Aurora Colorado is under Stage 1 water restriction this Summer, and I fear it is going to get much worse before it is over. Currently we are only allowed to water grass on Thursday’s and Sundays, not more than 20 minutes per zone. Also, they have put excessive use fees into place so we are not allowed to go over 50% above our Winter usage.
Our lawn looks almost dead.
I am hoping that it comes back but I am not holding my breath. It’s half tempting to start replacing sections of it with sand. but I do have some concerns about that as well as I do not want the ticks and fleas that sand comes along with on the dogs. So, for the moment I am not going to worry about the dead grass.
The hydroponics are doing really well. We have already had one crop of lettuce and Swiss Chard picked and multiple harvests, and the spinach did really well. But, you can only get so many cuttings out of a crop before you have to re-plant. That is in progress right now. The cucumbers are doing really well, we have a stack of them ready to be processed in the kitchen. We also have a lot of growth starting on the eggplants. The green peppers are doing well also. And, we got some hot peppers also.
The only thing that we have planted in actual gardens this year is the zucchini squash. I guess you can’t kill those with hot weather and high sunlight.
Next year I am going to expand the hydroponics again. I may try to plant tomatoes in them. We have many tomato plants this year in our grow boxes and in regular pots in the yard, but they are struggling with some sort of “rot” on the bottom of each tomato. We can’t figure it out but we loose about 50% of our tomatoes this way. It could be the heat also. The tomatoes have been the biggest struggle on this property that is a mile closer to the sun than anyplace we have ever lived before.
That’s what’s happening in our little bubble of agriculture here in Aurora, CO.
