Carol,

Oh, well, so much for those 'big plans for today'.

At least you're getting rain, and the timing seems perfect for your cool-season plants.

I mound up the soil into raised beds without borders just like you did when I need to plant something in the 'unraised' portions of my garden. It does really help when the heavy rains come, and even a grade change of 2-4" can make a difference in terms of root survival.

I'd like to kindly suggest that you send the excess rain to me. Please. Pretty pretty please. We have endless sun and heat. If the thermometer hits 96+ one more time this week I am going to scream. We're having fires again, and the last one was 15 acres of seemingly green pasture (dead stuff underneath the green and it burnt like mad).

My garden is getting rained on today, but the rain is coming from the water hose and I am dreading the water bill. Watering has kept everything alive and has really revived the okra which was starting to look tired and worn out.

It can't rain forever there, can it?

Hope you have alternate plans for an indoor activity for today!

Dawn

Carol
I worked so hard building up a huge expanse of my garden into a lasagna type garden, trying to raise the level so it wouldn't flood during rainy seasons. Well, you know how it goes, I started expanding outside that area, and planted a bunch of fall crops. Unfortunately, I didn't do the raised bed tilling thingy, and now where that lower end of the garden is, the birds are taking baths in it this morning.

Don't know what I'm going to do. If I wait til things dry out, I could plant a couple other areas, but it might put me too late to be able to harvest some of the plants. These, (in the now swamp) were already up and growing a bit. Oh well, Ole gardeners never die, they just replant, LOL

Dawn
Sorry about your wildfires and dry spells. Looks like we all have various probs to deal with........and water bills? Not for the garden- but we had a bad HOT water leak under the house, a small one, but didn't catch it for a long time. I just got the worst utility bill I've ever had in my life. What a waste. Wish it could have watered your garden cause I sure didn't need anymore rain on the garden, OR water leaks under the house.

I am however, trying to look on the plus side of things and am not about to give up. I still have LOTS of ((((burmuda)))) that can be turned into garden area, and some well water, and LOTS of seeds, so life ain't too bad after all. This too shall pass :)

Barbara

Barbara,

We need a T-shirt that says 'Old Gardeners Never Die, They Just Replant'. It would be a hot item!

We are pretty used to grass fires in summer that sometimes turn into wildfires although our real fire season is late winter through late spring.

I just wasn't expecting a lot of fires in a year with 32" of rain. Too much rain early in the year and not lately, I guess.

Sorry to hear about the water leak.

Maybe you could go outside and sow wild rice in your puddles?

Bermuda is evil and all bermuda 'deserves' to be ripped up and composted and replaced with beautiful ornamentals and edibles that serve a useful purpose.

If NOAA is right and we have an El Nino returning in early winter, then we'd all better spend our autumn and winter raising the raised beds even higher, and building more raised beds. Maybe it will be a moderate El Nino as they say, and not a repeat of the last bad one, which I think was 1995-1996. We lived in Texas then and had water everywhere forever. It was not a great gardening year.

Earlier this summer, they were forecasting a mild one, so the El Nino forecast is worsening. In most years that an El Nino is developing/occurring, hurricanes are reduced in number and in intensity. That's true of this hurricane season so far.

If heavy autumn rains in September are not nornal for all of y'all up there (they aren't here), that could be an early sign of the developing El Nino.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NOAA's El Nino Discussion

I checked my garden a few minutes ago and the water has all soaked in. It will be wet for several days, but at least it isn't a puddle.

I had to walk to the street then down to the mailbox (which is in my yard) to keep from wading water a couple of hours ago, but I don't see any standing water now except on the blacktop roadway.

My raingauge has 2.6 inches but that is probably on the light side. If my neighbor ever comes home I will get the official report. HaHa. If he doesn't come home soon, I will be over there reading his rain gauge.

Carol, The 1" of rain that we got this am brought the total since last Wed to 7.1" And with 10" in Aug we weren't really dry. What a strange year this has been, with 100s in June and mid 50s in Aug and so much rain. Sure wish I had a cistern to save some of it because next summer may be different entirely.

The soil around my poor little broccoli and brussels sprouts is packed down too hard. I need to cultivate them, but the soil will have to dry out some--and I hear thunder right now. Dawn, I wish so much that I could have sent you 4" of the rain that we got this last week. We didn't really need it.

Happy gardening everyone.

Dorothy,

I think your August-September rainfall is about the same as our April-May rainfall, and it was too much at once. I often thought the same thing....if only we could somehow save that excess rainfall for the drier months and years.

I would have appreciated the 4" of rain and appreciate you thinking of me. I cannot even imagine 4" of rain in the whole month of September, much less in one week or one day. I think our average September rainfall probably is about 2" and so far we've had 2/10s at our house.

I hopeyour little broccoli and brussels sprouts seedings are OK. At least they are cool season crops so they tolerate a lot of wet soil.

Carol, Have you gone over and read the neighbor's rain gauge yet?

Dawn

No, I forgot to go look and I let it get too dark. They never did come home either.

We had some rain last week so we weren't exactly dry because I still had moisture when I was working on my beds, but the surface was dry. I know there are differences between the Mesonet site and my house, but I don't see how it could be so far off so much of the time. Sometimes radar looks like it is pouring on that part of the county and it will be in non-reporting mode or recording very little. It makes me wonder how much rainfall we really get annually. Right now the Sept stats show 1.11 inch, but the daily total shows 1.93 since midnight. It is just not dependable. Too bad, because it's a good idea. Guess it doesn't update automaticly.

We actually didn't get too much rain, but there were times it was raining really hard. It was too fast for it to soak in or run off. But the slow rains that came first helped to "set" my new beds. They got shorter but didn't break apart. I had planned to put a floating row cover on the broccoli today but it was too wet to get in there.

Dawn, I almost hate to say this to you since I know you are having heat, but I turned the air conditioner off the last couple days of August and haven't had to turn it on again. With a couple of windows open and the ceiling fans on, it has been just right. So rain and cool weather too. Don't you want to move across the state?

The neighbors just came home and he said his gauge only goes to two inches and it over-flowed. LOL So much for a better total. Guess I just have to stick with my 2.6. When I put the guage on the mailbox post, I thought it was a good spot, but then I looked up and the limb about 25 feet up was kind of over it. I think it gets close, but is probably a little under tated.

I had to laugh when you said you had 25-28 of my 49 packs of newly purchased seed. I wonder if it would have been any different if I had purchased different ones. I think you may have them all. I have been really bad this year because I first hit ValueSeed, then the local cheapy seeds, then the Thompson and Morgan sale, then discovered Willhite, and then went to Baker Creek. It is a disease and you only feel better when you buy more. LOL

Carol,

I think the Mesonet updates automatically at midnight, adding in the day's total and starting over again, so check it in the morning. I think the mesonet stations send wireless updates and sometimes there's problems because I'll see corrections pop up a day or two late sometimes.

I'd move somewhere cooler in a heartbeat, but Tim wouldn't! He already drives almost 80 miles to work one way and that's about his limit. (Thankfully he works four 10-day hours instead of 5 8-hour ones.) By the time he retires and we 'could' move, we won't because we've gotten too attached to our friends and this community. The heat is nothing new to me, but it bothers me more now than it did 10 or 20 years ago.

I am ready for the cool-down and rain they keep saying is coming soon. If we can just get through tomorrow, I think we'll be in the 80s for a few days. Tomorrow is suppose to be 91 and the next day 88, but every day we keep going about 2-5 degrees higher than they forecast, and that is what worries me.

I've never seen a two-inch rain guage. Isn't that peculiar?

I have to admit I've bought a whole lot of Baker Creek's seeds over the years....and Willhites...and a few more. I have quite a few from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Seed Savers Exchange too. I don't save seeds much because the harvest and upkeep overwhelms me, but I make up for it by buying a lot.

I keep thinking the summer tomato plants are done because the harvest is really dwindling down to almost nothing, but today I harvested 20 big tomatoes and tomorrow I need to harvest the bite-sized ones and run a load through the dehydrator. It is hard to say "the tomato crop is dwindling" and "I harvested 20 big tomatoes today" and have both statements be true....but they are! Sometimes I'll make a statement about gardening, and Tim will say "Do you mean that in terms of a normal gardener, or you?" LOL He knows me so well.

I haven't been really bad this year yet, but I bet I will be this fall as I line up all my seeds for spring. I keep thinking I'll do it "now" but there's never enough time.

One of these days, the harvest will slow down a lot and I'll be able to post a message that says "Today I harvested absolutely nothing" but I am not sure when that day will come.

Dawn

Dawn said: "One of these days, the harvest will slow down a lot and I'll be able to post a message that says "Today I harvested absolutely nothing" but I am not sure when that day will come."

Christmas Day maybe?

My computer is set up with two screens so I sometimes keep radar running all day if I am not using both screens. Tonight I just kept it on Mesonet and am watching it change. The total has changed several times since I have been typing this message and is now at 2.74 since midnight and the two day total is 2.78. It had been raining for two hours or so last night at our house when Mesonet said .03. I think they are making manual changes to it right now. I can hear a little thunder but I doubt it is raining THAT fast. LOL

Just checked the radar and they are getting rain, so maybe the new reading is correct for them. The entire county is getting rain except our little corner. I hope we don't get this one. Looks like Dorothy and George may get more as well.

The Mesonet total rainfall for the last 72 hours is 3.67 in Ottawa County just to my north and 3.77 in Delaware County where I live. One of my neighbors said we had over 3 inches, but none of us has an exact total, but judging from the Mesonet totals we got plenty of rain. They are showing 4.37 for the month so far.

My only rain guage is one that mounts on wood and its hard to find "wood" at my house that isn't under a tree. I need to get one of those big ones that has it's own stand that I can put in the middle of the garden, I guess. No, then it might be too muddy to get to it. LOL

Carol,

During the Red River flooding of 2007, parts of our Mesonet station were disabled for days and days. I think the issue lasted until the worst of the flooding subsided. At some point they went back and manually corrected what records they could, but much data for the Burneyville station for that month is incomplete and considered somewhat unreliable. It drove me nuts. I had to rely only on my own observations! LOL

I need a rain gauge that measures 10 or 12" of rain. I don't need it often (hee hee) but once every 2 or 3 years we get 25-35% of our annual rainfall in one day. When that happens, depending on how fast the rain is falling, I have to put on my muck boots, grab an umbrella and run outside and empty the rain gauge when it gets close to the 6" mark so it won't overflow and give an incorrect measurement. In April 2006, we had 9.25" in one day and most of that fell in about 4 hours. I went out and emptied out the gauge when it hit 5", and then I went out and emptied it out again when it hit 4". Shortly after that, the rain pretty much stopped. This year, the 12.4" fell over a longer period of time--maybe 8 hours or so--and I dumped the rain gauge 2 or 3 times so it wouldn't overflow. Based on statistics, we shouldn't have a massive rainfall for another 2 or 3 years, but sometimes statistics lie.

"Christmas Day maybe?" LOL LOL LOL

Here is what I am thinking. I am about to catch up and I will have one of those days really, really soon.

I have two large bowls of tomatoes on my counter to process, so I think I'll roast them and a few other veggies at the same time and maybe make roasted tomato-garlic soup. That takes care of them. Then, I'll pick tiny tomatoes this evening (too hot already this a.m.) and dehydrate them. Then, I shouldn't have to process tomatoes again for 2 to 4 days, although I pick daily.

I'll pick okra at the same time I pick little tomatoes, add it to what I picked yesterday, and blanch and freeze that. That's another veggie I shouldn't have to harvest again until tomorrow evening then, and I usually wait until I have two days' worth before I blanch/freeze. I also should have enough purple hull pinkeyes tonight to either cook a batch or freeze one, and then I should be able to skip picking for a day or two because they are slowing down.

So, if I can get black-eyed pes, okra and tomatoes all done today/this evening, I shouldn't have to process them again for about three days. LOL It isn't much, but it is the best I can do.

That only leaves hot peppers and sweet peppers. OK, so I have a lot of sweet peppers coloring up and I can pick them and freeze them for future use any time. I might do that tomorrow. If I do, it will take me just a couple of hours to pick 'em, wash 'em, slice 'em or chop 'em and get them into the freezer. That, then would leave only hot peppers.

I've done a very heavy picking of hot peppers at least every other week since mid-July. At the present time, it has been about 10 days since I did a heavy picking, although I run out to the garden and pick as needed for cooking or canning recipes. So, I might be able to go 5-7 days before I pick hots again since rainfall is low and growth is relatively slow.

So, where this is leading to is here: if I pick and process okra, peas and tomatoes tonight (Thurs.) and sweet peppers on Friday, and postpone hots until Mon. or Tues., then I should have Saturday off! Well, I'll have to pick okra, but I can stick it in the fridge and blanch/freeze it on Sunday. So, you see, I might get a day off.

Unfortunately, Saturday is our best chance of rain here (about a 70% chance of rain and they are saying it may be heavy) so it probably would be a good day to be inside canning. It is hard to make the 'day off' fall where you want it to fall. I might do all I can on Saturday if it is raining, and try to make Sunday the day off because I love to cook a big family lunch and spend the afternoon watching NFL football.

We still need and want rain here, and I think that by the end of the weekend, maybe I'll be able to say we finally got some.

And, all my food processing predictions assume the plants will ripen produce as I expect it to. Every now and then, you walk out in to the garden and discover that blackeyed peas are suddenly purple earlier than expected, or the okra grew especially fast overnight or whatever. At this point, I'm just grateful the fall beans, corn, cukes and peas aren't producing finished products yet. As long as I keep up with the still-producing summer plants, I will be putting up a little food regularly, but not huge amounts on any given day.

I will have a big green bean and big corn day or two in October if all goes well. I really think the heavy food processing load is lessening though. I'm still doing frequent batches, but smaller ones.

When the fall broccoli is ready, that will be a big day or two, but that's some time off.

Dawn

It's rained a lot here, but I've given up on the idea of planting a fall garden. Or rather, I am pretending that I simply changed my mind to do more tilling and soil improvement instead of planting.

I went out yesterday and gathered up all the melons and pumpkins that looked ripe. That was 14 watermelons and about the same number of pumpkins. Got a dozen or so honeydews too (Collective Farm Woman, I think). I picked the okra and any tomatoes that were pinking as well.

I had hoped to pickle some okra in the next day or two, but since most of the okra for that will come from my parent's garden and it's too wet to get into, I'll have to wait. Maybe next week. In the meantime, I've got to figure out what to do with all these watermelons. I've given one away and cracked open the smallest three (two weren't worth keeping, the other only if I dug out the heart, which I did). The larger ones are usually the better ones. The biggest is 30 lbs. I'll probably fire up the juicer in a day or two and that will account for a couple. I'm dehydrating fast as I can. Dehydrated watermelon is like candy! I've made all the jelly I intend to make. I have about 30 watermelons still in the field, ranging from grapefruit sized to basketball. When it dries out again, I should go out and cut off all the ones smaller than grapefruit to try to hasten the development of the others.

Gamebird, If they are Collective Farm Woman they should have ripened from dark green to golden yellow. Sometimes they don't go completely yellow, but still have some dark green on them in patches or speckles.

You can freeze melons in ball or chunks if you have freezer space. As long as you eat it while it is only half-thawed, the texture remains good and the flavor is fine even if it is fully thawed and mushy in texture.

I like dehydrated melons too.

Y'all must have had a lot of rain if it is too wet to get into the garden. I'm hoping for a lot of rain.

Well, everyone, it is almost 3 p.m. and finally the front has rolled through and it is cooler and starting to rain.

I don't expect any monumentally large amounts of rainfall, but anything is better than nothing, and 85 degrees feels much better than 95, which is what it was at our house before the storm started rolling in.

Of course, around here, rain never simply arrives. This storm was heralded by very dark skies, thunder, and dry lightning strikes which apparently ignited a pasture fire (complete with big round hay bales afire) in our fire district. So, even rain brings us fire. Also, in more northern portions of our county where the rain started an hour or so earlier, there were accidents on the interstate. We don't know how to drive in rain here since it is such a rare occurrence. : )

The rain is light but it is real rain, not that misty stuff that barely wets the soil.

I hope it rains all afternoon, but that's not likely here.

Dawn

I just wanted to add, don't look at the Burneyville mesonet rainfall and get excited on our behalf. They got most of the rain.....about 2.29" last time I checked. We got about 0.20". Big difference.

Dawn

Ladies
I don't have a Mesoret, or rain gauge. All I know is that the 'low' end of my garden is drenched where I expanded and planted a lot of cool season crops-aaand-my feet came out of my shoes when I tried to wade out there yesterday to poke extra holes in some red cabbage cups full of water. I had to get out in my stocking feet. The shoes are still out there in the mud today, lol
Other than that little mishap, the new large lasagna garden I've been working on all summer, plus the 'berm' to hold back the flooding of the nile, seems to be working quite well.
Dawn, about El Nino, I just have a feeling we're going to be in for it this fall and winter season. We're still very damp and overcast here. Some crops doing well, others like okra almost to a stand still. My melon crop was a big bust, other than a few Blacktails and one superlative Old Time Tennesee. The Evan's Sweet were mush. Better luck next year. Overall I guess I can't complain. I still come out of the garden everyday with at least something to process, even if it's in small batches.
The compost pile got fed LOTS of melons that were too mushy to eat. Tomorrow I'm going to pull all the vines and plant fall peas.

Barbara

It rained a LOT at my house in Tulsa, so much, that weeding anything else this morning (since the bike ride got canceled) wasn't working. So, I drove home.

Here, in Edmond, we had a little bit of rain. The rain barrel that catches water from one downspout isn't even full.

For some reason, my gauge is down, but then I knew it was windy here, just never thought it would blow my rain gauge over.

Moni

Barb,

You do have a Mesonet station in your county because each county has one (and up to three of them in a few counties). Go to the attached link to see the Oklahoma Mesonet. The Mesonet has many weather features, and I use a lot of them including the regular Weather Data, the Agweather info and OKFire data.

You'll have to download the free Weatherscope software to use the Mesonet, but it is a great system and we are so fortunate to have it here.

I found the Mesonet and figured out how to use it on my own, and I am barely computer-literate, so it clearly isn't at all hard to use! Try it. You'll like it.

I know that we all should be glad rain is falling, but clearly some of you have had 'too much' in a relatively short time. Some of us, of course, still haven't had enough. Such is life in Oklahoma.

I am glad your dirt work is paying off....especially the berm that is holding back the flooding of the Nile.

Some of the crops that are stalled may start up again unless you've yanked them

There's nothing wrong with small batches. I have a canning book by Ellie Topps (The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving) that is nothing but small batches and it has aboout 370 pages of recipes. I like small batches because they are quick and don't take up the whole day, and if you can in small batches, you can have 12 or 15 varieties of canned tomatoes or salsa or peppers or pickles instead of 3 or 4 kinds. I like the variety.

I guess the rains fell at just the wrong time for the melons and there isn't much you can do for that. I have found that I can dehydrate melons and tomatoes that are too watery and save them sometimes, but not always. Sometimes, even after dehydration, the flavor just isn't there.

Light rain is still falling here, so we might be up to 3/10s of an inch by now, but I am not going to look and see what they have at the Burneyville Mesonet station because it will be depressing.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: The Oklahoma Mesonet