How Much Did It Rain?

The question of the day is, how much did it rain?  I walked into Clinton Soil and Water early this morning and that was the first thing the technicians ask me.  How much did it rain at your farm, Ed?  When you have farms scattered over several or tens of miles, it is hard to answer, how much did it rain?  It depends where you are talking about!

We had a big system blow through the Ohio Valley last night with 2 inch hail just west of us.  The first big wave went just north of us up Interstate 71.  I think they got more than I did.  Soon it started raining north and south of that line with heavy thunderstorms.  How do I know how much it rained on each farm?  I don't have time to track down rain gauges in every location every time.

My rainfall man is Dr. Bill Northcutt, whose work I found as good as the rain gauge and a lot better than me trying to track down rainfall.  "We are making the website so that everything is automated... The package you choose, paying with Paypal, setting up all of your locations, putting in the email addresses you want it to go to, etc... all of it. That is planned to be done in about 2 weeks. The new website is ag-informatics.com. Not a whole lot to look at right now - it will be looking better in a couple of weeks."


His tabular feature anyone can use shows 8 inches of rainfall on this farm since January 1.  We just added an inch or so to that total in the last 24 hours.  That is still a little below normal what we normally receive at this location although that varies, too.
Have you gotten enough rain?  This will push our planting date to May 1 at best, just like I had expected.  I never got into a rush to plant early this year.  It might be a good time to plant trees.  I never got any ordered because I have been too busy tearing out the unwanted trees or grubs that grew up naturally.  I don't have enough time left to thin them all out and they were growing on crop land.

Soil and Water said they had 8 black walnut seedlings left.  I called LuAnn to see if she thought we should plant them but she was busy and I had to leave a phone message.  I know they would grow well in the deep rich black land of the newest farm but I couldn't think where we could plant them and protect them.  Black Walnut is not my favorite specie though it will grow in this region in certain places.

"Choosing an appropriate site is the most important step in the successful establishment of a black walnut plantation. Black walnut will survive on a wide range of sites; however, to achieve best growth, walnut requires high-quality sites. Failure to select a proper site will lead to poor tree performance, if not outright plantation failure.


Black walnut grows best on moist, well- drained soils that are deep and fertile. Ideally. soils should be at least 36 inches deep and high in organic matter. Loams or sandy loams provide the best combination of moisture holding capacity and drainage. Black walnut does not tolerate flooded or saturated soil conditions well, nor does it perform well on dry south or southwest facing slopes, or on ridge tops where soils are commonly thin. Black walnut often performs best on moist bottom land sites where drain- age is adequate to prevent soil saturation."

That last paragraph describes our best available land to plant into.  I don't think it would be a good location to plant those seedlings.

Do you have any black walnut trees?  How much rain did you get, if any?

Ed