Crikey it’s wet

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, old man emu said:

Why is rainwater always better than tap water? This is my theory:

It's a scientific fact that thunderstorm rain and hail is high in nitrogen.

[facthunter]

It's the combined Nitrogen that does it. Hosing a patch may keep it alive but the rapid growth is after stormy rain.  Nev

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, willedoo said:

It's a scientific fact that thunderstorm rain and hail is high in nitrogen.

Nice to know that a theory one develops simply by thinking about what happens with lightning in a cloud and the subsequent behaviour of the plants the rain falls onto has been supported by the labcoated brigade.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Y'learn a new thing every day!

[nomadpete]

And here I was, thinking that even natures own nitric acid was bad for living things.

 

 

[facthunter]

You can use urea as an alternative. Soil Ph will determine what you can safely add. Slightly alkaline soils are the easiest to manage. because a lot of things tend to increase acidity. Nev

[willedoo]

6 hours ago, nomadpete said:

And here I was, thinking that even natures own nitric acid was bad for living things.

 

 

If you pee on the grass, it's just applying nitrogen fertiliser in the form of urea. A little bit here and there greens thing up; too much in the one spot causes fertiliser burn and eventually kills the plants. If my horticulture memory serves me well, the excess fertiliser around the plant roots sucks the water content out of the plant and causes the plant cells to collapse. It tries to dilute the fertiliser with it's own moisture and dies of dehydration in the process.

 

A bloke I knew used to pee in a perimeter around his permanent bush camp. He said it was supposed to keep snakes away. I don't know where he got that theory from or whether there's any merit to it.

[facthunter]

You can add Urea toa drip system and it is very uniformly distributed. The process you describe is osmosis but urea is probably toxic in larger than required applications. I only ever applied it when the leaves got a bit pale. Too much will produce rapid but sappy weak  growth.  Nev

[willedoo]

I can remember a few years back seeing the Incitec urea plant in Brisbane. It had a big tall enclosed tower, something to do with the way they make it.

[facthunter]

If I recall correctly it makes the water go cold when it mixes. It doesn't smell like PEE, thankfully.   Nev

[willedoo]

It goes cold enough to cool beer down if mixed with water. How cool is a matter of opinion. Definitely cooler than hot beer.

[old man emu]

And in winter you mix it with diesel for a bit of warmth.

[willedoo]

I worked it out that I've had about 17mm of useful rain for September, October and the first half of November. Back in September there was also a couple of inches in a thunderstorm, but that came down hard and all ran off to the neighbours down below, so none soaked in. Even though it's a record dry year (so far 10" below the previous record dry), the shallow rooted trees near the rock escarpments on my place haven't started dying yet. In other dry years, quite a few have died back.

 

It just goes to show, it's not the yearly total that counts as much as how the rain falls. Some places can have a reasonable yearly total but it's an accumulation of very small, frequent spaced out falls that provide little soil moisture. Other times can see a low yearly total but have spaced out decent sized falls of good soaking rain. I think my country is holding up because we had a big patch of good soaking rain a couple of times during the year.

[facthunter]

Bore holes in the ground about your block and insert 100 MM heavy perforated Plastic tube and you have a ready  available  indication of where the water table is.  Nev

[willedoo]

39 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Bore holes in the ground about your block and insert 100 MM heavy perforated Plastic tube and you have a ready  available  indication of where the water table is.  Nev

I know where the water table is via a dry 170' bore hole near my driveway. About six feet below ground level in the wet season and twenty feet below in the dry at that spot. Heading in from the front gate, there's nothing flat. It rises steeply up about another 400' to where I live and a bit higher after that. It's all trees, boulders, stone and big cliffs. Very porous hills, all the underground water makes it's way down to the floodplain next door. During the wet, it gets full of water and you can see it flowing out of the ground in places on the lower slopes. There's a small spring fed dam that rarely goes dry, only in the driest years. It's only had to be topped up by a water truck twice in 35 years. Cow drinking water.

 

It's this type of country, lots of rhyolite that smells like gunpowder when you whack it with a sledge hammer:

 

[onetrack]

Volcano country!!

[willedoo]

23 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Volcano country!!

That's right. Further along the ridge is a mountain which is a big exposed volcanic plug (photo below) The ridge my place is on is an old lava flow branching off the mountain. It's the ridge on the right side of the photo. It goes for 4klm to the east terminating in my place, then all flood plain beyond that.

 

[nomadpete]

There's nothing new under the sun.....

 

Melbourne vs. Sydney

" Melbourne. -- Hundreds of thousands of people fell down on their knees expecting the end of the world when a ray of sun broke through the clouds for the first time in 50 years..."
(Kings Cross Whisper, Issue No. 97)

[pmccarthy]

The Whisper and the Melbourne Truth were rare and sought after papers where I lived.

[spacesailor]

I'm told Thunder-storm rain has a '' ozone '' type element in it .

I put water out for my cat . I tried ( tested ) which   water the cat likes , ' Tap' Rain & storm . the storm water is my cats favorite .

spacesailor

[facthunter]

Catatonic  Cat tonic?  Nev

[Marty_d]

10 hours ago, spacesailor said:

I'm told Thunder-storm rain has a '' ozone '' type element in it .

I put water out for my cat . I tried ( tested ) which   water the cat likes , ' Tap' Rain & storm . the storm water is my cats favorite .

spacesailor

Run it through a cow first and the cat will find it udderly delicious. 

[facthunter]

Cow's milk is not good for Cats.   Nev

[red750]

Our cats drink lactose free milk. My daughter is lactose intolerant. Had no problems with the cats.

[facthunter]

Cats have lactose intolerance.  Nev