good luck with the experiment! one of the most adapted veg plants i've seen is the eggplant. eventually just got sick of eating eggplant and pulled it out. but would be interesting to know if one strain of lettuce is hardier than others.

I didn't pick up that 1902 was the oldest date. That could well be the beginning of records being kept for Taidong - i think the Bunun were still cutting people's heads off in those days so it would have been a pretty wild place - wouldn't want to be stationed alone on some remote mountain weather station anyways. But yeah, it does seem odd that the first year was one of the driest on record. So if you count 1902 out as a likely error, 3 of the top 4 driest octobers have been since 2001. On the other hand, 2010 and 2011 were among the wettest octobers.

18ml in the guage which is not bad going garden wise, but a long way off filling the tanks.

First coldfront of the season forecast to hit on Oct 30. Might be a bit of rain in that as well.