We are getting quite a bit of rain here in Indianola - will my garden still do well if it is always wet? I checked the garden yesterday and thought I had better water tomorrow (today) but that was taken care of by mother nature. I am still learning about what to do and not to do, but I will never go without a garden again. I can not go outside and play right now, I have four stitches on my right hand due to slicing it on the wire while building my compost bin :-). I have to wait 10 days before I can get it wet or dirty. So here I too sit on my laptop wathing TV. The good thing is the kids are helping more by feeding the animals and doing the dishes. I hope that you get some of this wetness.

Renee,

Sorry to hear about your hand. I'm assuming you've had a recent tetanus shot? It is a good thing that the kids are helping more!

I doubt we'll get any rain here, unless a new storm pops up. I've been watching the radar and everything is a couple of counties to our north or northeast or a couple of counties west or northwest of us. Nothing here. Same old same old, i.e. "no falling rain".

I love gardening, but every now and then I think it would be so much fun to have a nice, normal year with average rainfall (not too much OR too little), and normal temperatures (not too hot OR too cold) and normal wind. It isn't going to happen though, so I might as well get over it. LOL

Usually a garden can withstand much more moisture than we think. I wouldn't worry too much as long the plants are looking good. IF your garden is getting too much moisture, you'll know it. Excess moisture is usually only a problem if your soil drains very slowly. However, both last year and this year some parts of Oklahoma are receiving very excessive rainfall and even well-drained soil can suffer under those conditions.

First of all, plant growth will slow down or halt because waterlogged roots cannot take up nutrients properly. Often you will see yellowing of leaves near the bottom of your plants. Sometimes, upper growth (the foliage farthest from the roots) will twist, curl or show otherwise distorted growth. Again, this is occurring because the plant's vascular system is so clogged with water that it cannot transport nutrition. Plants will show wilting of leaves and stems for the same reason--too much water is starving them of oxygen. (One "error" rookie gardeners often make is that they think wilting always indicates a plant needs more water, but it can indicate too much water as well.)

On some plants you may see blossom drop or, at the very least, blossoms that don't pollinate because excess humidity makes the pollen stick and clump. In root veggies, excess moisture can cause cracking and splitting. In melons (watermelons, cantaloupes, muskmelons, etc.), too much moisture at certain growth stages can cause a loss of flavor, cracking, splitting or even rot. In tomatoes, too much moisture can water down the flavor, cause cracking and splitting, and even cause or contribute to foliar diseases. In squash and zucchinis, too much moisture makes nice, average-sized veggies turn into super-sized monsters overnight. Pumpkins and winter squash, though, love lots of moisture and heat and just grow like mad. I think that excessive moisture may make sweet potatoes crack, but I've never had excess moisture problems with my sweet potatoes because they are grown in a very narrow band of sandy soil that drains very, very well. (It is so different from my mostly clay soil!)

If you start seeing problems you think may be related to excess moisture, post and let us know and we'll all toss our best moisture-beating hints your way.

Take care of that hand!

Dawn

Dawn

When the going gets tough the tough get gardening. LOL.

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Scott,

Oh dear,

We are going to miss you.

I guess this means it is raining there.

Y'all are clearly getting our rain and I want you to send it down here immediately. (Not for the sake of MY garden, but for yours.....and for you.....so you won't drown.)

Dawn

If you see us building a pipeline, you will soon see water coming your way. We would like to move some of it along. LOL

Actually we are moving it along at 22,695 cubic feet per second but we are still 7.23 feet above normal in Grand Lake. Several other lakes are much worse than we are.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grand Lake

Yes, I don't recall being taught anything in about Oklahoma having swamps, the only thing I remember is something about a dust bowl. I managed to buy one of the swamp spots and then have the nerve to dry to garden on it. Slow steady rain started Sunday night and ended Monday evening. DH is a welder - perhaps I need to get him to work on that pipeline LOL.

I'm just thankful it's not as bad for us as it is in Iowa and the other places that have flooded so severely. My heart goes out to them, we don't have anything to complain about.

Jill

Carol,

Seven feet over flood level sounds kinda bad to me. Are some people with lakeside homes in any flood danger at this point? (I remember well the flooding situation here last year with Lake Texoma and the Red River both being at record levels. And, of course, there was all the other flooding all over the state as well in 2007.)

Jill,

I'm with you on the Dust Bowl image. Who knew parts of Oklahoma could get huge amounts of rainfall? Although, I have to admit that when we looked at this piece of land before we bought it, we did see a small swamp in one location. It was in August of a drought year, though, so the swamp only had a couple of inches of water.

Our swamp stays dry as much as it stays wet. It just depends on the rainfall levels. Our creek and our ponds are the same way.....raging water in the creek at times (I've seen a couple of heavy rainstorm raise the creek 8 to 12' in a few hours.) and none there at all most of the summer months. The ponds are the same way, going from so-full-they-overflow to dried, cracked mud in drought periods (dry by August of almost every year). We have a few springs, too, but they dry up in dry spells, although they usually dry up long after the ponds and creeks have done so.

I pretty much expected the dry conditions that we have, although I still am sometimes astonished at how many storms bypass us by just a mile or two. It is like the rain is a doughnut and we live in the doughnut hole. Still, if the option is either excessive drought or excessive rain, because I can always irrigate and add water but I can't vacuum up excessive moisture out of the soil.

Dawn

My poor sis says they are getting more and more and more rain in Neodesha. I talked to her about a week and a half ago. Need to call her again to see how they are doing with all this rain in SE Kansas.

We have gotten a lot of rain for June - are we reliving last year? Close to it.

All I know is that the bugs and critters (bad ones for caterpillars) are taking over the garden. I have been squishing and stomping for days now. And pulling up crabgrass everywhere. I cannot keep on top of it. I used my scuffle hoe in areas that provide a clear patch of crabgrass, bermuda (well, I know that doesn't get rid of it) and other weeds, but it's back the next day!!!! Weeds seem to love the rain! Some of my plants are hating it. Like my Pearly Everlasting. Everlastings do not like a lot of moisture. They want to be "dry to the bone". While the hibiscus love the rain, their stems tend to bend and break in the wind.

My poor Joe Pye Weed has been bent in half and the flowering heads are going to flower on the ground!

Now my shade plants will do fine! Most shade plants can tolerate a lot of moisture.

Dawn, one of my Arkansas Traveler plants is just growing in leaps and bounds and is so green and full of blooms, it's not funny. But, another plant, not too far from it, has yellowing foliage and is looking droopy. It does have one little tomato on it, but a very sad looking plant. Also the Early Girl is blooming and doing very well, but the other one died. I probably waited too long to plant them. Any suggestions?

My blue mistflower (ageratum houstonianum) is starting to bloom (not supposed to until fall). So many things are totally off schedule.

My little hardy lemon has doubled in size since last year. I thought they were supposed to be slow growers???

My tithonia is hating this wet weather. So do the peppers. I've been top dressing with chicken manure and they started to look better. But, with all the rain, they really don't like it.

Neither do the Salvias. Ah well, I guess not everything will be perfect every year, right? I sure hope everyone up north is doing okay! I hate it that y'all are getting "over the top" amounts of rain. I don't want to see people lose their homes and gardens.

Susan

Dawn, it looks like your time is coming. I think you will get all you want in the next couple of days, starting about now.

We got 3 more inches yesterday. We are at about 70 inches from last May through today, including the bottomland having major flooding 8 or 9 times in those 13+ months.

Susan,

I hope your sister has better luck than last year. It was bad enough to go through it then and I hope they don't flood again.

And if YOUR rainfall this month is anywhere close to what it was last June, it is a wonder your plants aren't just throwing in the towel and giving up.

I don't know what to tell you about that tomato plant. Sometimes they just behave that way, and the more rain you get, the more likely it will continue. Tomatoes really don't like to be wet--neither their roots nor their leaves. It amazes me that they grow as well as they do in our gardens. In their natural habitats they don't get a lot of direct moisture on the foliage, but instead get rainfall run off from the rain forest mountains.

I have about 140 tomato plants and most of them look great, but there are two or three that look so bad that I am going to pull them up if this rain doesn't turn them around. They look similar to your description of your sickly plant.

It does seem like a pretty bad bug year. In our case, it is the bugs that don't usually appear in great numbers until July or August, and they began appearing in May, including stinkbugs, which can ruin a tomato crop. (sigh) I am sure the wacky weather has something to do with the confused bloom cycles of plants and the massively successful bug reproduction cycles that are producing large amounts of pests this year.

I have always felt like Lemon Trees are NOT as slow growing as you'd expect. Perhaps they grow pretty well vegetatively for the first few years and then slow down? I'm glad yours is doing so well.

Scott,

It is HERE! Rain, lightning, moderate winds, thunder, power's gone out only once and it came right back on, and no hail so far. It's been raining about 20 minutes and I wouldn't mind if it rained for 20 hours. : ) The rain keeps knocking out the satellite TV, so I'm stuck watching the local CBS affiliate, which is the only channel we can pick up without the satellite (we are WAY down in the Red River Valley where TV reception is almost non-existent).

No wonder we have only had 14" of rain this year....you've been having all of your rain and all of ours too! I think, if I added up our rain totals from July 1st of last year until now, it would be in the 20" to 25" range. To me, 70" sounds out of this world. I've have to go back and see what we have for May 2007 through June 2008, but it won't even approach 70"--maybe 35".

For all that I whine about not getting enough rain, I am grateful we aren't flooding like Iowa. It is hard to comprehend that 1300 city blocks are flooded in Cedar Rapids, or that 1/3 the state is flooded. It just boggles the mind. I feel so bad for the people there. I would imagine the farmers and gardeners are frustrated beyond belief, and their crops and gardens most likely aren't even their biggest worries at this point.

I think that the one-year anniversary of the Gainesville Texas (just across the Red River from us) Flood is this week, and DH, DS and I were there, though not all at the same time. I will never forget it and hope never to see flooding like that again. It was horrifying.

Scott, how much more can your trees in the bottomlands take? I would think that they are beginning to enter the danger zone for being wet too many days/weeks/months in the last two years.

Dawn (from RAINY southern Oklahoma)

I've stopped worrying about the flooded land. It has only been dry for 3 months in the last 14. If the trees die, then I'll just try to get the county to fix the problems they have created and plant new trees there.

I've included a link to a website that has circulated here before. It shows river levels around the state. Just move the mouse over the dots to see the flow levels. Change the state to Iowa and move the mouse over the black dots and you see just how much water they have in those rivers. Pretty amazing.

Here is a link that might be useful: river levels for OK or other states

Scott,

That's a pretty cool river level link. I suppose you've noticed that the slow, lazy, relatively shallow Red River is not very full this year, which is completely different from last year's levels. I did go to Iowa and look at the black dots, and it is scarey how high some of those rivers are relative to their flood stage. I think the last that I heard on the news, at least some of the Iowa flooding is classified as a "500 year flood".

So, what kind of problems did the country create for your land? Improper road grading or something else?

Dawn

It's hard to visualize it without seeing it. Years of building up the road combined with the dirtwork to install some telecommunication cables and the loss of the tinhorn years ago makes 10 acres of our place about 6"-12" lower than the road level. Repeated grading of the road right along where the large creek runs has cause two portions of the creekbank to fall away, so anytime the creek gets to flood level, it pours into the road and our place. In the past only our own runoff would stand in the low area. Now we get flooded much more often.

This year we would still have had 5 or 6 flooding events even without the grading problems, but they would have gone down much sooner.

It sounds like our road! So, you see, visualizing it was pretty easy for me.

Just last week the county finally did some erosion control of the north bank of our creek right beside the roadway because the erosion had become just awful. In that area the road sits almost a foot above our land, and then the land rapidly drops several feet due to decades of erosion. This is the piece of the property farthest away from our house, so I don' worry about it much. The house sits on substantially higher ground.

Now they need to do similar work on the south bank of the creek, also near the roadway, or they may find the stability of the bridge endangered one of these years.

Our county doesn't have a lot of money and I feel like they do the best they can with limited resources.

Dawn