I applied glycerine to the lawn to test the humectant benefits, if any. A humectant draws water to itself from the air and surrounding materials. Glycerine is capable of holding five times its mass at any one time.

Glycerine is a by-product of soapmaking and biodiesel production. It's edible and used as a low-calorie sweetener, biodegradable, and safe for use on skin (it's added to lotions to soften and moisturize).

Amounts were as follows, done yesterday:

2 ounces per thousand in front and back, and front garden
4 ounces per thousand on the sides
8 ounces per thousand on the back line and problem areas

24 hours: No change, as expected. No issues with the lawn. 0.5" - 1" of rain expected today.

It is also used in explosives as in nitroglycerin. Just add nitric acid in a dry ice bath, siphon off the yellow liquid, mix with saw dust or bentonite clay with some water and you have dynamite.

For just a test Morph that was a little much. I would have thought a 1x1 patch would have been a better start for testing. Guess you knew it would do no harm.

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Harmless stuff, produced by every single plant, animal, bacteria, and fungus on the planet. We tend to have it in triglyceride form (glycerine with 3 fats attached), but glycerine is also natural to your cells and grass' cells.

texasweed wrote:It is also used in explosives as in nitroglycerin. Just add nitric acid in a dry ice bath, siphon off the yellow liquid, mix with saw dust or bentonite clay with some water and you have dynamite.

I hope the fact that I just bought a gallon of glycerine and a grand total of 560 pounds of compressed sawdust does NOT get me on a watch list...

Fortunately, I have no nitric acid and no dry ice.

yet.

Never. Nitric acid is incredibly reactive and not of any particular use in the gardens. Dry ice is hard to store, and also of no use in the garden.

MorpheusPA wrote:Never. Dry ice is hard to store, and also of no use in the garden.

Huh? Have you ever picked berries?Sprinkel a little dry ice on the bottom of an ice chest, lay a sheet of news paper, make a layer of berries. Repeat until ice chest if full. Go home, have dinner a few beers, go to bed exhausted. Get up next morning, put berries into bags, store in freezer and enjoy for months.

Works well for beans, peas, or anything else you want to FLASH Freeze for long term storage with little damage to delicate veggies and fruit. We just buy th eice the day of harvest at the grocery store. Also good for fish, game, and meat if you home butcher or monger.

Oh, for berry-picking it sounds great. Most of my plants would kind of object to the cold, however...and get ample CO2 from the atmosphere without assistance. Collected seeds need to be stored cold, but not that cold. The garage in winter is fine.

3 Day Update: Well, the grass looks great after 3 days with no rain, but it always looks great after three days with no rain.

There are no negative effects from the glycerine. I applied an additional 0.5 ounces per thousand today across the property as I added the remainder of what I had to the soil conditioner mix.

The forecast changed and rain is possible tomorrow, likely Tuesday, and rain is expected next week again after a hot period. This test may be invalidated by the rain as it's going to need at least ten days of no water for me to evaluate it.

7 Day Update: The grass still looks great. We did receive 0.06" of rain on Tuesday, but that's insufficient to help with anything. At this point, the grass still looks like it was watered yesterday...which it was not...and is still actively growing with no discoloration. The soil is still moist at the 3" level, although I'd estimate it at perhaps 60% of field capacity and no greater.

Temperatures have ranged from the mid-eighties to mid-nineties for the last seven days with full sun six out of seven days.

I watered the gardens for the first time in a week today, only because they needed feeding. They did not require water.

There's one stressed area on the southern face, about 25 square feet, in a clay intrusion. I hand-watered that today as it was convenient and I'll remove it from consideration in the test.

Evaluation so far: Still neutral, tending positive. Day seven is reasonably normal for this lawn, although the secondary trouble spots look better than they should at this point (the primary ones are mulched with sawdust and not being considered for this test). The southern face is looking better than it should for this weather. The main lawn is not yet stressed, nor would it be for a few more days.

Forecast: Upper eighties to low nineties through the next week, no rain until at least next Thursday (day 14).

I don't have much to say other then I am watching. Please keep us posted.

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simpson wrote:I don't have much to say other then I am watching. Please keep us posted.

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Will do. The stuff is dirt cheap (actually, I was just in the gardening aisle and glycerine is literally cheaper than dirt! [Kids in the Hall, Poreef]). And it's going to get dirt cheaper in the coming years; we'll end up with about ten times our needs in production capacity from incidentals.

I'm at the point where I'd say that, for the price, it's worth a try. If it holds two more days, it passes that point and goes to Worth A Try, at least for people in areas with decent humidity at night. It won't work in dry-air locations like the desert or high mountains as there's little available water to suck out of the air.

The problem with the next two days is just that here--low humidity. We're in that weird July pattern we occasionally get where the temperatures are moderate, but the air extremely dry.

The weather sure is weird. It feels like fall here tonight. Nice cool wind no humidity. Leaves are even falling in my back yard.

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That's the problem. I'm registering 57% humidity on the back deck, or quite low for 11 PM. Glycerine--no humectant--can pull out of the air what isn't there in sufficient quantity.

MorpheusPA wrote:That's the problem. I'm registering 57% humidity on the back deck, or quite low for 11 PM. Glycerine--no humectant--can pull out of the air what isn't there in sufficient quantity.

So would glycerine do me any good? Humidity has been really high here lately, but it's relative--really high here is 25%. Normal is about 5%.

Out of curiosity, did you leave any areas of the lawn unglycerined?

bpgreen wrote:So would glycerine do me any good? Humidity has been really high here lately, but it's relative--really high here is 25%. Normal is about 5%.

Doubtful. I'm not even sure it's going to do any good HERE yet, where 50% is kind of low overnight.

For skin and hair application, glycerine by itself isn't recommended in areas with very low humidities. Although not a strong pull, it can strip skin of water. Mixed into lotion or soap, it's not a problem.

Out of curiosity, did you leave any areas of the lawn unglycerined?

Did I neglect to mention this? I see I did. Bad scientist. Yes, although I did most of it, I exempted the areas behind the roses.

Patchwork through the rest of the lawn would be too tough, and I'm basing the evaluation on what the lawn does normally (since I know that). It should start to wilt a touch during the day on Saturday (day 9) when we get near 90 (again) and no rain for 9 days. It should hit the point where I'm forced to water on Monday (90+ and no rain for 11 days). I'm flirting with the permanent wilt point on Tuesday and the beginning of the drop into dormancy if I don't water, which I will if it wilts.

Morph, what kind of glycerine did you get? Just wondering because I am curious to try it since the humidity here is ridiculous!!!

Mightyquinn wrote:Morph, what kind of glycerine did you get? Just wondering because I am curious to try it since the humidity here is ridiculous!!!

http://www.soapgoods.com/Vegetable-Glycerin-p-560.html

Sure, if you want to join the test go right ahead...but I'm definitely not at the point of recommending this and may or may not ever be. It was just a thought using something I have on-hand for making soap anyway.

Day 8: Interesting. The area behind the roses is wilting. The rest of the lawn still looks fine, with the exception of that one bad area. This definitely isn't definitive, it's just interesting, and early indications are that wilting on the lawn will start tomorrow anyway (exactly on time).

The extreme edge of the back is also wilting, but often does that--it's behind the Thuja, I tend to ignore it as I don't see it, and it's at the base of the swale. The ground varies between soaked and de-oxygenated and dry.

Humidity is officially 37%, or extremely low for here, and I'm clocking 32% in the garden which is also a bit warmer due to the mulch.