Pam, In Oklahoma, our middle name is "bad weather". I think that tornadoes are my least favorite form of bad weather, although hail storms rank a close second. At least with hurricanes, y'all know it is coming and you even have a pretty reasonable idea a day or two beforehand where it will make landfall. You have wind speed estimations, elaborate storm surge maps and forecasts, etc. Up to a point, you know what to expect and about when to expect it. With tornadoes, it is their very speed and randomness, as well as their unpredictable nature, that makes them so scary. I think I could handle living in a hurricane-prone area better than living in a tornado-prone area. Much remains to be learned about tornadoes. I think the NWS does an outstanding job of telling us when the conditions exist for tornado development, but it must be our job to pay attention, heed the warnings, and be alert and aware and ready to seek shelter, because no one can predict the precise location where all those conditions will come together at any given moment and form a tornado---or a dozen tornadoes---or a hundred tornadoes. No one can predict if any specific tornado that forms will be a pretty mild EF-0 or a severely horrific Ef-4 or EF-5. No one can predict how long they will last, although the NWS does warn us of days when long-track tornadoes are more likely to occur. I am glad you and yours were safe when the tornado hit your village, and I know your husband and his chainsaw were greatly appreciated. Looking at the damage I'm guessing it likely was an F-2 or a very low-end F-3? It is wonderful y'all were able to help. A couple of years ago, a small community in the county adjacent to ours was hit by an F-4 tornado in February. It was the worst damage I've ever seen from a tornado because the county I live in doesn't have nearly as many tornadoes as other parts of Oklahoma, and when we have them, they tend to be small and fairly weak. Of course, we have only lived here 14 years, so maybe we just haven't lived here long enough to see a big one here. My DH was one of the dozens of emergency responders who spent the next 24 hours on search and rescue efforts, assisting the storm victims in any way possible. It warms my heart to see how many people respond and help, and every bit of that help is needed. Oklahoma City is hit by more tornadoes than any other city in the United States. Since records began being kept, there's been over 140 hit the OKC area, according to info on the NWS Norman Weather Office's website. The records date back to the late 1800s. We moved here in 1999, just a couple of months before the horrific 1999 tornadoes hit OKC-Moore and other communities. Prior to that, in our head, tornadoes hit people "out there" in tornado alley but I don't think my DH and I had thought they'd ever be a threat to us. After we saw the magnitude of the damage in the OKC area, which is a little over 100 miles north of us, we had a tornado shelter put in before spring of 2000 rolled around. Have we used it? Oh yes, several times a year. Have we had tornadoes near us? Yes, within our county and in the adjacent counties, but so far not any on the ground within maybe 20 miles of us. We've been lucky. Oklahoma weather drives us gardeners nearly crazy. It doesn't matter how beautiful your yard and landscape may be, how lush, beautiful and productive your veggie garden might be, or how heavily loaded with fruit, your fruit trees, brambles or berry plants might be---the OK weather can wipe it out in the blink of an eye. While tornadoes are a huge threat, we also often have very destructive severe thunderstorms, usuallly accompanied by high winds and often by hail in very large sizes that demolishes everything. We have derecho winds that blow through and flatten plants to the ground. We don't often have a lot of snow storms that cause damage, but very destructive ice storms are fairly common. I'd take a heavy snow storm over a light ice storm any day of the week, but we don't get to chose which one we get. Rain often comes in two forms here--either almost none at all for long periods of time, or inches and inches at once, often resulting in flash flooding. Gardening in Oklahoma is not for sissies! Earthquakes have always occurred in Oklahoma, but many of them are too small to be felt. We had a big one (big for us, but I bet folks from California would laugh at us because it was not big at all compared to theirs) last year that was felt as far away as Dallas. It was the first one I ever had felt here. Then, a couple of weeks later, I felt another one. Once was enough for me, and twice was too many. I'll be alright if I never feel the ground shake like that again. Bon, I don't know how many earthquakes Oklahoma normally has in one year, but over 1,000 were recorded in 2010. Of those, only 103 were reported as being "felt" by humans. The rest were just recorded seismically. I haven't seen 2011's numbers. I've linked a webpage with lots of OK earthquake data on it, including recent earthquakes. I cannot help thinking that the fracking procedures being used with oil/gas wells are contributing to our more frequently-felt earthquakes. Down in the D-FW metro area where fracking has gone on at a tremendous rate for about 10 years or so, they are having fairly frequent small quakes. I grew up there and never heard of an earthquake there, not even one from long ago, until they started fracking the wells. The weather here is supposed to be just absolutely gorgeous this week, and I am looking forward to accomplishing much in the yard and garden, but we never, ever can let our guard down. You cannot be a gardener in Oklahoma without being weather-aware and, in fact, every resident of Oklahoma needs to be very aware of the weather around them at all times, not just the gardeners. It isn't that we have more weather than anyone else, but I think it changes incredibly rapidly here and it can turn violent in so many ways...and does so with great regularity. It keeps life interesting anyway. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Recent Earthquakes in Oklahoma

On March 23, 2014, I planted a California Hass Avocado Pit by inserting three toothpicks into the pit, and placing the it partially submerged into jar of water. About four weeks later, I placed the pit, which began to sprout roots, into a pot with a mixture of potting soil and soil from my yard. It first sprouted two stems at approximatedly the same time, and it later added a third stem. Does anyone know what is the mathematical probability of this occurring. I've never seen this happen before. June 28, 4:00pm This post was edited by FrankFlores on Mon, Jun 30, 14 at 1:42

ERF Cracking up about the Resale Pearl clutchers. They would choke themselves looking into our house. I have not been to the other posts about preparation. I used to can so much of our foods. 200 to 300 quarts or more a year. Plus what I froze and we used to run two freezers. Now it does cost a lot more to do the canning and we would get tired of all of it and then later I would have to toss some of it. All that work. Sigh. Like you we have a gas stove. Ours is outside and needs to be run outside for safety but we have the covered porch. I do not think we would ever consider not having a kitchen if we were even thinking of moving. I am too much of a cook it at home person. We have a small expensive cafe here in town and did take out one time in four years when we were into our move and I had spent the last day at the sold house cleaning for over 8 hours and I was hungry and exhausted and not really set up here to cook much yet.We had been here three days. If we want eat out we eat it out. I have made lots of jerkey in my husbands hunting time. That will preserve meat for a long time. Should the electricity go out it can be done on top of the porch stove to save the frozen meat. Not as easy as using the dehydrator. I do believe people need to be prepared for at least a month with some things extending further. We were fortunate friends offered us their homes when we were flooded. We were out of our house 2 months while we were doing repairs, the temps had dropped to zero and below. And we had no heat at the house until we had a wall to hang the heater back on and our geothermal heat was lost in the flood until we could get the pipes back in to bring the hot water from the hot spring but first we had to get a new septic tank and lines approved and back in not to mention the foundation back under the house. I do not understand people wanting huge kitchens when they do not even cook. Worse I can not imagine not having at least a sensible kitchen. Our kitchen is 11 foot by 12 1/2 foot with lots of counter and yet I do 90% of my kitchen cooking work on a three foot wide counter. I have had much smaller kitchens and always made them work. We could have a much smaller kitchen but then I loose some of the storage space for the bulk items we do buy.

The ones doing well are nearly all the lettuce (~25 seedlings in pots), about half of the spinach (10 in pots), most of the cilantro (6), and the rhubarb (4). And the 6-pack of white Spanish onions (30 seedlings). But the other 20 6-packs of tomatoes, peppers, red onions, green onions, chives, and a few other things all dampened off. I've got one 6-pack of beefsteak tomatoes that look like they're hanging on longer, and 3 peppers. But I'm guessing they'll eventually bite it too. So I'm about to reseed today. Been washing everything, disinfecting with a diluted bleach spray, bought a bag of Jiffy seed mix at HD, I'll moisten it in a disinfected bowl and microwave it just in case. I also read that spraying the 6-packs before soil packing with a neem oil mix inside and under helps reduce gnats, then on top of the soil after planting the seeds. And using a light powdering of cinnamon on top to combat fungus. I also have a bottle of Garden Phos coming that's supposed to help fend off pythium (which as I understand it is the main cause of dampening off). I think I just mix a little in the water can. (That reminds me - I need to disinfect the water can/bottle too). I have a different spot in the house that I'll put the new seed trays. And I'll use a heat mat so it never cools (I read that cooler temps can promote the fungus growth). No plastic cover either, and only bottom watering so the top dries out more (I've probably been over-watering). Might set up a small fan too once they start growing, although not sure I'll really need that as onions and a few herbs are the only things I put more than 1-2 seed per cell, so it all stays reasonably spread out. Assuming things grow this time, when is the risk of damping off mostly over? The plan is to transplant up to 4" temporary pots with my regular container soil after they grow to transplant stage (have established true leaves and roots fill the cell). Are the plants usually strong enough by then to fend off any fungus that might already be in that soil?