Dawn...
Yup, "mitigate"...that would be my need right now. Still POURING up here! Thinking about getting my rubber boots on and hoeing a little canal down through one particularly low area. Not kidding, it's that bad. What scares me most is the threat of fungal diseases on my tomatos NOT in that area though.

Ya, just when things were going so good, and the garden looking so perfect, Oklahoma is always ready to throw it's folks a challange. Can't having us get soft ya know, LOL!

Where the green dirt grows and the water flows,

Barbara

Barbara,

If there is lightning in the area, please wait for it to pass before you run out to dig that trench. We don't want you fried by a lightning strike.

I am really worried about all of y'all and your gardens, and especially fungal and bacterial diseases as a result of the excess moisture and humidity. Since this rain is falling so fast, I am hoping more of it runs off than sinks in. At this point, some folks have had more moisture than their plant roots need, and folks in low-lying or slow-draining areas may see plant stalling.

Believe it or not, a brief hit-and-run shower blew through our part of the county a few minutes ago. It dropped about 3/10s of an inch of rain in about 10 minutes, so I can't say we haven't had rain lately, because we have. Of course, it is a mere drop in a bucket compared to what y'all are getting. Some Mesonet stations are nearing 9" of rainfall since midnight.

It is hard to be unhappy about rain in June, but this much in one day is going to create huge problems for gardeners and non-gardeners alike. I hope everyone stays safe today!

Dawn

Dawn,
I've already been out there on a patrol of the area, in my jammies with an umbrella. The neighbors are used to this, LOL!

I am sooo glad for the Lagagna garden we started last year. It's made all the difference in raising the soil level. I can't begin to tell you the huge amount of cardboard from the furniture stores we hauled in. It looked terrible until we got it covered up with grass clippings and hay. Oh well! The price of progress. I also now have earthworms in that area for the first time.

Also, we created a large bermed area with dead logs across the back where it always flooded in before. I'm turning that area into a hugelkulture raised bed area, so it serves a dual purpose.

Now, even in spite of the heavy rains, "most" of the plants are not in standing water. I do worry about fungal diseases, and/or mushy tomatos from the "too much of a good thing water".

Still raining and now more lightening. I will wait to do treaching til after this deluge stops. Thanks for the concern.

Green Dirt Gardener,

Barbara

Dawn,
I just wanted to add to your "turn around don't drown" warning that people need to keep children inside. I mentioned this in the "it's raining" thread, but kids love to play outside in the rain and there is high, rushing water all over the metro area and children could be swept away in an instant. They are now reporting on the news that there are water rescues going on in several locations, including one area in northwest Edmond where they're having to bring in a boat. And the rain is still falling heavily.

Suzie

Suzie,

It sounds horrible and I am afraid you're right about kids rushing out to play in the rushing water.

Y'all are setting records today.

Dawn

Link to News Line 9 live stream.

Here is a link that might be useful: Live stream

We managed to make it into work today, but what is normally a 20-30 minute drive (depending on traffic) took more than hour with all the detours and rerouting to find roads not under water. We saw one truck on a side street that had water halfway up the windows.

What's really annoying, for me, is I watered practically everything yesterday! Vegetables, flower beds, everything except the cannas and boxwoods which I was going to do tonight got a good, slow soaking yesterday. Wish I'd known this was coming.

I tried to check my rain gauge using the binoculars this morning. I think my little gauge only goes to about 6 inches, and it had water in it to maybe 1 inch below the top. That was before 8 this morning. The radio was reporting anywhere from 2 to 7 inches of rain in parts of the metro area. I'm thinking I'm in the closer to 7 inches part of town.

My one good fortune in this is my yards both slope, the backyard severely. The only place that can possibly hold water, and it doesn't hold much before it runs downhill to the back, is where three hydrangeas are planted. I'm not sure they'll mind much. I tried to sort of raise and level the veggie garden a little this year, but, even so, when I water it still ends up running out towards the drainage ditch in the back so I don't expect too much problem with excess water in the ground at the veggie bed. Excess humidity could be a different story, though.

I would strongly advise anyone who doesn't absolutely have to be out to stay off the streets in the metro area today. Freeways have been closed this morning due to impassable water covering them, and I can see out my window that the rain continues to pour down.

I'm going to second what Suzie said about keeping kids inside. The water is moving fast enough in flooded areas to have a very strong current that could easily and far too quickly pull under and drown even adults, let alone "short" people. I know I thought it was lots of fun to play in flooded streets as a kid, but this is a seriously dangerous situation for little ones. You just can't tell how deep the water is by looking at it.

Debra

JCheckers, Thanks for posting the live link. Wow, what amazing rainfall totals. We sometimes get that here, but we're rural and mostly gently rolling river valley land and the water tends to pretty quicklyl drain into creeks leading into the Red River. I can't even imagine what the rivers are like there in central OK with all the storm runoff.

Debra, I hope the rain ends soon so y'all won't have trouble getting home this afternoon. Maybe it drains more quickly there in the city, at least as long as it has somewhere to drain.

Apparently your watering made it rain. Right? Go ahead and take credit....and if you watered your garden AND washed the car, you REALLY DID make it rain. : )

I was watering potatoes when our brief hit-and-run shower quickly raced cross our end of the county earlier. Any rain is welcome, but I was disappointed it moved so quickly. We didn't get enough rain here to drown a lady bug (and the lady bugs are glad).

Y'all can box up all the excess rain and mail it to me. I bet Moni's rainbarrel not only overflowed, but may be floating away.

They've increased our chances of rain tonight from 20-30% to 60-70% so I'm feeling sort of hopeful. I'll make it a point to harvest all the ripening plums before the rain arrives (if it arrives) this evening and will harvest all tomatoes at the breaker stage. I don't want a heavy rainfall to cause cracking and splitting, so at least I can pick those and save them from that fate.

Your rainfall is giving me hope that rain may really fall here. We only need 6" this month to get back up to 'average' rainfall levels through the end of June. That's certainly doable, not that I want 6" all at one time.

I tell you what the stores may sell out of....chigger and mosquito itch products like caldryl, benadryl ointment, Chigger-Rid and ChiggerRX, etc. One year we had a 5" rainfall in just a couple of hours. It was probably in 2001 or 2002. After the rain ended, everyone rushed out into their pastures to check on their cattles, horses and expecially the water gap gates over their creeks (they swing and move to let water flow through but fall back into place to keep cattle in, and sometimes rain-carried debris piles up and keeps them open and the cows escape). Guess what everyone got? Massive cases of chiggers. Apparently the little chiggers climbed up high on the tall grasses to escape the rushing water and then we idiot humans walked through the pastures and picked up chiggers all over ourselves. Lesson learned!

Dawn

Well, all kinds of stories on the news. Supposedly someone witnessed parked cars actually floating in Crown Heights (the next housing addition east of me); reports that along with the water overflowing the creeks, lakes, and rivers, are snakes that will be displaced by the flood waters and showing up everywhere in the city now. Of course, they advise everyone NOT to drive thru flooded roadways, but stupid people do it anyway thinking that problems just "won't happen to them"..... That's probably why the guy who was rescued off of Hefner and Sooner Road didn't want to talk "on camera" this morning - idiot! And what about the young woman and her 13 month old baby who were rescued from the flooded street around Penn and Memorial? What are people thinking? Not!

They requested voluntary evacuation of homes around Ski Island and some downtown areas. Lots of flooding in areas that have never flooded before.

My backyard has turned into a baited fishing hole! It's been so dry I really wonder how much water actually soaked in from the pounding rain cuz there was obviously a lot of run off.

My tomatoes are in containers, so I don't think they will be too bothered, but I really don't know. They also get lots of air circulation in the form of our typical Oklahoma winds. I'm anxious to see what Dawn suggests as a preventative to the potential for diseases brought on by this rain, and it seems, the continuing high humidity and high temps forecast for the remainder of the week.

We have pretty much surpassed many records since the December 24th blizzard, to the tornados and massive hail storm, the earthquakes, and now this. Geez. Do you think we might now be in line for an inland hurricane here?

Susan, who is afraid to go look at her plants right now, and will remain in denial for a few more hours.....

Okiedawn,
I'm a newbee here, joined last Friday and can tell from reading your posts that you are extremely knowledgeable about gardening. I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge. Does your experience come from the "College of hard knocks" or do you have more formal training? Also, one more question if I may, we are rapidly approaching the time of the season when Red Spider Mites show up and attack my tomatoes. For several years I have successfully combated these pests with a Green Light product (Red Spider), the ingredient list on the container shows 73% Xylene which is a paint thinner for industrial paint. Nothing on the container says Kelthane at all so I don't know if it is or not, but do know that it is very effective, usually one treatment with sometimes a followup in 2 or 3 weeks and I'm good for the rest of the season. The Green Light web-site doesn't show the product available anymore and I probably only have enough to get me through this season. Every year I talk to gardeners who tell me their tomatoes burned up. I tell them the problem is probably red spider. This is even the case with the neighbor lady just across the fence, not even 30 feet from my plants. Her's are brown and dead by the end of July, while mine continue to produce right up til the first frost in Nov. My question is do you have problems with Red Spider, if so how do you treat them and do you know anything about Xylene for treatment? Could xylene mixed with liquid detergent as a binder, be effective? Thanks for all you do here and I'll be looking forward to reading all of your posts. P.S. I can tell the Oklahoma forum is gonna be my favorite here! Thanks, Keith

I know the feeling of wanting to get out there to assess damage after bad weather. I actually did this not long back when a severe storm crossed directly over our property down here in Coldspring,Texas. It laid down my garden,so being wrapped in anger and sadness, I went out after the majority of lightning passed,still pouring rain, and quickly found out being sunk into the ground nearly up to my knees that if anything,I did a good job tilling. I laughed and shook my head,and realized I cared. Nature will always do things the way IT does,and the only thing you have is awareness. Use it,and then hope for good things. Hope everyone is alright.

Well, I didn't wash a car as I don't own one, but I'm sure I could have saved a bit on my water bill if I'd only known this was coming. I'm hoping the rain stays let up enough to at least walk around the yard when I get home and see how things have done. I'm not really worried about anything washing away, but if it fell hard enough things might be beaten up a bit. I know my front hydrangea was looking sad and droopy when I left for work because of the weight of the water on the plant.

You know, most of the time I really hate the severe slope in my backyard. I would guess that from the edge of the patio out the back door to the fence, which stops maybe 20 feet short of my property line, there must be a height difference of at least two feet and maybe more. It's a definite uphill walk you can feel walking from the back fence back up to the house. Days like today, though, make me really glad I do have such a slope. Lots of rain can make the yard soft and spongy, but water never really stands in it anywhere for any length of time.

Here's hoping Dawn gets a nice gentle, reasonable, slow rain rather than what we got this morning. I ride to work with a friend and when people in his department are going to stay home and work from there they call it "WFH" for "Work From Home." He sent a text to his boss this morning, when we were almost to work, with the letters "WFA" for "Work From Ark."

Debra

another note about puddle play...one station I was watching warned that since water was overflowing from the gutters, it could have any number of contaminates in it....and there were some reports of water snakes being seen as well. So, as fun as it may sound, um.....no thanks :-b

Susan,

You go right ahead and stay in denial as long as possible. It will be less stressful than facing reality.

Are y'all looking at the radar? Storms are firing up in west Texas and streaming your way. It is ridiculous. I expect things will get worse before they get better.

Susan, I hope you get to take Kenna outside but it isn't looking too good for that from here.

Either tonight or tomorrow, I'll start a thread on heavy rain mitigation. Maddie is here and that means I can't sit here at the computer endlessly as I'd like to today.

We had heavy rainfall and high wind from a couple of hurricanes back a few years ago. Wasn't one of them Erin? I bet it could happpen this year, especially with the record-high SSTs and predictions of a more active hurricane season than usual.

Hi Keith, Welcome to the forum. I hope you won't be shy and will talk to us often. We have a lot of fun here and always learn so much from one another. I have no formal education in horticulture, just hands-on knowledge from the school of hard knocks. I did grow up with many gardening friends, neighbors and relatives and my dad was a gardener, so I've gardened since I could toddle around the yard 'helping' my dad.

The Xylene is a solvent so it isn't the active ingredient in your spider mite spray. I'm organic about 98% of the time and a cancer survivor on top of that, so I am very picky about what I'll use here in our yard and garden, and I just wouldn't use Xylene. From the MSDS on Xylene, there's this (their words, not mine): " The substance is toxic to blood, kidneys, the nervous system, liver. Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organ damage." Do you really want to use that kind of chemical on food you eat? I choose not to.

The Green Light Red Spider Mite, as best as I can remember, did have Kelthane but it is likely they used the chemical name on the label, and I believe that would be dicofol. Check your label and see if that's it?

Spider mites are present in my garden. That's not to say that they cause me much trouble because they don't. I learned about spider mites the hard way....by watching my dad lose his entire garden of beautiful, highly productive tomato plants to them every year.

The mites arrived. He sprayed Kelthane. Quick knockdown. More mites in 6 or 8 days. He sprayed Sevin. Quick knockdown. Many more mites in a few days. Sprayed Kelthane. Quick knockdown. Millions more mites in a few more days. Sprayed Sevin. Once the mites arrived, no matter what he did, he lost all his plants. THE MORE HE SPRAYED, THE MORE MITES HE HAD. It happened every year. When did he get rid of the mites? When I convinced him to go organic. Why? Because your garden is an ecosystem and it has good bugs and bad bugs, including good mites and bad mites. As long as you have the good mites, they'll eat the bad mites. When you spray a miticide, you wipe out all the mites. Unfortunately, plant-eating (bad) mites recover faster and the mite-eating good mites recover more slowly (because the survivors don't reproduce until there's lots of bad mites for their babies to eat). In the long term, spraying does more harm than good. There also are other insects that eat mites and spraying can harm them. That, in a nutshell, is why I do nothing for mites.

If I had a spider mite infestation that threatened my tomatoes, I'd just spray with Neem or release beneficial insects. It isn't necessary though. I've had spider mites here since May, but not at sufficient levels to harm my plants. They never do enough damage that I have to worry about them. I just ignore them.

When I see someone whose garden, esp. their tomatoes, get wiped out every year by spider mites, I know without them telling me so, that they use pesticides.

If Kelthane isn't the active ingredient in your Red Spider Spray, it might be Neem Oil, and they may use the technical name for Neem on the label, which would be azadirachtin.

I need to run out to the garden and work while dear granddaughter naps. I'll write more about spider mites tonight or tomorrow. I assure you that is it entirely possible to have a garden here without massive spider mite damage. And, food for thought, I've never yet seen spider mites overpopulate in a garden that wasn't given quick-release nitrogen. Excess nitrogen is a magnet for spider mites. If you're organic and use only slow-release forms of nitrogen, you may have spider mites at a certain level, but their population will not explode.

Dawn

Dawn,
Thanks for your reply and I'll look forward to your thread tomorrow when I'll comment more on my use of pesticides and fertilizer. Rain finally slowed enough here to get in the garden, about 5 inches so far and found a few peppers laid over and some standing water in the 5 gal buckets (in ground) my tomatoes grow in. I should be alright because the garden is 4-5 inches above the grade of the surrounding yard and is very loose black loam that I can dig by hand about 6 inches. I see on the local news that you have 100% chance of rain tonight, hopefully just an inch or two. Thanks again and see ya tomorrow.

Dawn,
I can honestly say that I do not use pesticides or over use nitrogen(in fact most years I don't fertilize at all) but *every single year, my tomatoes succomb to spider mites. The first year we lived in this house was the worst year and of course I can't vouch for what the previous owners might have done, but honestly, by mid to late July I usually am totally over run by mites. I don't do anything- I don't even pull up the plants. I leave em alone and eventually some of them (usually the cherry or grape tomatoes) will start growing new leaves and producing again. It's frustrating, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing I'm personally doing because I really don't do much.

On a side note - I did go out and buy some MG for tomatoes and "fed" my very puny shriveled up looking plants (sprayed the leaves too.) They actually started looking better - for the one day until we started getting all this rain. No telling what will happen now. :-/

Laura,

There is some reason you have spider mites in such large numbers then. It wouldn't have to be that you specifically are using pesticides. It could be that you're in an area of town where pesticide use is heavy (or, even worse, the city sprays pesticides to kill mosquitoes and wipe out lots of beneficials in the process) and that wipes out the beneficial insect population that normally helps keep the spider mites under control. I had a lot more trouble in town where neighbors were big pesticide users. Out here in the middle of nowehere, pesticide use is way down compared to what it was in town (except in a bad grasshopper year when the ranchers spray like mad) but herbicide use is up.

It also could be you get nitrogen runoff from overfertilized yards if you're in town and your land has rainwater run across it from elsewhere. There's lots of possibilities.

I just know that every time someone tells me they have massive spider mites, something is out of balance in their own little ecosystem.

The reason plants that are overfed nitrogen are so appealing to certain pests is because they are high in carbs and sugar. That's why too much nitrogen is bad, and I avoid it for that reason. The reason pesticides hurt is because they wipe out the beneficial insects. It could be you have a low population of beneficials for a reason that isn't your fault or too much nitrogen for the same reason. I'm not saying it is the fault of the gardener that spider mites show up, but just that certain practices allow them to get out of control. Because none of us has a protective bubble covering the air space over our property, we are affected by what people around us do.

Several years ago in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, some cities went crazy spraying for mosquitoes because of the West Nile virus. Horrible things happened. Organic gardeners who'd spent years building up a good population of beneficial insects lsot them. People who had fish in lily ponds, and some of them were very expensive koi, lost them. Those folks weren't doing anything wrong--they and their ecosystem just were negatively impacted by someone else's action. It happens all the time. Several years ago during a severe grasshopper outbreak, ranchers sprayed seemingly nonstop to combat the grasshoppers, and we lost many songbirds including all the local bluebirds. I wasn't spraying anything, but noticed a definite decrease in bird numbers because birds travel from place to place.

Think of your garden as an ecosystem. In a healthy ecosystem, everything stays more or less in balance and no one insect becomes too dominant. That's because every insect pest is eaten by some other one (or by birds, toads, etc.) and every insect eats something or someone. So, if everything is in balance, no particular insect gets out of control and overpopulates. When something, like spider mites, runs amok, there's some reason why. The key is to analyze it and figure out what is out of balance.

I have a perfect example from our garden. This year we moved the potatoes out of the main garden and into an unfenced auxiliary area. It seemed to be working just fine, until I realized that every time I hilled up the potatoes, the hens got in there and did their 'digging and scratching' looking for bugs and un-hilled the potatoes. So, I hammered some fence stakes into the ground and put a 3' tall chicken wire fence around the potatoes. Just a couple of days later we had a huge explosion in the population of Colorado Potato Beetles, which normally aren't a problem for us. I hand-picked them forever, but was wondering what was 'out of balance'.

Well, first I moved them from an area where they'd grown forever and it is likely the beneficials that feed on potato beetles were still over there in the big garden waiting for the CPBs to show up. In the meantime, 20 or 30' away, the CPBs were in a garden with a low population of beneficials. One night, as I was leaving the potato garden, there was an agitated turtle trying to get in. A light bulb went off in my head. Every year that turtle lives in the potato bed and probably was eating CPBs. Because I'd fenced him AND the chickens out, nothing was in my potato garden eating the CPBs. So, I opened the gate and let him in. I also have let the chickens back in on a limited basis. They seem to be controlling the CPBs again, and I've been reminded that the beneficial garden helpers have to be able to do their jobs. If I move a crop away form the beneficials, I have to take care of the pests myself until beneficials can relocate themselves to the new area.

Whenever I have an issue with pests that I normally don't have, if I think about it, I can figure out what has changed.

This year we have grasshoppers galore. Normally they aren't a huge problem, but this year they are. What changed? Four-legged predators killed off our 30 guineas last year and we made a conscious decision to not replace them this year in case predators are hanging around wanting to eat them again this year. (We're going to get some again next year.) Since one guinea can eat up to two pounds of grasshoppers a day, that means we're really missing those guineas and it shows in the huge numbers of hoppers we're seeing this year. This probably would have been a bad hopper year anyway, but not having the guineas has made it worse. I have noticed the songbirds are hanging out in the garden more this year and I assume they're bug-hunting while in there.

I don't know exactly what it is, but for some reason, you seem to be lacking the beneficial insects that eat spider mites. The solution is to buy and release some or try to attract some. All I did the first three years here was work to improve the soil and to attract beneficials and build up their population. Once I achieved that, the pest problems diminished considerably.

I use a few 'tricks' to help me manage the spider mites, and I'll talk about them tomorrow.

Dawn

Susan said:

"stupid people do it anyway..."

"didn't want to talk "on camera" this morning - idiot!"

"What are people thinking? Not!"

Wow. Remind me to never be human and screw up when you're around to witness it.

Diane

I'm sorry, Susan. That was a very unkind thing for me to say. I'm a giant, human-shaped butt at times. (Don't ask what I am the other times.)

Diane