Thank you so much for your answers. I never thought to check the FAQ sheet. (I do tend to panic.) But I think you've hit it. We had a horrible hot spell recently. At least it appears there is reason to hope. I was afraid something awful had happened. In further support of high temps, the patio tomatoes had set their fruit before the heat wave struck. Thank you all again. I am so relieved.

Robbie, The short answer, of course, is that yes, there is such a thing as "too much rain" but the sticky issue is just how much is too much, and it varies from plant to plant as well as the plant's stage of growth and how fast the soil drains, etc. Rarely will too much rain harm lawnturf unless the puddles are so large that the roots/stolons are underwater for a very prolonged period. Even in that case, you are likely to see yellowing and maybe fungal diseases on grass blades, but not actual death of the lawn grass. With ESTABLISHED trees and shrubs, if the soil is at all well-drained or even moderately slow-draining, long-term damage is unlikely. With perennials and annuals, too much rain can be a problem and plants that prefer well-drained soil and drier soil may indeed rot. Generally, though, if your rainy period is only a week or two, followed by a drier period, the plants won't suffer long-term harm. (Last year, with weeks and months of excess moisture, a lot of us DID lose plants,) With veggies, the effect of too-much moisture relates to the growth stage. As you correctly believe, unsprouted seeds are in the most damage, especially since they can wash away before they sprout. Carrot seeds, and other similar tiny seeds, are MOST prone to do this. Even sprouted seeds can get rot, especially if the rainfall is accompanied by cold temperatures AND if the seedlings don't have at least 3 or 4 true leaves and some well-developed roots to absorb that water. The corn should be fine. It is at the PERFECT stage for a lot of rain and will respond by growing like mad, which is terrific. The only trouble I ever have with excess moisture and corn is corn smut, and your corn is not at the stage to be affected by it, so that's a good thing, and corn smut is more likely in spring than in fall too. Well, sometimes the combination of hard wind/hard rain will cause cornstalks to lodge (fall over) but not with corn so young. If your corn were a couple of feet tall, lodging might be an issue, but it is too short at this point for rain or wind to knock it over, I think, You might check your corn roots and make sure soil hasn't washed away from that. It SHOULDN'T have, but might have if your rain fell very quickly and very hard. How many ears you get off of one corn stalk varies depending on the variety and insect pressure and how closely the stalks are planted to one another AND also depending on whether you have raccoons, deer, corn earworms or corn borers. In a perfect world, you should get two ears per stalk. With a very few varieties, you might get 3 ears, or even 4 (though rarely) although anything beyond the 2 ears usually will be very small and perhaps not large enough to bother harvesting. There are a very few old varieties (Six-Shooter is one that comes to mind) that consistently produce more than two ears per stalk. So, hope for two, expect one and be thrilled if you get three. Getting the ears to grow is not the hard part--getting the ears to survive the predators and ripen is the hard part. Pumpkins and squash, if they don't rot, love water, guzzle it like crazy and grow with wild and reckless abandon. If they are up and have true leaves, it is hard to give them to much water. These seeds also are not especially prone to rotting as long as the soil is relatively warm (above 70 or 75 degrees), which it is. Turnips and carrots like water and don't mind wet soil, so they ought to be fine, except for the issue of carrot seeds washing away, which could happen. Just watch your soil and make sure it doesn't "crust over" as it dries, because those tiny carrot seeds/sprouts have a hard time breaking through the crusty soil as they sprout. One way to prevent that (next time) is to interplant radish seeds every couple of inches in your beds of carrot seeds. The radish seeds will sprout first and will break through the soil surface, thereby paving the way for the carrot seeds. And, radishes mature fast, often in as little as three weeks, so you can harvest them and the carrots wil have plenty of space to grow. In the future, you can keep carrot seed from washing away in rain by covering the entire seedbed with cardboard, newspaper, plywood, or a thin layer of straw. If you use the cardboard, newspaper or plywood, lift it and look underneath it every morning and every evening to check for your first green sprouts. As soon as you see those first sprouts, remove the cardboard, newspaper or plywood. The covering keeps the seed in place if it rains and also prevents wind from blowing away the top soil/seed and keeps the soil from crusting over too. To me, the only hard thing about growing carrots is getting them to sprout before the seed washes away or blows away or rots (only an issue in cold soil). Turnips are easy. They'll sprout and grow and seldom wash away and seldom rot, so be patient and you should see leaves soon. The temperatures are in the perfect range for tomatoes to bloom right now. The only issue is the humidity and rain. With the larger fruited (NOT cherry, grape, currant or most plum) tomtoes, excess humidity and moisture, especially in combination with higher temperatures, can inhibit the pollen and cause it to be "sticky" or, sometimes, infertile. Just keep shaking the blooming plants, and you should see small tomatoes in 7 to 10 days. If the flowers drop and small fruits haven't formed, your plants aren't happy with either the temperatures or the humidity. In time, though, blooms will set fruit. Some of my summer tomatoes (those that survived the drought after I stopped watering) have new leaves already, and a few have blooms. We've had at least three days of 99-100% humidity, though, so I know that the blooms may not set fruit, but once the rain stops, it should happen. Dorothy can address your asparagus issues. I had it in Texas, but not here, although it (and a million other things) are on my "one of these days" list. I think the harvest window here is a little later, and perhaps a little longer, that what we had in Fort Worth. As long as you keep the GRASS out of your asparagus beds, all should be well. If grass ever infiltrates, especially bermuda grass, it is nearly impossible to reclaim the asparagus bed from the grass. I am assuming your soil drains well to moderately well. In those conditions, it would take a LOT of rain to hurt a veggie garden when the soil is warm. Excess moisture PLUS cold soil (below 55 to 60 degrees) is much more damaging than excess moisture plus warm soil. Even if you have very slow-draining clay, I don't think the recent rains are enough to hurt much of anything. The biggest issue in the next few days for many Oklahoma gardeners will be the possible appearance of moisture-loving fungal and bacterial diseases. These will mostly show themselves via leaf spots. Damping off of very new and young seedlings is a possibility too, and it is hard to prevent when rainfall is heavy. IF you have a prolonged rainy spell, like Scott, Dorothy, Ilene and a few others had in the spring, then you might see a few nutritional issues caused by the inability of root systems to take up nutrients because excess water clogs up their roots. It usually takes at least 4 straight weeks of extremely wet soil for that to even begin to be an issue though. Some of us experienced that last year, but only because the heavy rainfall occurred while the plants still had pretty small root systems. Finally, sometimes a VERY rainy period causes some physiological problems, such as cracking and splitting of tomatoes or melons. This occurs because the fruits'/veggies' flesh grows more quickly than the skin so the skin can't keep up and literally splits open. Also, with tomatoes, alternating wet-dry cycles can cause problems with calcium uptake that leads to blossom end rot of the tomatoes (and peppers and eggplants as well, though less often). So, after the rain ceases and your soil dries out, strive to keep it evenly moist, but NOT sopping wet, to reduce the incidence of BER. Did I cover everything you were wondering about? If not, let me know. And, feel free to pick our brains some more if you want. It may be too wet to be out in the garden right now (words I have NOT been able to say in months), but we can talk gardening! Dawn

Here's a photo of one of the damaged leaves on the Orange Bell that suffered the most. I'd put this particular leaf in the middle of damage the scale. The ones that were worse have dropped, as have some flowers and buds. There is similar but milder damage on the Jalapeños. The solution: From left to right in the black pots: 2 Orange Bells, 3 Hot Wax, 2 Jalapeño, 2 Anaheim, and 1 lone Ancho that we started last December. Works so far, but it's only been up for 24 hours. Only a few leaves get wet when it rains and they quickly dry. It also seems to give the plants some welcome shade right in the middle of the day. Usually around noon the leaves on all the plants just go limp only to perk up as soon as the sun goes behind the trees. That wasn't the case today. I'm gonna just leave it in place for now and see if it helps for the long term. The materials, if yer interested, are 20"ish wide by... 15' long plastic sheeting that was leftover from a basement project, sticks that were also leftover project bits, some rocks, and a bunch of staples. Frankly, I'm surprised it's working as well as it is.

I recall, here near Albany, the local meteorologist saying that July tied 1858 for the 10th rainiest July on record. And our area got less rain than many of the surrounding areas. It certainly has been cloudier and cooler than most summers. Personally, I like it, but it's been hell on the tomatoes. And, of course, May was very chilly; too chilly to get plants in when you would normally plant them in the middle of May. Brrr, nights in the 40s, with a couple of frost warnings for outlying areas. But, despite the chilliness, the last couple of weeks in May were a lot less humid than normal and there were many days of bright sunshine. It was just too cold to plant most annuals. I believe it was all the sunshine and reduced humidity that caused the roses to bloom 2 or 3 weeks earlier than normal. It certainly wasn't heat that caused it. :-) I thought about black plastic, but you talk yourself out if it, saying, "Well, next week it will warm up, so it's silly to put the plastic down this late in the game." Learned that lesson. Weather is unpredictable. :-)