Hey FBB: Don't feel bad, it happens to me to a varying extent every year. My extols me to hill the corn every year. She thinks that it will produce more prop roots thereby minimizing the lodging. I agree with her about causing greater prop root formation but, still I get blowdown. The reasons I don't like hilling: 1) it is alot of physical work 2) it doesn't seem to stop the lodging 3) I have to flatten the hills back out in the fall (more work). However, this year, in order to reduce the labor I used my tiller to loosen about an inch of soil on both sides of each row and hilled the plants with the easy to move soil. It made hills about 8" tall around the plants. We had 3" of rain wind and pea sized hail Monday evening over a 2 hour period and my corn is still standing. HURRAY! I'm looking forward to picking standing like a homo sapiens rather than a gorilla this year. There may be another benefit to hilling. For the 1st time ever, I have corn root worms. Having the extra roots that formed from hilling may have saved me from serious losses from the worm s the plants may have grew new roots faster than the worms could kill them. About 5% of my plants fell over and shriveled which is how I discovered the (very late in the season) worms.

Stevewayne, yes thats true our weatherman here says usually about a 10 to one ratio, so we were lucky as artic air moved in that night it went from 47 to 22 that late evening very quick a 25 degree temp drop and just a dusting of snow when i woke up so anything that had standing water froze which made driving during that transistion dangerous. Up north in wisconsin and minnesota they did get a good snow amount i heard.We finally had one miss us this late winter season. Heck in another 35 days or so the Chicago Cubs will be playing baseeball. C'mon spring. Martin

Caroline, I'm so glad you have finally got some relief from the terrible weather you've had. Not that we have had the dreadful time those of you in the south have had to deal with, we've had our share of problems too. Today it is raining buckets, coming down so hard it sounds like hail, not. I can hear the garden sighing a sigh of welcome relief. you can almost hear the soil reaching out to capture every precious drop. The one thing I have learned from this past year is to mulch, mulch, mulch, a good layer of maple shavings on top of newspaper is going to be the name of the game for me. The part of the garden that did not suffer was mulched this way. Next year I'll be out there early on, getting as much mulching done as I can manage. That hurricane sounds like it's going to be another nasty one, PLEASE STAY SAFE EVERYONE, I'm praying for gentle breezes and calm waters for all of you. Annette

Scott, I hope my chance of getting more rain doesn't mean you'll get less. That's not fair. Why can't we all get one good rainfall this week where it is needed, and not have the rain fall on already soggy ground where it is just likely to run off and cause flooding. I haven't looked at the QPF since I linked it earlier today. I was afraid if I looked at it again, it would have changed and would show us getting nothing, and then I'd be depressed. Maybe I'll go look at it now. We need to do work on the pond, starting with getting the trees out of there, but it is hard for Tim to find time to work on anything around here because the VFD work always takes up so much of his spare time. He's been perpetually behind on his "honey do" list ever since he joined the VFD in 2002...or maybe it was 2003. I've become resigned to the fact that nothing major on the list is likely to get done until he retires, which is still a few years away. We are having some sort of rainstorm here (it looks better on the radar than in real life, I'm afraid), but I use the word rain loosely. Every now and then a rain drop falls, but mostly we just have thunder, so I'd say we've gotten about $5.00 worth of thunder in the last hour and a penny's worth of rain. (That is the story of our entire summer....) Flis, Thanks. I'm very hopeful. I'm going to keep all my fingers crossed, and maybe my toes as well. It can't hurt and might help. Your end of the county looks pretty nice and green this week and I admit to being jealous!!!! Today I was not going to water, but then everything just wilted like mad and even the zinnia leaves were all twisted and sagging and just sad-looking. So, I broke down and watered the whole back garden and half the front garden, but not an excessive amount of water----just enough to keep everything hanging on until tomorrow night's "good" rainfall is finally supposed to arrive here. Tim is supposed to take a fire truck to a rural residence west of Marietta tomorrow morning so he can stand by for fire protection while that resident burns a big brush pile. He really wants to get it done tomorrow morning, so I hope the weather doesn't mess things up by raining too early and getting the brush pile all wet. After wishing for rain endlessly the last few weeks, now we're getting picky and hoping for the rain to hold off until the big brush pile has burnt. lol Even though tonight's storms have mostly only brought us noise and little rain, the temperature plunged from the 90s to the upper 70s when the so-called rain arrived. I was excited. That was a big temperature drop! Well, the outdoor temp here is now back up to 82, so even the cooler air didn't stick around long. I wouldn't be as worried about the lack of rain if the ground in our side yard wasn't cracking way too close to the house. Cracking ground is nothing unusual here with our clay soil and we have soaker hoses in place to keep the soil around the foundation moist so we've never had foundation trouble, but the soil is cracking in places it never has cracked before and we have had plenty of drought years since moving here in 1999. It is cracking near where the water line runs, and it is cracking right down the middle of the gravel driveway, and it is cracking where the water line runs from the house to the detached garage. I wish the ground would go crack someplace else where it isn't so likely to shift enough to break a water line! We have had water lines break both in the summer of 2011 and 2012 and I feel like it may be about to happen in 2013. (sigh) With all the rain in May through mid-July, our ground should be in better shape....or at least I thought it would be. I feel like the cracking ground south of our residence may be an indication of how dry the soil is deep down after below-average rainfall in 2011 and 2012. I've been hoping for a nice little (not-too-strong and not-too-damaging) tropical storm to hit the Texas gulf coast and send its remnants across Texas to us like Hermine did a few years back. We got about 7" of rain from Hermine and it was at a time we desperately needed it. The tropical weather season so far has been unimpressive though. On the evening news they said the Sulphur area was likely to have enough rain tonight that flash flooding could be an issue. I hope they get the good rain without the damage and danger from the flooding. Because I think good rainfall might actually happen here in the next day or two, I harvested half my watermelons today. I left the others because they were not quite ready, but if it rains hard, I may pick them right after the rain stops falling. I'd rather pick them a day or two early than have them crack and split and have their flavor watered down. Dawn