wbonesteel, I am thrilled y'all have had rain recently. I've just been wishing and hoping we'd get some too. We finally did last night during the tornado warning. I crept outside right before bedtime with the flashlight and checked the rain gauge and it had a half-inch. A little after midnight another thunderstorm hit. It was mostly thunder, lightning and wind for the longest time and then finally more rain fell. This morning there is a total of 0.95" in the rain gauge from yesterday and last night. The skies are darkening up and it is beginning to thunder, so maybe we are about to get a little more rain. So, our month-to-date total at our house for May rainfall jumped from 0.04" to 0.99". That's a nice improvement. I haven't watered any more than the bare minimum to keep everything a little happy. I've been holding out for the rain we should be getting at this time of year. We have completed one new garden area out back (our original garden is in front between the house, which sits 300' back from our rural road, and the road) and another new area is in process. My goal with the two new areas is to be able to grow everything at once, instead of relying on constant succession planting. I get great results from constant succession planting, but the water bills in 2011 and 2012 were off-the-charts and I'd like to grow the same amount, but get it all to finish up by the end of July, more or less, so I don't have to water heavily all summer during drought. This year most of the big garden out front is cool-season crops, and all those are clustered together. When they come out, if I think it is too dry to succession crop without extensive irrigation, I'll sow their areas with a cover crop and let it be. The portion of the big garden in warm-season crops is only about 30% of the total area, so at least I'll only have to irrigate that portion of the garden if the rainfall remains below the needed levels. The entire back garden is warm-season plants, so the majority of the irrigation needed will be done back there. I'm planning to lay out the drip irrigation lines this weekend, as soon as I get the last little bit of that area planted, which likely will occur today....or tomorrow if it rains all day today. I have a corner of that garden with Johnson grass regrowth and I need to hand-dig all those clumps out before I plant southern peas and sunflowers there. The third garden area that still is under construction could have been completed this week, but we got sidetracked (willingly) by other tasks, mostly shopping for butterfly plants and putting them in. I had half-way made up my mind that I wouldn't even finish that 3rd area and plant anything there this spring if rain didn't start falling. Now that rain is falling, maybe we'll work on it next week. There's lots of storms in the weekend forecast, so maybe I should say we'll work on it if the weather allows. This 3rd area is mostly for several varieties of C. moschata winter squash and summer squash that need room to roam. I am trying two varieties of C. moschata avocado summer squash that are new to us this year, and then I have about a dozen rozelle plants to put in that area too, but they are still small and in the greenhouse. Since the new garden area out back is new and I don't have any sort of image in my head of how it has to be or should be planted, I have been having fun with it. I don't have to stop and think, "okay, tomatoes were here last year....so this year they need to be moved over there...." That has left me free to just put stuff wherever I want, which is sort of liberating. With the rain that fell in the last 24 hours, we are up to about 9.7" for this year at our house. That still is way below average, but it is better than the 8.7" we were stuck at for the last few weeks. I can remember good years here (2002, 2004, 2007 and a major portion of 2010) when I hardly had to water at all. The drought years have been tough ones. Our spring-fed pond no longer is spring fed and stays empty most of the year. Our overflow pond that catches the runoff from the big spring-fed pond, hasn't has any overflow water in it since 2009. Our spring-fed swamp in a different area no longer is swampy. Our big creek is empty most of the time, and our smaller creeks are empty all the time except during a rainstorm with heavy runoff. We used to have tons of little ponds, spring, pools of water, creeks, etc. all over our acreage, and now we don't. We're lucky though, because we aren't ranchers. Many ranchers around us have reduced their herds to almost nothing the last few years, and others have spent a lot of time and money putting in new stock tanks, hoping to be able to catch and hold enough water to get the cattle through the summer. When I look at all the challenges our ranching friends face in these recurring dry years, I stop whining about how dry my garden is. Early in the year we had decent rainfall and I thought it might last, and I was so excited. Then it pretty much stopped. We had made it out of severe drought and back to moderate drought, but only stayed there about 2 or 3 weeks and then slipped back into severe drought. When you are in severe drought before summer even arrives, you know it will be a tough summer. I have been wishing for a nice wet year like 2007, minus the flooding, but I guess this isn't going to be that year. I'm going to go find a year-to-date rainfall map and post it, and we can look at it and see how the state of Oklahoma is doing overall. I know some parts have had great rainfall but many others are still hurting. One problem with early spring rainfall is that it causes a lot of plant growth. Then, when the rain stops, there is more fuel in grasslands and woodlands to feed the wildfires that have become increasingly common here in the summer months. It used to be our big wildfire season was winter when everything was dry and dormant, but in recent years, the summer wildfire season has been almost as bad. It is so dry here in our county that green grass has been burning, which freaks out a lot of people because they think green grass doesn't burn. Here in OK when the grassfires and wildfires start up, everything can burn....and that is what I'd hope we can avoid this summer. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Rainfall Summary Maps

I'm not sure what you are asking. There are 2 threads now with links to the video, people can see them that way.

Flea beetles/grasshoppers -- I saw my 3rd grasshopper for 2022, last week. The Asian greens were flea beetle victims in the distant garden. Fairly close to everything was attacked but those brassicas are a favorite and they moved in on them early and strongly. It was something of an experiment out there since Asian greens are grown at home where there is less exposure, especially to wind. But, there are just too many seedlings at a time. Those greens did start off well out there but a second transplanting of the Asian greens burned up! We have had 6 days with afternoon temperatures above 100°. Three of those were 104-5. A little break the last few days but back to the 100's for a couple more days this week, we are told. My first sowing of green beans resulted in puny plants. The cool June must not have been to their liking. The second sowing produced big, robust plants!. The pods are just about ready for harvest. They liked the early July heat .... however, the 3rd sowing of bean seed must have baked during those 100°+ days - emergence was probably less than 50%. Since those plants are so widely spaced, we can try a third transplanting of the fall Asian greens as companions. Ha! Learning from our mistakes?? Well, it works here at home! The first sowing of sweet corn resulted in puny plants also but the ears are fairly good size and we are enjoying those now. Second sowing - robust plants! The tomato plants are rising to waist height out of their sprawl. However, there are few green fruits on them and we have only harvested a handful of Bloody Butchers & cherries. I think that the high temperatures damaged their flowers. I did knock the flea beetles off of them well and they recovered from the attack, weeks ago. Steve

Have a few dead looking ones, casualties of a December weather forecasting debacle when the forecast got changed at the last minute and turned into a freeze warning so I could not protect. Other plants also got killed but I am giving the hydrangeas time just in case.