear tree. With … Continue reading →

Posted in flowers, fruit, spring, summer | Tagged , , | 25 Comments

Hot enough to beard

Posted on July 1, 2013 by jkmcintyre

Very uncharacteristically, it has been hot in Seattle. Really hot. Nearly unheard of in June. Last year the high today was 68 degF, close to the 57-year average of 70 F. Today reached 92 F – and the bees noticed. … Continue reading →

Posted in animal behaviour, bees, summer, top bar hive | Tagged | Leave a comment

Garden ollas save water in the Pacific Northwest

Posted on April 6, 2013 by jkmcintyre

This is such a cool graph, I had to write a post for it. This is the first empirical evidence that ollas reduce water use in Pacific Northwest gardens. In 2009, I watered our 650 sqft of gardens by hand … Continue reading →

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Rainwater Cistern Report 2012

Posted on January 22, 2013 by jkmcintyre
[caption id="attachment_1909" align="aligncenter" width="512"]Blanca with southern cistern Blanca with southern cistern[/caption]

In the spring of 2012 we installed three 500-gallon cisterns on our property. For the recap read Starting with Cisterns and Installing Cisterns. The goal of this project was rain water collection for use outdoors.

In the figure below you can see that our water use is typically low in the winter and rises during the summer months as it stops raining and we draw more water for our extensive gardens (grey bars). Continue reading →

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