Dodging Twisters & Wading through Flood Water

16 years ago

From Severe Drought to Severe Flooding.

Anyone else out there dealing with tornadoes, flooding & insects? My heart goes out to those in Greensburg, Kansas.

My Cottage Garden Flowers are ruining from too much rain and wind. Some have fallen over because the ground is so saturated. Rose blossoms and peony blooms were beat to bits last night. Everything is drowning, and I live on high ground. I can't mow the grass because it is too wet and there is standing water. The grasses are growing like corn! The weeds are waist deep along the fence in some places.

The wildflowers are really beginning to be spectacular, but there is a point where the ground becomes too saturated and plants drown. I feel sorrow for the wildlife too.

Mosquitos are bad and getting worse each day. I can't put on enough insect repellent to keep them off. They are ravenous and now little gnats are biting too.

I just hope I have a good vegetable garden this year.

It must be horrible for all of you flatlanders and those who live in flood plains!

~ Annie

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (9)

User
16 years ago
Oh Annie I am so aorry that the weather is that bad for you. We are having a drought !! At least it got cool last night . In Georgia they are having the terrible wildfires. I don't know what is happenin' out there. We sure need to think of all of you that are having such a hard time. Caroline
amare_al_giardino
16 years ago
There are several around us here in NE Kansas having flooding problems in their basements and many in the Topeka area are having to evacuate their homes. Sat. night my family of four piled into the bathtub and covered ourselves with a mattress while we waited out the tornado that passed over us! Scary stuff! As always, I'll be glad to see this stormy season come to an end.

This has been a very disappointing season so far for many of us here in the midwest. My HT and my Endless Summer hydrangea were both leafing out gorgeously then that darned cold spell hit and all the leaves on both plants turned to mush! They are just now starting to bounce back but I doubt I will have much bloom from either one this year. On the upside, I have dug up and potted several hostas to save them from the sink holes created by moles and they are thriving!
Stephanie (new poster in Kansas!)
Related Discussions
Flooding! In Arkansas?? Yep!
Q
Comments (20)
Kristy I didn't find them clinging on a bush! Didn't find them at all! But hey, it's ok! I'm sure I can round up another of each. :) Jarie I took it in stride (after the nasty things I said aloud) but, it's done & over now! But you know - I babied the 'Pink Perfektion' you sent me. :) Bonnie Thanks! :) A good hug always helps!! Rigo Didn't find them! And I tried! lol! Boy - did I try! Kylie Thanks! Safe & sound means alot! :) Like you said - the brugs can be replaced. I'm glad your aunt was spared the tornadoes & crazy weather we're having. I'm hoping it's DONE for now! :) And thanks very much for your well wishes - as you know, they're appreciated very much! wildflower Nope - didn't find them! But I can possibly get them again when trading & cutting season starts! :) Trading time is not really that far away - is it?? lol! It's going to be a LONG summer!! Mike
...See More
Ready for The Great Flood?
Q
Comments (46)
Carol, What we need are little foot-sized Jetski/boot combinations so we can zip around the garden and work without having to slosh through the muck and mud. Heather, Isn't it exciting that we get to plant beans so early? I've already got the first four varieties of bush beans in, and am getting ready to plant pole beans next week just as soon as the soil is dry enough that the seeds won't rot. It might not be too early to sow squash seeds, but I'll likely sow mine in paper cups. Squash is really sensitive to cool soil temps and cool air temps. However, if your soil temp is at least at 60 degrees at planting depth and doesn't drop colder than that at night, you probably could do it. I don't usually plant squash until my high temps are consistently staying above 65 degrees. If they get too cold, even for just a day or a night, they can stall and refuse to resume growth until they get over being mad about being too cold. If the warm-up that begins tomorrow for most of us catapults you into warm-enough temps that you think are likely to last, there's no reason not to give it a shot. Sometimes early plantings do indeed manage to produce a lot before the SVBs show up. I have found SVBs to be very hard to predict. Last year I didn't see a single one. If you familiarize yourself with the appearance of the moth, you'll know when they arrive and then can cover up your plants or protect them in whatever way you choose. Larry, For me Yukon Gold almost always emerges later than Red Pontiac. The potatoes I have in a raised bed in the Peter Rabbit are loving the rain. The plants I have at grade level in the main garden are one-fourth the size of the ones planted in the raised beds. I just hope the ones in the grade level beds don't rot. Dorothy, Tim and I drove back from Texas on Tuesday and came across at the Taovayas bridge at the far western end of the county. We have been so green and lush here, that I forgot the western part of the county had been receiving less rain than we had. They haven't had nearly as much green-up and their fruit trees are blooming later too. We have plenty of rain for March now, and I wish it would stop. (I am so hard to please because back in July I would have given my left arm for 10" of rain...or for five inches or three inches.) I was thinking for most of this month that I was getting your rain and Carol's rain and that y'all were getting mine. It looks like your half of the situation has improved a lot, but we are still getting now-unwanted rain here today. It is very, very light but any rain is too much rain at this point. In June or July, I'll rue saying I wanted the rain to stop. Leslie, It is wonderful you have had so much more rain this year already and that it is falling early in the year. I am always mindful of the fact that we have gardeners here who face very diverse soil and weather conditions. What some of us consider "too much" rain likely doesn't sound like "enough" to others. If the rain keeps falling, maybe your rainfall this year will end up being higher than average. Wouldn't that be great? Larry, We've had leaf-eating pests all winter. I don't usually see a lot more pests in a wet year, or even earlier pests. What I usually see is an early arrival of some of the worst pests in a hot winter or spring. It seems like the early arrival of hot weather always brings me spider mites and grasshoppers at destructive levels by May instead of July. Dawn
...See More
OT: Flooding-Related Closure of I-35 Bridge/Love County
Q
Comments (11)
merrybookwyrm, You still have to be pretty tough, independent and determined to live out there around Orr because it is just so remote. Even with modern-day vehicles, it can take police, firefighters and medics a long time to reach you out there in the boondocks even without flooding or road washouts which just compound an already difficult situation. Western Love County, including Orr, and the adjacent portions of Carter and Jefferson County were hit really hard by this last storm. They got a lot more rain and flooding out there than we had here in southcentral Love County. There's a point where you even stop having cell phone service once you get out there, and where the fire and police radios cut in and out and have so much static that they are pretty much unusable for communication. In this day and age, it is shocking to me that there's still areas that are not so remote, mileage-wise, but that still are far enough out there that communication is spotty. Carol, I love the sunshine and it helps the garden a lot, but the heat and heat index numbers kinda take the fun out of it. We gardeners and our gardens are going to be roasting hot this week which will help plant growth but make life miserable otherwise. I've been so busy with other things, or flooded out of the garden, that I am so far behind on harvesting and canning that it isn't even funny. Today I'm going to sort, wash and freeze about 10-15 gallons of tomatoes that I can use later on to make salsa. I just don't have time to make it this week. I've already got that many frozen, so they're really piling up and still there's tomatoes piled up on every flat surface in the house. I am more behind than usual. Partly it is because of the peppers. I have hot peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes, etc. for making salsa, but the sweet peppers are so far behind it isn't even funny. If I picked every sweet bell that is even half-sized, I might not get enough for one batch of Annie's Salsa. I did hold the pepper plants in cups forever during the May flooding before finally getting them planted and they are way behind everything else. The jalapenos were quicker to set fruit and start making up for lost time but the sweet bells and poblano plants are just sitting there. Apparently 33+" of rain in the last 7 weeks does not impress them at all. I've been trying to just stay caught up on making plum jelly, but last week I didn't have time to make jelly so I just extracted the juice and froze it. I can make jelly any time, but I don't like the fact that I'm stockpiling everything in the freezer. I wanted to have all the plums finished before the peaches began to ripen, and we're only 2-3 days away from the first peach harvest (if I can keep the birds out of them, which seems like a losing battle). I'm hoping to pick a day later in the week, maybe on Wed or Thurs, where I block out any and every other thing and just focus on thawing that plum juice and making all the jelly. Oh, and I have more plums to harvest sometime today. It is cloudy and there's been rain (and flash-flooding) to our southeast. The last thing any part of this region needs today is more rain. Lake Texoma's rise has slowed dramatically in the last day, so I am not sure its crest will even match the record crest that happened around June 1st. The Red River is falling fast, and everyone here is relieved by that. I never got okra, cucumbers, winter squash or purple hull peas planted, and I need to do it now or not do it at all, but I'm so distracted by trying to deal with the tomato and fruit harvest that I don't know if I'll do it. I might wait and see how the watermelons and muskmelons I planted before last week's heavy rain/flooding do. If they don't survive or quickly become diseased in the waterlogged soil, I might not bother planting anything else. At least all the cracks in the ground healed up, though I am sure the silty ones on the surface will return soon. Dawn
...See More
Florida Backyard Floods; Grading or Drainage Issue?
Q
Comments (18)
Hi had a similar problem with mine i live in Palm Beach county I removed the grass from the backyard creating shrub palm islands Using gravel in the paths . Don't know about your soil but mine is mostly beach sand so drains easily if you don't block it I put gutters on the roof and direct it to the water gardens from there to marsh gardens then to the neighbors.lol It has worked well except when there was a 31 inch rain.!! Was collecting fish from the neighbors for weeks lol Summer is the rainy season so expect heavy rains !!! I'm almost 14 inches below normal this year so depending on the hose for my floods lol Good luck gary
...See More
PRO
Nell Jean
16 years ago
The forces of nature are awesome, aren't they?

I'm in the same drought zone as Caroline. I'm more than a hundred miles west of the Georgia wildfires. My neighbor's grandson went from here to help with the firefighting. He had a medical problem unrelated to the fire and is back home recovering.

Today it's terribly windy, which dries out everything, but at least it's cooler. The trouble is, the wind is from the NE and blows any moisture right back to the Gulf. I'm watering sunflowers and the deer are munching on them every night. I saw tracks. It's always something.

Nell
Annie
Original Author
16 years ago
I waded out into my Potager yesterday. Despite the storms and deluge, the pole beans had sprouted and had the two cotlydons that appear before the firt True Leaves appear. I was so pleased. I had found the combination of cucumbers and pole beans worked splendidly in years before. Now with the 7 year drought finally over, I was certain to have a great garden this year.
This morning, however, I went out to let the guineas loose. I walked up into the Potager and found that something had eaten the cotlydons off and a chewed off a couple of the cucumbers too. Just stems left standing. Boo Hiss! I will have to replant them. I need to put in a French drain to drain of the standing water in the paths down to the cherry orchard below.
I feel for you who are in drought areas with wildfires. We had them here last year. More than 5 of the wildfires were within 10 miles of here and half of those within 3 miles. The smoke was really bad all last summer. Many of the fires were the result of pyromaniacs. Some started from backfiring lawmmowers and one caused by the spark from a motorcycle. Unreal!
Best wishes and hugs to all in harm's way.
~Annie
natvtxn
16 years ago
Well, just mark those plants and cuttings "return to sender" then. I can't have my babies drowning. LOL

I am sorry things are so bad for so many. We'll be crying for this rain in July.
You have a cherry orchard?! I am so jealous.
aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
16 years ago
And here I was whining about the cold wet Spring we were having up here. A piece of cake to what some have to deal with. My heart goes out to all that have lost loved ones and homes. DH had some pictures on his computer of the devastation that hit the town where nine died. Here one minute and gone the next. We are so fortunate to be living where we are. Like Annie I'm sending best wishes and hugs to all in harm's way.

Take care,

A......
todancewithwolves
16 years ago
Geez Annie, I'm so sorry to hear of the flood. When it rains it pours, pun intended.

I remember you mentioning the fires last year. Breaks my heart to hear of wild fires. It's the critters I worry so much about. People too, of course, but the wild critters especially touch me as they get so confused and scared.

We're in for a drought this year. They've already asked our counties to ration water.

This year my garden is infested with leaf hoppers. Never had that problem before.

Oh well, can't fight mother nature.

Edna
lindakimy
16 years ago
Does anybody else wonder if it's always been this violent? I can't remember gardening in the midst of disaster before a few years ago. Yeah...spring might be late in NY. We might have a very hot (unusually hot!) summer in CA. But, heavens above! What is up with this weird weather??

My heart also goes out to those in the tornado areas. I've been through three of those (gotta pick better places to live!!) and it is NOT fun. How horrible for the whole town to just vanish! I can't get my mind around it.
Steveningen
16 years ago
I'm so sorry to hear about all the troubles in the midwest. I belong to a Dutch-interest forum. One of our regular posters has a daughter and her family living in Greensburg. They survived, but lost everything. The pictures out of that town are almost impossible to comprehend.

Annie et al, you folks hang in there. We're all thinking of you.

Steven

Dodging Twisters & Wading through Flood Water

Comments (9)

User

amare_al_giardino

Related Discussions

Nell Jean

Annie
Original Author

natvtxn

aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada

todancewithwolves

lindakimy

Steveningen

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

Dodging Twisters & Wading through Flood Water

Comments (9)

Related Discussions

AnnieOriginal Author

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

Annie
Original Author