Well, of course, I forgot the link.

It's not my fault. It is too hot to think. LOL

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Excessive Heat Warning/NE OK

100F+ for Sunday, 108 on the heat index :-(

Yes, all outdoor activities are on hold. I'll just rush out as needed to do a bit of watering and perhaps a drive onto the little nursery in town and do a bit of impulse buying.

I have a few indoor jobs to keep me out of trouble.
Some volunteer tomato plants which need repotting, I'm hoping they'll form part of my fall crop.
Also 2 cuttings from the willow tree that have rooted.

And my fall seeds have arrived from Heirloom so I can plan and dream too! :-)

I can do all those things from the comfort of my indoor, air conditioned, potting shed. ie my growing room.

Mick.

Mick,

We already had the heat index readings of 105-110 several times in June and July (and maybe once in May as well, but my memory is foggy), and I don't want them back.

The good thing about a drought is that the heat index usually goes lower as the humidity drops. So, for as long as our drought lasts here in southern OK, no matter how hot it gets, our heat indexes ought to be lower and lower over time as long as the drought lasts. I would think that, if your daily rain has slacked off, y'all might see a similar decrease in humidity and heat index over the weeks, unless your humidity stays high there all summer.

It is 97 degrees outside and the heat index is currently 104, and I just came inside from making a "wildlife puddle" for the wild things because the previous one had apparently dried up. Guess what? I was thinking that it felt pretty good out there! I know, I know, maybe I need to get my head examined.

Enjoy your indoor time and stay out of trouble! And, no, you are not allowed to turn your indoor growing room into a full-fledged indoor garden, so don't start hauling bags of potting soil inside the house. LOL

With any luck at all, we'll see a cooling trend in September. That's not as far away as it sounds, right? My garden is achieving lovely shades of yellow and brown although there is still some green left, most notably on the melons, peppers and tomatoes. No new fruitset on the tomatoes in the last 8 or 10 days though, as blossoms are aborting. (Not unexpectedly.)

Dawn

Perfect weather for working with hay! (Tongue in cheek)

That's what we did yesterday. I hadn't had time to go on-line, but I thought it was awfully hot. By the evening yesterday I didn't feel too good.

I would have liked to have been in the garden instead!

George
Tahlequah, OK

yesterday was a bit cooler here in Tahlequah with a nice breeze. this a.m. it has been sprinkling. Not sure what kind of day that will bring. would love the heat index to go down.

George,

I would think your temperature and heat index must have been dreadful yesterday.....when I am outside in weather that hot, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW how hot it is until we're done. As long as I just know that it feels "too hot", I am OK. But, if I turn on the weather radio and find out it is 102 degrees and feels like 107, I suddenly feel like the heat is unbearable and I have to go inside. LOL

I know that this weekend at least one young man here was transported via the ambulance to the hospital for heat-related reasons. It is so easy to avoid that type of heat illness by drinking and taking breaks to rest in the shade or indoors, and yet people just don't do it.

We had a fairly cool day the last couple of days....only 100-102 with heat indexes of 104-105. Today our high is supposed to be 104 to 106!

Only minor fires in our county yesterday, but they had a 1,000 acre wildfire near Ravia, which is either in Bryan or Marshall County to our east.

Jessaka,

When you get rain, it SHOULD cool the air and drop both your air temperature and your heat index. If you get the humidity but not the rain, though, that usually drives up your heat index.

We are hot and dry here and have very low humidity, so our heat index lately has only been 2 to 4 degrees higher than our air temperature. In NE and NC Oklahoma where humidities may be higher, you might see heat indexes of 5 to 7 or 8 degrees higher than your air temperature.

I've noticed that when a little afternoon thunderstorm pops up here, it often cools our air 10 to 12 degrees (even if only a small amount of rain falls) and that feels WONDERFUL, but it is a fairly rare occurrence at our end of the state in July and August.

I think today is supposed to be the worst of this current heat spell....about 104 at our end of the state and 106 in parts of N. Texas near us. Drink, drink, drink (water, sports drinks, iced tea, etc....of course!) and stay cool.

If your local weather station doesn't broadcast heat index numbers, and if you know your dewpoint (top chart below) or humidity (lower chart below) and temperature, you can estimate your own heat index using one of the charts below.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Heat Index Chart

It really sucks though. Needs to break so that I can at least plant my new daylilies and lilies without chancing cooking them to a crisp! They're soaking in a shallow bucket inside right now. So far in Edmond, we're not on a watering ban, just the voluntary schedule, which I adhere to. So the watering's not a problem at the moment, just the plants and seedlings I have waiting. My celosia, coleus, alyssum and ice plant seedlings are getting really leggy and need to go in, but it's staying so hot even at night I'm concerned about planting just yet. I'm sooo hoping we get some of that rain they're saying is possible on Wednesday and Thursday!

Kathy

Most of the seeds I started dried up. This is just awful. Can't wait for some cooler temps and rain. My sister on the other hand has had so much rain and cool temperatures that she lost quite a bit of her crops. Perfect weather, where are you????

No daily rains Dawn. Only rained twice this week. I know, rub it in. You guys need to move north.

But it is HOT!!!

Kathy,

I hope y'all get some rain. It is very frustrating to not be able to plant, but I would wait for cooler weather too....and maybe by Wed. or so you'll have some there in Edmond.

Mari,

The weather is insane isn't it? I have my seedlings in morning sun for about two hours and then shade the rest of the day. I don't know how or when we'll get them into the ground anytime soon. I don't think we have a chance of rain in our 10-day forecast, unless they've changed it since I looked at it this afternoon. It seems like the weather is always too hot or too dry or too cold or too wet, but it is never "just right"!

Carol,

Only 1/2" of rain here officially this month, although we've had more than that at our house. Marietta's average rainfall for July is about 2.5", so that 0.5" is not nearly enough!

I do need to move north and on a day like today it seems very appealing! It was 106 degrees here today with a heat index of 107.....our humidity went down into the upper teens and that kept the heat index very low. I think officially it was 103 or 104, but everyone's thermometers around us also registered 106.

It is too early to be this hot--we usually get these temps. here in early to mid-August, but not in late-July. Mama Deer is bringing her twin fawns to the yard to eat....and, y'all are going to shoot me, but I left the garden gate open for them tonight. I don't know if they'll find their way into the gate, but the fawns are so skinny that I couldn't help myself. We don't see a lot of twin fawns here.

I also left them some leftover potato salad that sat outside, unrefrigerated, at the neighborhood cookout tonight, and some overly mature green beans and some watermelon rind. Mama and the babies are out eating that right now. I can be very hard-hearted towards the deer in the springtime, but can't do it when they are starving.

The dogs and birds have raised lots of sunflowers in the dog yard this year--dozens and dozens of them--and I always cut them and lay them out back behind the barn for the deer in the fall. I guess I might start cutting some of them earlier this year as they already have ripe seedheads.

I hope tomorrow is cooler--106 was too, too hot, but we ended the cookout with a water balloon fight (guess who brought a cannister of 450 water balloons to the cookout?) that progressed to water hose fights. Well, their yard was dry and needed to be watered and the party host noticed as we were leaving that the water hose had been on for three hours and the ground was still bone dry!

My flowers and veggies are severely wilted and leaves are yellowing. I don't know how much of this unrelenting heat they can take.

Dawn

Hi Everyone, sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I moved to Oklahoma about 5 years ago from Texas. Lived in Chickasha for 4 of those. Now living in Edmond with my new husband (got married in May!)and children. I was rather startled to find so many differences between gardening in Chickasha and gardening in Edmond. It's like I moved across the country!

But yeah, the heat is really bad here. I'm hoping and praying for that rain they say is possible tomorrow and Wednesday, now, rather than Wednesday and Thursday. But at the very least, it's suppose to drop into the upper 90's, so hopefully I can get all of this stuff planted without it frying.

I was going to start my fall veggie direct, but don't think I could keep the seeds damp enough to germinate. I know we have a long fall growing season, so hopefully if I can start them inside and "tent" the seedlings for a week or two, they'll still have time to mature and produce fall veggies before the first frost. Any advice on what to plant?

I guess the celosia, coleus, etc that I have as seedlings I'll pot up into larger pots this morning. I've got roots coming out of the bottom of the pots they're in now. Even for shade plants that have been hardened off, it's just too hot and dry to set them into the beds.

Kathy

We need rain, and I would love for a cold front to move in from somewhere also because our A/C broke down! We're looking into buying a whole new system since the old one is about 19 years, and hubby doesn't think it's worth fixing and holding out until September. HEAT is killing me!

Dawn,

OK, now I'm convinced for sure that you have heat and humidity that rivals ours. We've had temps in high 80s
and mid to low 90s with a some days of heat indexes above 100. But yours sound far worse, except the humidity. Our humidity is always very high. Sorry to hear your fruitset stopped. I'm still getting fruitset on all my tomatoes so far,although it has slowed, including on the Fall plants I planted in mid June. Most amazing is my Martino's Romas are still setting. I put them out in late March and understood they were determinate, so I planned on replacing them with Fall plants, but don't have the heart to pull them since they're still going pretty strong. Foliage on all mine except the Fall plants is taking a beating, but generally plants look better this year at this time than I can remember. I think that may be because I took your advice and have been very careful not to fertilize more than necessary. Hope the heat breaks for you, but it doesn't sound good to me.....
Tom

Hi Kathy,

To find previous posts on fall gardening in Oklahoma, do a search on this forum and use the words "planning the fall garden" or something similar and you should get a list of old threads. If the search feature doesn't work, let me know and I'll find an earlier thread and link it for you.

Mari,

Sorry to hear about the A/C. I hope y'all are able to find a new system and get it installed quickly. Ours broke down 2 years ago and we were without a working A/C for only 2 days and I though we were going to die! Stay in front of a fan and drink lots of water!

Hi Tom!

Oh, it is always so good to hear from you! It sounds like your tomatoes are doing great and I am so glad to hear that!

As much as I hate our dry heat during drought periods, I think I'd rather have our dry heat than your humidity because your humidity contributes to so many of the diseases that plague tomatoes.

Today's a much better day. It is only in the lower 90s so far, and our humidity is higher, thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Dolly which are making their way across Oklahoma. Lots of places are getting rain, but not us.

Our volunteer fire dept. pagers went off at 1:45 a.m. for the first of 4 grass fires we've had today, followed by one wreck that required a med-evac helicopter so it's been a crazy day. I only got 3 hours of sleep so feel like I am barely functioning. It is so dry here you can barely mow the grass without sparking a fire! Of course, dry, brown dormant Bermuda grass doesn't require much mowing.

If the rest of the day is quiet, I am going to go out later and pick and ton of tomatoes and peppers. I still have lots and lots and lots of green tomatoes, but they are very slow to ripen once the high temps. are over 95.

I have new tomatoe plants to put into the ground, hopefully by Friday. It is later than usual for me (I started planting them in June last year under very different weather conditons) but I haven't really had much room for them until now.

I'm still waiting for the first ripe tomatoes from some late-planted Ramapo F-1 tomatoes and Supersonic.

It has been a great year. My freezer is full and I'm not ever tired of tomatoes yet! In fact, we just had BLTs for lunch, using some Black Krim tomatoes.

Talk to all of y'all later--I've got to run to town to get some "firefighter food" because now that the wildfire season is off to an early start, I have a lot of "extra" mouths to feed. If I'm not around much for a couple of days, it's just the wildfires.

Dawn

FINALLY! Rain!! And we actually got some of it! I didn't mention it yesterday because all we got here in Edmond was a bare sprinkling. The cloud cover did help with the sandblast heat, but the sprinkle was barely enough to wet my porch boards once it had set a while. But last night we got some real rain. Not sure just how much, but enough so that i can tell we actually got more than a sprinkle. It's still cloudy, so hopefully we'll get some more today. And perhaps that was enough, with the cloud cover cooling things down, for me to be able to get my 15 new daylilies,3 new Iris, 2 new lilies, seedlings sheltering in my gazebo and some cuttings I was rooting planted! It has been looking like winter sow time around here! DH will be happy to help plant the new DLs and lilies so he doesn't have to keep scooting them around on the kitchen counter in their bowl of water!

Ya know, I was really amazed, and now firmly believe that DLs and Iris can grow under any conditions. A friend sent me a jam packed box of them (there's more than one fan of several)that she'd thinned from her own gardens just before we had this horrible heat snap. They arrived the day before we started the 100+ temps here and I wasn't able to plant them the next day due to other obligations. I'd tucked them into a large bowl with enough water to cover the roots because they'd gotten a little toasty on their trip. They perked up well from the soaking and with changing the water to keep it from getting icky, I've actually got brighter green on the truncated fans. And I believe there's been some little amount of growth as well. DH is off tomorrow, so we'll finally get them into their beds and tucked up :) And those poor seedlings that should have been out of their confining pots a week ago!

And I finally have tomatoes to speak of growing. I took advice that someone gave about shaking their cages to help the pollen dislodge and spread as well as cooling them several times a day with a water mist from the hose. Finally they now have several fruits each and more coming if the swelling of fading blooms are any indication.

It has really been a learning year for me here in Edmond. I lived in Texas until 5 years ago, and honestly I have to say that Oklahoma has the most diverse land and growing conditions across the state! I moved from Chickasha to Edmond a year ago and am amazed at the difference that 60 miles made to what to grow and how. However, school is just about out for this reasonably seasoned gardener (I've been gardening since I could toddle) and now have a notebook compiled on what I need to do differently here in Edmond. Just needs notes to be made this fall and winter (didn't have time to garden much here last year with the move and getting my kids settled in) and it will provide many reminders of things to handle differently than I have in the past. But I guess that's the amazing part about gardening, you NEVER really stop learning!

But back on topic, I am thrilled to finally get some rain! I'm hoping everyone has shared in the bounty and is cooling down a little.

Dawn, bless you and your fire department! I know this is the beginning of a really rough time of year for ya'll.

Kathy

Kathy,

I'm glad you got rain--even a little rain can perk up a lawn and garden at this time of year!

I moved here from Texas (Fort Worth) too, in 1999, and didn't think gardening here, just 80 miles north of where I had lived and gardened my whole life, would be THAT different from gardening there. HA! I had some lessons to learn and some changes to make!

The climate here in southern OK is hotter and drier in summer, colder in winter, and spring and fall are much more variable, with wild climate changes from hot to cold and back again. Our red clay soil here is much worse than our black clay in Fort Worth, and we've also had some weather I never saw in Texas, mainly drecho winds and thundersnow. We have more prolonged drought here, and the occasional torrential rainfall of 4" or 5" in one day that causes flashflooding. Our worst rainfall here since we moved here was one day in April (2006, I think) when we got 9.25" of rain in a 24-hour period, and 8" of that fell in 4 hours. We also see more tornadoes here (never saw one up close in Fort Worth, but saw 2 very close up our very first year here) but less of the baseball to softball-sized hail that has been a huge problem in the D-FW metroplex since the late 1970s.

One thing about living here is that the weather changes constantly, and it is never, ever dull! It does make gardening more of a challenge!

The biggest surprise, though, was the wildfire threat we face here. Some years we have almost none, some years we have dozens, and they range in severity from very minor to hugely dangerous. We SHOULDN'T have wildfires right now, only an occasional pasture fire, usually started by haying equipment. It is very dry, though, and the 4 fires we went to during the overnight hours on Monday probably were arson. Our standard wildfire season shouldn't start until about January, after everything is dry and dormant and not much rain is falling, but some years it starts in October if we have a moderate to severe drought like Love County is experiencing this year.

Dawn

Dawn, we got someone to put some used parts and get the A/C up and running...not sure for how long though. I needed time to get quotes, evaulate what they're trying to sell me, and make an informed decision. Not a good thing to be desperate and have all these sales people telling you that prices are going up, so sign on the dotted lines ASAP! I hate that.

That four letter word is really getting on my nerves. I see you all using it so much lately. RAIN! That's the worse four letter word around these parts. Where the heck is it? I saw a couple droplets yesterday and nothing after. I mean about three. Then this evening some clouds looked kind of dark, but I won't hold my breath or keep my hopes up.

Some of my flowers are doing just great (Zinnias, Crepe Myrtle, Marigolds) but everything else is starting to wilt in spite of being watered daily. Geez, we need a break. Can you hear us up there??????

Mari, desperate for rain. Oops..I used the four letter word!

Mari,

At least the A/C is back working for now.

We're using that awful 4-letter word because it is not falling.

I know that we are incredibly dry here.....one of the 4 wildfires we were at the other night just ran across the pastures and woods like a freight train. It burned about 30 acres in the blink of an eye. Seeing that massive fire running towards the house on that property was a reminder to all of us that we are in a very vulnerable position, and nothing can correct the situation except for a LOT of rainfall.

At our house, rainfall has been "below average" for 10 of the last 12 months, and it is turning into a desperate situation.

I feel bad for the ranchers. Most of them hire "custom cutters" to cut and bale their hay. They are getting so few bales of hay per acre that they are spending more money on cutting/baling than the baled hay is even worth. Of course, they must have hay to feed their cattle, so they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Most of my plants are looking pretty pitiful, although a few, like the zinnias and 4 o'clocks, are holding their own pretty well. One good thing about the lack of rainfall is that we aren't having to mow any more because the grass isn't growing.

It POURED just south of us in Gainesville, TX, yesterday but we got only 2/10s of an inch.....and we were grateful to get it! It rained only on part of our property, though.....the west and the south. The north side of the yard and most of the east part of the property got nothing.

Dawn

Oh Dawn, it just sounds terrible down there. I have to make a trip down to Ardmore at the end of the week and I am not looking forward to it. It is sad that you are having to give up on your garden.

Green Country is still green, but I have had the worst tomatoes ever. The plants all looked like they were starved for nitrogen and didn't have nearly enough leaves. They are producing tomatoes, but not like they should be. Of course we have all we can possibly eat and I have shared a few, but I will not have big numbers. The pots probably just didn't have enough nourishment early on while we were having such heavy rains. I will still plant in pots again, because I don't have to weed, but I will also make some changes.

I have learned that I needed to put my pepper plants into bigger pots. They are loaded with peppers and most were staked. Several have gotten so heavy that they leaned so far they turned the pot over. As soon as the heat breaks a little I need to work on, at least, the bell types.

And guess what...........I actually cooked 2 eggplant tonight. We had a nice Greek dinner. I only planted 3 plants and put them all in one BIG pot. I kept them covered while they were still small. They got some flea beetle damage after I uncovered them, but they were strong enough to take it by that time (as you predicted). They are blooming and setting fruit even in this heat.

I had some early cucumbers that got way too big. I tossed them in the back of the flower bed with the thought that they were organic and would improve the soil as they decomposed. I walked out the other day to find blooming cucumber vines in my daylilly bed. So much for having to dry seeds before planting.

We are still having heat warnings on a daily basis. I am having company this week from Utah. I know they are going to be miserable. After we make our trip to see my mother, I think we will just live under the air conditioner.

Earlier this week we were having company for dinner and I wasn't too thrilled about cooking and adding that extra heat to the house. I built a big charcoal fire outside and cooked in my dutch ovens. We had to laugh because we kind of had a picnic in reverse. We cooked outside then filled our plates and brought them inside so we could eat under the air conditioner. I love dutchoven cooking.