Dawn,
I came to town around 3 to get new tires on my company pu. We got rain six inches between drops and 50 mph winds off of it. There is a line forming to our SW if it stays on the current path and continues to build that has a chance of hitting us. The areas that have been getting rain got it again today. Seems we are snake bit. I'm heading out now to do a dance. If it rains I might do back flips in the garden. You might hear me where you live.
Guess I'd better get outside and do a few things. Went out to a friends place and picked up 30 of the 25-30 gallon plastic tubs that molasses feed comes in. They have to haul them to the land fill if someone doesn't come and get them. Will make another trip. Don't need that many now but surely someone will need them. Good for container plants, feed tubs and water tubs along with several other things. I can now finish up my containers for the year. Jay

Jay, Even without the rain you are lucky. Those tubs are a nice find. I saw a stack of those at a farm home once where I was taking food after a death in the family. By the time I could find out about them they had a big farm sale and sold everything off. I was sorry I missed those tubs.

Jay,

Well, I went back outside like an idiot and worked a couple more hours and the heat index went up to 107. You think I should have stayed inside? LOL

I have faith that the line which formed to your southwest is going to come your way. After all....it has to be your lucky day.....you got feed tubs! Feed tubs are my favorite containers for tomatoes, but I only have six of them. After the guy who gave them to me saw how well my tomatoes grew in them, he apparently decided to keep his tubs for himself and grow tomatoes in them. It has worked out really well for him, but I hated losing my feed tub source.

I agree with Carol that the feed tubs are a really great find! Most people here that I know who buy that molasses feed have a long list of "friends" standing in line to take those tubs off their hands....a long, long, list. So, I am officially jealous, but I hope you get rain anyway. :)

And, since it is your lucky day, I feel like you're gonna get rain, and I hope it comes without high wind, hail, lightning or anything else "bad".

Dawn

Dawm we missed again. Put plants in two of the tubs and took 15 out to my sister. Will go pick up some more tomorrow and store them. If I ever make it too one of your swaps I will throw in a few. I have a few sources around here where I can get them. Most have been hauling them to the land fill. It saves them having to haul them off. They thought they had over a 100. Said they usually haul a 100-150 away every year. Jay

Jay,

I cannot believe the rain missed you again. I'm going to stop looking at the radar because it lies!

I guess about the only thing we can say with any certainty is that it will rain sooner or later, but it sure is looking like "later" and not sooner.

If you ever come to one of the swaps and bring those feed tubs with you, prepare to be the most popular person at the swap.

Dawn

Dawn yes it has lied several times. Friends will call or send emails saying nice to see you finally got a rain. The radar shows it went right through Elkhart. Nothing hits the ground for sure.

The way things are going tubs might be all I have to swap. Maybe some garlic. They are free and if somebody can use them better than going to the landfill. The ones I'm getting some are red and some are black. Jay

Jay,

Well, I am glad other people are seeing things on the radar that look like rain, but aren't, because I was beginning to think that I was losing my mind.

Are you getting fruit set on your tomato plants, or have the heat/dryness/wind prevented that so far?

Dawn

Dawn,
I'm seeing some fruit set. Sure there is some I haven't seen yet. Not heavy but ahead of last year. Plants are still growing. Will see how they continue especially if the drought continues. Most of the ones that set last year are setting. A few new ones also. The PL versions of Cherokee Purple, Cowlick's Brandywine(2) that I have noticed. Glick's and Kanora are both setting the pace so far. Set on a few others. They are saying it might cool some again so hopefully will get more set. Brushing them at least once a day and twice if it isn't damp in the mornings. Golden Cherokee is loaded with flowers and so far haven't seen any. Hopefully will soon. The radar showed rain moved through us today but not sure what it is picking up as there wasn't even any heavy clouds. They are saying this weekend is a good chance. Heading to haul hay. Jay

Jay,

Hauling hay. Nothing says "summertime" like that phrase! LOL I hope you drank a lot of water and stayed hydrated because that's hot, tiring work. We used to help Tim's best friend, Ken (who later passed away), who had a cattle ranch a couple of miles from us here, haul hay in the summertime. That's been a few years ago. I love the smell of fresh hay.

I think the radar must pick up any clouds in your area and show them as rainfall because when I look at the radar that includes your county, I see stuff on the radar all the time and then, at your place, nothing falls from the sky.

I know it happens to us too, though, because sometimes during the drought last year, Tim would call me from work at D-FW Airport and say "I see on the radar that it's raining at our house" and he'd be all gleeful and excited. And I'd look outside at what we call "severe clear" (hot, clear sunny skies with little to no clouds) and I'd say "No, nothing here. No clouds. No rain. No nothing." It happened several times, and I'd tease him about trusting either the radar, or me!

Dawn

Dawn,
I didn't haul that many bales last night. One of the young men who works in a different department at work called. He also raises hay. He had baled some for another man about 15 miles from me and said he was hauling him his hay but he baled about 25 bales more than he wanted and needed to get rid of them. So hauled them home and decided I had better unload them so the rain that is coming won't hurt them. I like the smell of hay also but allergic to it. Can feed it ok as long as I don't handle a lot at once. Handling the new hay causes my sinuses and allergies to kick into high gear.

If it rains everyone I'm sure will hear it. Jay

They are saying 50% tonight and 60% tomorrow. We will see. Hopefully they don't change it too 10% by noon.

Jay,

Our son, who was a young teenager when we moved here, always helped Ken haul hay, and he is allergic to hay too. He'd take Benadryl before we started, which helped a little, and always wore long sleeves, long pants and gloves to reduce actual physical contact with the hay. When it came time to stack those square bales up high, high, high in the hay barn, we were glad we had a young man to climb up high and do that part of it.

A surprising amount of that hay ended up in my garden, eventually, as mulch because he always put up so much for winter and seldom had to use it all.

I hope y'all get rain, but I'm really beginning to wonder if it ever really rains there. : )

Dawn

Dawn,
As an old timer I used to work for always said. When Noah was in the Ark we got a tenth of an inch. So yes it does rain here. And our ten year average is 16 inches. Just way below it the last few years. And it rained just south of us again last night. Guess it was our time. Not the lottery you want to win.

I use all the loose hay and the moldy portions that touch the ground in my garden. I usually add at least a 1000 pounds a year along with the other things I add. Been getting grass clippings lately.

I've got all the in ground plants tucked in for the season now. I usually don't do nothing but water them after I fill the holes. Will feed one if it looks like it needs it. Still have a few more to spread around. Been tossing and culling. I have kept plants till July 1st but think I'm done for this year barring a major hail storm. Have some more planting to do.

Pulled a few onions last night. Have decided Contessa doesn't do well here. And thinned out a few Walla Walla's. Grilled two for supper. I like them that way. Looks like some are getting some size. Dug down and checked a garlic bulb and it is getting some size also. So overall things are looking good.

Saying cooler for two days then the summer trend will set in with fewer cooler dips. I know it is time but not ready for it. Jay

Jay,

Contessa didn't get nearly as large for me as I'd hoped it would and both Candy and Super Star do better here for me. And, of course, Texas 1015Y, which is a mainstay in our garden.

I was looking at my onions yesterday, and thinking that even though they survived the 18" of rain that fell in 5 weeks, they weren't happy about it and haven't grown well ever since. They are bulbing up but their size probably is going to be half of what it normally would be. Oh well, the garage freezer still has a year's worth of frozen onions from last year, so I can use this year's crop for fresh eating and not fret if there's less pounds of harvest.

My Red Candy Apple seemed to suffer most from the excess moisture, and have hardly grown at all since, then, but I look forward to tasting them and will try them again next year. I just feel lucky the onions even survived the 12" that fell in one day because I didn't expect them to survive. I'll try them again next year because one year's trial is not enough, especially when it includes a record-setting heavy rainfall period that's likely never to happen again here.

It is going to be cooler here for the next couple of days, and I am excited about that. I think we're expecting a high today of 93 and then 95 tomorrow. It isn't much of an improvement, but we'll take it. The highs and lows have been running 7-8 degrees above average for a couple of weeks now. Why can't we have 7-8 degrees below average instead? LOL

I'm going to try reverse wishcraft and say I hope it doesn't rain! Maybe that will help.

Dawn

Speaking of those onions, I'm beginning to eat the candy apple reds you sent me as starts, Dawn. They're not all that big, but that's more likely the result of my soil not being up to snuff than anything else. They're about the size of a biggish ping-pong ball or a golf ball. I'm sure that's not their full size because they aren't totally bulbed out. They still taste great. I've had one on a burger and am currently eating two in ... er, I've always called it goulash. It's elbow mac with hamburger, tomato paste (I had most of a can leftover from another meal) and a can of diced tomatoes. And of course the two onions. It's spaghetti with elbow noodles. As the summer wears on I'll make the same with fresh tomatoes (or so I hope!) and toss diced squash into it.

I've been reading Ruth Stout's No Work Garden. Someone here recommended it. She's all "mulch, mulch, mulch"! I guess maybe the experts were saying something different 40 years ago because for my gardening life in the last 10 years, they've all been saying the same thing about mulch and organic material. Or perhaps I've just been gravitating to the books by experts that say that? I'm not claiming to have done any comprehensive survey.

I see you and Jay talking about using hay the way Ruth Stout advocates. Interesting that Jay can overcome so much drought with it. He must have fantastic soil! Which was something I think about Ruth Stout's stuff: after 10-20 years of continually amending the soil, no surprise it's awesome and grows stuff great! Is that really so strange? Do most people's gardens peter out? In the five years I worked the soil at my garden in St. Paul it got fantastically better and it wasn't terrible when I started.

I think most of the folks out there reading garden books are new to it (like me) and don't have a decade or two of soil enrichment behind them. To compare their gardens to something established is silly. On the other hand, all the repetition of "mulch, mulch, mulch!" and stuff about soil enrichment *does* encourage me to keep doing it and do it more. If I can just borrow my dad's dump trailer again I'll go get another load of manure and wood chips. It's funny, but with each load I've thought, "This is all I need! This will be enough for what I want to do with it this summer." Then less than a week later I've run out! LOL! The first time I got mulch it was gone in two days. Of course I had a front end loader to move it around (that helped), but I didn't cover even half of what I'd intended to use it for. The pile had looked so big at first. :D

Wow, I'm rambling. I'm also trying to avoid having to go back out and mulch some more. I don't have the front end loader so it's wheelbarrow time now and I don't look forward to it.

Dawn,
RAIN. I'm doing a happy dance this morning. Have a smile on my face and just amazing how much better the sound and smell of rain makes a person. Haven't been out in an hour. Getting ready to head back out. We have a few heavier shower move through then just a steady slow rain you can barely hear. Been going for a while now.
Most of the other onions have grown nice tops and most are developing bulbs. Won't know the size till they die. I'm growing the Candy Read Apple also. Will report my results. Last year the Red Zeppelins didn't do well. They are looking different this year. I'm beginning to think that I received the Red Torpedo onions someway from the shape last year and how they look this year. I imagine from early to mid July they'll be ready and will report back. Dug down to check one garlic bulb and it was good sized. Not many leaves dying yet. So waiting to see how they turn out overall. Most look good. A few varieties have done really well judging by tops and others have stayed smaller. Will see how that translates into bulbs. Jay

Game bird,

This is the first year any of us have tried Candy Apple Red since it is the first year Dixondale has offered them, so I am curious to see how they do. Mine are about the same size as yours, but I haven't harvested yet, so they might get a bit larger. Of course, nothing in my garden is a good indicator this year because the 12" of rain that fell in one day at the end of April absolutely halted all apparent growth for 4 weeks or longer, so my entire garden is stunted compared to last year. Still, as long they they taste good, that's what matters. I intend to try them again next year and will hope for a more typical spring growing season so I'll know how they perform under "average" conditions.

When Ruth Stout was trying to interest people in mulch gardening, she was sort of out there on her own. I sort of thought of her as "a lone voice crying in the wilderness". Now, of course, she looks positively phophetic During her time, the gardening fad was all the chemicals developed after WWII---chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc. She persevered and stuck to her guns about soil improvement and mulching, and she was right.

I think Jay must have fantastic soil too, plus he works very, very hard. I cannot imagine trying to grow everything he grows in his semi-desert conditions.

We are in our 11th year here and the areas that I've been improving and mulching for that time frame do not even look like the soil I started with, and that is despite repeated droughts that have baked the ground to a concrete-hard consistency over and over and over again. Except for the first 2 or 3 years when I amended heavily, all I've done is mulch, mulch, mulch. The difference in the soil is amazing. The formerly red clay that was so hard and sticky that you couldn't even break it up with a fork or mattock is now a milk chocolate brown colored sandy loam and has improved beyond my wildest dreams.

Even in the pathways where I routinely mulch, the soil is so different from what we started with. Nowadays, I only improve soil by adding amendments the first year that I break up new ground. After that, it is all just stuff that's layered on top of the ground as mulch and time, Mother Nature and the earthworms do the rest.

When we moved here, we had a tremendous issue with Cotton Root Rot, a soil-borne disease that affects thousands of different plants and folks who live here told me I'd never be able to overcome it and grow what I wanted to grow. After the first three years of soil amending, though, the CRR has never reared its ugly head again and I plant what I want in that soil, including many plants that you "cannot" grow if you have CRR. So, I think well-amended and well-enriched soil can overcome almost anything.

Like you with the wood chips, I find that no matter how much mulch I put out, pile up and spread around, it is never enough and I always want more. We have to remember that "heat eats compost" and here in OK, it gobbles it up and breaks it down almost more quickly than we can add it. So, mulching is just a great way to keep replenishing what is being used up, and it keeps the soil so much cooler underneath the mulch which helps the plants too.

Wheelbarrow time will build muscles and help give you a tan! Of course, the front end loaded was a mulch more efficient way to do it.

Jay, I can relate! When the drought of 2005-2006 finally broke and we had a simply luscious summertime late afternoon thunderstorm, Tim and I sat out on the covered patio for 2 or 3 hours and watching it rain and listened to the thunder and watching the lightning. We also watched the frogs come out of "hiding" and play all over the yard and in the puddles. Later on, we spoke to several different neighbors and discovered they all were doing pretty much the same thing....watching the rain and the frogs. We all joked that it doesn't take much to entertain us here in Love County, but I'm telling you, we were so starved for rain at that point that nothing was more important than seeing that rain fall.

I hope you get to enjoy every minute of the rain and hope it is falling at your mom's place too.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your onion results. Except for being too dry, you've probably had the most "typical" or "average" weather of all of us. I don't know what the rain has done to everyone else's onions, but it almost killed mine. I was just looking at the garden earlier this week and marveling at how good it looks, considering that I thought the flooding rains might kill everything in it.

I hope you're out playing or working in the rain, or at least spent some time sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee enjoying that strange phenomenon of liquid falling from the sky!

Dawn

Dawn,
Either you are prophetic or more prove when it comes to the outdoors and gardening we think alike.
I just came in from over an hour and a half outside. Was a light rain most of time. Now up to 6 tenths. I'm hoping for an inch. Had picked up a little when I came in. Didn't feel like I was all that wet till I came in. Prepared the last four containers and put plants in them. Know what they say about handling them wet but figured it was as good to get them out of the cups as what harm I might do. Then set the ones out in the flower bed. Of course too wet to finish the planting I was waiting on the rain for. Culled several plants. Have two more I would like to stick somewhere and a few peppers I will transplant when the rain quits which I hope is a week!!!! The rest are heading to the bone pile with the others. I noticed coming in my pants were soaked. I knew my shoes were. When I pulled off my t shirt is was soaked. Was enjoying it so much that I never noticed. The only one outside. The rest of the people moving about are hurrying from one cover to the next and here I am working in it. Sure that confirms to them I'm not normal. Jay

I will try to take some pictures sometime of my soil I've mulched and then the natural soil here. As one coworker who was raised in tight ground said. Only Jay would take sandy soil the rest of us would love to have and try to improve it. Won't say I have but can say I've changed it. I had a few tighter spots where the sand had blown away and now you can't tell them from the rest. You used to really tell it when tilling or spading but you can't now. I can show you the spot but otherwise you would never know.