Category Archives: WEATHER

Time to plant your vegetable seeds outside in Santa Fe

Weather next 5 days from May 24

Look at the forecast! Finally summer is upon us! I can’t wait! Yesterday my soil temperature was 70° F in my main vegetable garden so I feel like it is safe to plant our warm season seeds now. I will plant squash, cucumbers, and bean seeds as soon as I can get them in now. Do cover them with some row cover to help keep the birds and 4 legged critters from eating your seedlings as they come up.

I also will transplant the peppers, eggplants and the rest of my tomatoes as well. I have too many  veggies still to plant so I have decided not to grow winter squash as it takes so much space in the garden. Besides I grow giant pumpkins, the biggest squash of all so I can just eat that in the fall! Hope I can find room for everything!

Cold Weather AGAIN!

Here we go again! Cold nights! This morning was 32°F at the house. All of us who patiently waited for the magical date of May 15th to plant vegetables have been foiled again! Looks like it’s going to be cold AGAIN tonight in the high 30’s again. Of course tomorrow and thereafter the nights are suppose to be in the 40s again. Weird weather!

More cold weather coming

Better tie yourself to a tree!!!

I knew it was too good to be true.

I’ve lived here for 16 years now and you can’t fool me anymore. Just when you think we’re home free from the cold weather, Bamm! We get another cold front. When you say? On the weekend of course! Cold on Saturday and COLDER ON SUNDAY: 46° F for a high and 28°F for a low. Oh yea and lots of wind coming too. Big wind! 60 mph! Better tie yourself to a tree! Think I’ll go to the movies..

RAIN! BLESSED RAIN!

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A break in the storm-views from the house

Well, it rained a little last night and a little today and boy we sure need it. Ahhh! It smells so good. I opened the windows to breathe it in!  We haven’t had rain for 60 days and it is dry, dry, dry. We are starved for moisture here in the Southwest while the Northwest has been getting soaked. That’s La Nina for you. The jet stream goes north and the storms miss us here in Santa Fe.

La Nina “continues to weaken,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said and neutral conditions for the U.S. are in sight by the end of June.

“As La Nina continues to wane, we can expect that rainfall over the drought regions of the southern U.S. will gradually return to normal levels by mid-summer,” said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and co-founder of Weather Underground.

I sure hope these forecasts of La Nina breaking down are true so we can get more rain, otherwise we will have a tough summer gardenwise and waterwise…

Spring in Santa Fe?

Just when you think it’s finally spring here in Santa Fe, it’s starting to snow again. Oh no, not again! But that’s how Santa Fe is in spring—one day it’s spring, next day it’s winter, then it’s summer, no it’s winter again and on and on. Maybe the snow will put a damper on the juniper and cedar starting to bloom raising the pollen counts in Albuquerque to over 1200 today. Soon (like a week or two) we will have that high of pollen counts too with yellow pollen dust on everything and blowing everywhere. You can actually see clouds of pollen blowing across the land which is horrible for all my friends who are allergic to them. LUCKILY, I am not. I’ve been spared.

Winter Spinach!

Winter Spinach-Feb 1, 2011

 

Just before we dipped down into -10 to -15°F for nightime lows during the first week of February here in Santa Fe, I picked all the spinach that had been growing up till then. I figured the winter garden greens growing in my coldframe (that is only protected by some bubble wrap on the lid-nothing protecting the 2 x 10 wood on the sides) would be toast but unbelieveably it survived! Not only survived but thrived! Now the chard is starting to really grow! I continue to be astonished by it all. I got 4 salads from the spinach and it was the best I ever had-I’m not just saying that either. I’ve never seen such deep green coloring for ANY spinach and it was so tender. Delicious! I only picked the bigger leaves so I’ll see if it regrows again. I’m starting to become a believer in this winter garden thing. Things grow a little slower in winter but hey, I’m a little slower in winter too.

OMG-what will it do in Spring?!

Brutal Cold Weather Hard on Barn Animals

The weather here in Santa Fe has been brutal, no make that VICIOUS with it’s extreme cold weather this last few days. We’ve had -10 to -15 ° F weather here at night with the daytime temperatures only getting between 6° to 10° F  for 4 days and that doesn’t include the wind chill. Coldest weather in decades.

My poor barn animals have not been happy. There is little way for them to recover from the cold nights with the equally cold daytime temperatures. We’ve definitely been in a survival mode here at the little farm.

My Belgium Golden Campine, 'Chimay'

I lost one chicken to the cold even with my heat lamps on inside their coop.  It was a Belgium Golden Campine, named ‘Chimay’-I will miss her and her little chirps. She never did very well with cold weather much less this extreme cold. The chicken water heater wasn’t working very well so I took them hot water to melt it yesterday. I have another new water heater for them that I took down today and installed it.

The goats have a big water trough outside in the corral that is heated (and working) and I have a little heated bucket inside in their stall at night. The heated bucket  decided not to work and when I went down yesterday morning at -15°, it was frozen solid so I brought it up to the house to thaw and it evidently had cracked but I couldn’t see it through the ice. So it leaked all the water all over the living room yesterday after it melted while I was at work. Great.. I finally found a feed store with only 2 heated buckets left and got one of them.  All the other feed stores were sold out. Phew!

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I’ve been making both the goats and chickens oatmeal (with raisins!) everyday and they have enjoyed a hot meal. I give little blobs of peanut butter (high energy food) on a popsicle stick to my goats to help keep their energy going and grain and of course LOTS of hay. The goats are amazingly hardy as their barn is not heated. They have a big stall with about a foot of straw on the floor and yesterday we made smaller areas with straw bales inside the stall for insulation  and protection. They are out of the wind and wet but the temperature is still bad (but suppose to improve). Today the sun is out and no wind and they are out sunning themselves, I’m sure trying to suck up as much heat as they can get from the sun. Ahh. Life on a mini farm.. Finally it is starting to warm up 34° high/14° F low tomorrow-if you can call that warm..

Well, one good thing-Phil didn’t see his shadow so hopefully we will have an early Spring.

Wind chill on December 31, 2010

Temperature-14° on December 31, 2010 at 12pm noon

Here it is, the last day of the year and the outside temperature is 14° F (-10°C) at 12 NOON! We are having a bitter cold snap here in Santa Fe and that doesn’t include the wind chill factor. What is wind chill? It is a measure of how cold the atmosphere feels, taking not just actual temperature into account, but also wind, which can make the air considerably colder. So I was curious (as I always am) and found a wind chill calculator on line to see what the wind chill temperature was. Image my surprise when it said -3.2° F! (That’s -19.6° C)  Now I can figure out the real temperature when I go feed the barn animals and dread it more for them and me!  You can figure out how cold it is wherever you live too. I always get a little antsy about this time of year to get planting and then I go outside for a reality check. I think it’s a good day to stay home and go through the seed catalogs coming in and dream of what will be…