Viewing post #671699 by ofm

valleylynn said:Hi ofm, they do appear to be dehydrated. How often are they getting water?
What type of soil are they growing in?
With the weather we have been having lately in the Willamette Valley, I would water them maybe once a week, in the evening.
Mine started to look like that because I hadn't been water. Once I started watering they quickly improved in color and health.

Just don't water in the heat of the day. That will steam cook them.

So....yeah, in this heat I've been watering them almost every night.... It's so hot and the dirt there is so dry (I don't know the right words for the soil...it's dry and ... hard?). I generally just slowly trail the hose along that planter, letting everything soak a little - except the semps (and my Jovibarba heuffelii ), for them I've been letting it soak less, because I was/am so paranoid of over watering them.

I only water after the sun has gone down.

How much water should I use? I've been wary of letting it puddle up at all after reading so much about potential rot (and because I have some sedum in there and I've read that they don't do well when the water doesn't drain fast? But being new to all this I don't know what constitutes good and bad draining speeds....).

I'm wondering if maybe I should get some kind of misting attachment for the hose and soak things a little that way?

webesemps said:I was sticking to a watering regimen of once a week for my semp bed last year and found that my semps didn't look
as good as I thought they should. So this year I started to water twice a week especially on those hot days of 90 degree temps which can affect my semp bed when the full sun hit it from 11am to 4pm. I also put a shade cloth or frost cloth (which ever is the biggest sheet available in the stack) over them during the full sun exposure. Both changes have helped. When it cools down from those high temps, I water only once a week.
Btw, Ofm, those hens sure are prolific. I thought my hen with 25 offsets was impressive. Your two hens each are forming a colony...

This section has full sun from like... 10-8? Maybe? It's a lot of sun. I didn't even realize how much until I started this yardening odyssey. I figured this, being the sunniest spot in the yard, would be the best spot for semps... but since then I've read that "full sun" might only mean 6 hours, so 10+ might be overkill.

I'll have to look into the cloth, thanks!

I can't take any credit for the chicks...wish I could but they had all those chicks when I bought them

One more question while I'm in here - is it normal for jovi rollers to close back up?? I've been so happy with the first three that I planted that when I finally found some more I had to get some. Those have been in the ground a week or two and I could swear most of them have closed up. I don't recall my other ones doing that at all.