What are you watering, and is it mulched with anything at all? Is it in natural soil/clay, or some improved soil mix?

Skybird

My problem is the leaves of the plants are wilting in this wind - the plants can't pump it up fast enough from the very moist soil.

If they are having the same weather conditions down in AZ where they're fighting the fires, whoa boy.

Anyway, mulch mulch mulch.

Skybird...

I'm watering peppers/tomatoes/broccoli/cucumber/zucchini plants and the rest are seeds. I did put plastic containers/buckets with the tops cut off over the tender seedlings like peppers and tomatoes to help with wind. I haven't mulched yet. I want to use straw, but am concerned of it blowing away. Don't have enough grass clippings and whatever I use needs to be able to be tilled in with the soil at end of season. My soil is a good soil w/compost, so I'm not worried about soil condition.. I have worms and all.

Christy

I feel your pain, Christy! I've tried various mulches, but everything I've tried just gets blown all over the yard. I would use grass clippings, but I have such a bindweed infestation that I don't want to put that in my veggie garden.

David, I've lost a couple of pepper plants recently due to complete leaf loss from the wind. In the morning, a healthy plant, by evening a wilted stem with crispy leaves dangling. Thankfully, I have a few extras to replace them with.

Bonnie

I use an excelsior-type straw blanket in the veggie garden. Its a little spendy but the BH likes the look and it does a good job of preventing air movement at the soil surface. The Lowe's by the house carries it. Nothing else stays down around here, and this week I have to go out and rig up something to keep the onions from laying down flat in the wind and getting stunted.

Dan

I'm not familiar with what Dan's talking about, Christy, but if you can afford it, I have every confidence in his recommendations, so it sounds like that's something that would work for you.

As long as you're SURE your straw doesn't have weed seeds in it, I think that would work for you too. When you're putting it down, "set" it as well as you can with your hands--don't just "flip it over the top of the soil"--and then thoroughly wet the surface down, and keep hosing over the top a few times a day till it's pretty well wet and settled down. We're not expecting any BIG winds here in the Metro area in the near future, and if you take the time to get it stable and moistened, I don't think too much would be blowing around--but I've never used straw! But my grass clippings don't blow much, even after they're completely dry, once they've been out there for a few days and have been wet down. Only way to find out for sure would be to try it. (I don't remember! Are you here in Denver, or down in the Springs area?)

I wouldn't put a thick layer of straw--or anything--on top of the seeds tho, until they germinate and are big enough to handle it! What I'm doing for my seeds right now--and I just finally got my root crops and cukes in this past weekend, is to go out there however many times a day I need to (depending on wind and temps) and sprinkle lightly over the top to re-wet the surface (I use a Dramm wand and breaker to "rain" lightly over the top of them.) As long as your soil was thoroughly watered after you put the seeds in, all you need to do until they germinate is to keep the surface from drying out completely. If you have enough grass clippings for the seeds, put a THIN layer of clippings over those areas and gradually add a little bit more as they start to come up. When they're big enough you could add straw there too. I prefer the grass clippings, which I keep adding all summer, because they decompose quickly in the soil, but I suspect straw would decompose over winter too, or if there's a LOT left at the end of the summer you could rake part of it off and throw it on the compost pile and turn the rest in. But I can't emphasize enough that you need to be absolutely positive there are no weed seeds in the straw. You'll have a nightmare scenario in your garden if there are!

When I was at Paulino's we used to use some of the straw (actually hay) bales they sold in fall in our displays--we'd put the gallon plants for sale all around and ON them, and after a week of watering the plants, the straw/hay bales would be totally green growin' weed gardens! Kinda like a Chia Hay Bale! I wouldn't have even trusted putting that stuff on my compost pile!

Headin' back out into the heat to hose down the veggie garden and get some other stuff done,
Skybird

I've used straw quite a bit and around here it doesn't blow around after it settles down for about a week. There are 6 foot fences all around and trees which cut down on the wind.

There are 2 ways to use straw. The first is to grab pieces and sort of break it up and spread it around. The second is to just grab pieces of it and set it down as is. The second method you'll need quite a bit more of it but it won't blow away.

The mats Dan mentioned work well. I'm not sure of the price. You can also get them Pioneer sand and gravel.

One type of excelsior. AMLeo has good prices but the shipping gets you from the weight.

I keep my Helianthus maximiliana stems. I use them for stakes, guides, markers, children's swords, etc. I'm sure that if you were to orient the straw in one direction and lay such stems perpindicular to straw orientation, secure the stems, then wait 2-3 weeks that should do a decent job of holding some of it for a while. I do this with my ornamental grass clippings that I use for mulch. And by the end of summer there is some left, but much of it is strewn about the yard. I can go out now and pick up 150 pcs of wood chips much heavier than straw that the wind blew around.

Dan

Hay and straw bales will separate once opened into sections called flakes. After recommendations from the good folks here, I used straw from the local feed store last fall in my raised garlic bed. I laid down flakes and separated them as needed to fit the space. Like gjcore said, it takes a bit more initially, but once it settles you can remove some and move it to other spaces. Straw really seems to knit together and stay in place. My garlic had no trouble growing through the straw this spring so I've left it in place. The only weeds coming up are the common weeds here, so they didn't come with the straw and there are very few weeds. I wouldn't use hay, there are many more weed seeds in it.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit I still have walls of water on my tomatoes, but like Bonnie, I've lost a few peppers in these winds, one just today. I plan to set up my redneck Florida weave with T-posts and baling twine, so if I get that set up this week, I'll pull the Walls of Water and set the toms free. I hope you find something that works for you!

Barb

Great suggestions and thoughts... thank you!

I actually saw something pretty clever yesterday in someone else's yard. They constructed a tee-pee out of wood (square wood base frame the size of the row with pieces of wood coming from the base at various intervals to form the tee-pee. They then placed light garden fabric on one side of it - probably stapled on as wind protection. This might be a good idea for next year.

So far everything seems to be surviving, but the tomatoes look very sad. I'll keep working on them, but may need to replace them.

Oh... I'm in Kiowa and the wind has settled down out here too.

I think I mentioned on one of the other threads about having 3' long tomato plants to set out, and burying most of the stem, leaving about a foot above ground. That foot looks pretty battered, and some of the stems have split in the wind.

Digging them up to replace, the buried stems are now covered with 2" roots.

I don't think we've had a day without wind here in months. The winds usually pick up after noon here and are strongest from then until after sundown. Thus, I try to go everything I can before the wind really picks up. We didn't have anywhere to plant anything until a couple of days ago; I just finished filling and gridding four raised beds in the back yard, replacing the low, weed-infested ones. Much better soil and compost for growing things. However, planting will have to wait until I've soaked the beds through. I'll probably protect the tomato & pepper plants with the upside down bucket method. The cukes, pumpkins and squash get a black plastic mulch with a drip hose running beneath it - that method worked very well last year.