I live near a famous town known for a certain address given by Honest Abe. Great little town if you have never been. It is full of lots of motorcycles this week. That is the one thing I noticed about the raised beds, specifically with a SFG mix. The soil stays moist but any excess water is removed before plants suffer. It has definitely been a wet year and the garden has been entirely unaffected in any negative way. The one exception is really tender/young plants or unsupported larger plants in strong winds. I started gardening last year as a bit of a 'back to basics/make all my own food from scratch' so going organic was a given(hopefully, I'll be doing it 20+ years from now when I hit my fifties). I did try organic fertilizers last year but not this year. My only 'pesticides' have been beneficial insects and plants. Ironically, the only pests I have found this year are the ones that want to find me---ticks. But organic produce is hard to come by and the variety is often lacking. Growing it myself means saving money, not having to drive all over to find other organic farmers, and I think it tastes better/is fresher meaning it also lasts longer once harvested/etc. It also means I can grow varieties I can't get in a store---like purple basil or baby doll watermelon I am trying this year---I can only imagine what my neighbors and any passersby think of my approximately 10 foot trellis 3/4 filled with plants. I know gardening is one gigantic learning experience but I had zero. I read up in late April 2014 and sort of went for it so to see things doing well makes me happy like a kid on Christmas morning. I managed a garden with insect and sun help and THAT came out of it? I admit I am easily entertained but it seems surreal---zucchini easily 2-3 times the size of a store bought organic zucchini? Even more surreal when I realize, aside from adding organic matter back to the bed at the start of the season, I haven't done any garden work. I did quite a bit last year but this year wanted to see the contrast. I just walk around the garden for a few minutes every day or two harvesting and that is it. Obviously, not having to break my back is nice but the garden is healthier too. :) Not exactly an outcome I was expecting. Nor was I expecting this...as a funny aside, as I was writing this, I received yet another request for my baking from a family member using produce from my garden! It adds to the surreal feelings. Maybe that thought of opening a restaurant focusing on organic ingredients is not so silly after all? Steve

Susan, It was the common orange-flowered one called buttefly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). I have grown it several times and it doesn't like ANY of my soil. My sandy soil drains too quickly, my clay drains too slowly. It did incredibly well (raised from seed) in a raised bed in the veggie garden a couple of years ago. There it got huge, bloomed all summer long and seemed perfectly happy, but it didn't come back the following year. (It was a dry winter, and I don't water the veg garden in the winter, so maybe it got too dry?) Ironically, it grow wild along the roadside on a country road about 1/3 mile south of us, growing up and down the fenceline. Turn onto our road, though, and you'll see one or two of them a short distance from that other road, and then no more. I think the clay just gets thicker and more dense once you turn onto our road, and the farther north you go in our direction, the worse the clay gets. Sometimes, if I break new ground, I'll get volunteers of the pink-flowered milkweed that has big, tropical-looking leaves, but I haven't broken any new ground lately and haven't had it the last few years. And in the pasture we have the Antelope Horns Milkweed everywhere. Ilene, We always have tons of Johnson grass too, and I pull it out of the beds all the time, but most especially when it has just rained. I hate the stuff and it is EVERYWHERE here...in every yard, every pasture, every bar ditch, and along every fenceline. Ironically, our land that we bought and built our home on was part of the Johnson Farm for many years AND, of course, it is on Johnson Road. (I need to ask the Johnson family if they got their family name from the Johnson grass that is so abundant here.) My common white datura reseeds in both clay soil and sandy soil, but the various hybrid ones with different colored flowers and double flowers are pickier and only reseed in sandier soil. The ones in sandier soil or in clay soil improved with compost grow larger, though, than the ones in unimproved clay. Here, the common white datura is known as jimson weed and often grows wild in pastures. I think you are having a pretty good garden year considering the rainfall you have experienced. You are very resilient and are quickly finding ways to work around the weather "challenges". Imagine how much fun it will be in an "average" year with normal rainfall! I do not think you are whiney at all. This forum is a great place to talk through ALL the challenges and successes, all the good times and bad, all the ups and the downs of gardening in Oklahoma. I honestly think that Oklahoma is one of the toughest places to garden because our weather changes non-stop. Where else in the USA can you go from ice to snow to rain to sleet to hail to tornadoes to drought to wildfire, etc......and all in one year or even in one month (sometimes it seems like it is all in one week!). I have seen rains so heavy that the roads flooded, and then the dry, dormant grasses went up in a blaze of wildfire a day or two later, and firefighters trying to fight the wildfires found their trucks stuck in the muds from the heavy rains. Living here is a challenge, and gardening is even more so. NO ONE understands it better than those of us who live here and garden here. I agree that the people on this forum rock! I have never seen a more agreeable, considerate, kind, giving and helpful group of people. On many forums you see a lot of "discussions" that turn into heated debates, and you see a lot of out-of-control egos that clash. We don't have that here, and I am so proud of our entire group of individuals on this forum. I think we can and do disagree with one another, but we are not disagreeable in the manner in which we do so. Sharon, I agree with you that we all are blessed to have our homes and gardens, even when they are giving us fits. I think we're blessed to have each other too. Susan, I had a lot of butterflies earlier in the season, but they have been fairly sparse lately. Maybe it is the wind....or lots of predators/diseases because we had a huge upsurge in population last year and that is always followed by predators/diseases and then a smaller population. (Just like the corresponding up and down population cycles of rabbits/coyotes.) This week I am beginning to see more, especially black swallowtails. Y'all our lovely day lasted until noon, and then the heat and humidity combined to make it miserable, along with the wicked mosquitoes. I've been inside for a couple of hours but hope to get back out in the yard after dinner. Dawn

We only got three inches, and the rain really didn't start falling here until sometime after 10 p.m last night. We're in great shape....just mud and puddles, no flooding anywhere in our county that I've heard. I've linked the current Drought Monitor map which included reported rainfall through Tuesday. As you can see by looking at it, OK is in fine shape--probably the best shape its been in overall in at least a year. In Texas, the drought is ebbing away slowly. Parts of it still look pretty bad on the linked map, but they're improving weekly. I am starting to laugh at DH and his fire department buddies. They keep telling me "it is going to be a bad fire season as soon as this rain stops". I have started telling them "no, it isn't". The weather this year is so completely different from what we've had the last four years that I am not at all concerned about the winter fire season. I'm more concerned we're in for months of heavy rainfall, courtesy of El Nino, and that we're going to have a hard time planting in spring because everything is going to be very waterlogged. I still have a wonderful garden....still producing peppers (ugh--I've had more than enough of them), okra, green beans, corn, winter squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. I've got broccoli and cabbage going for fall/winter crops. They all need sunlight to grow though, and that seems in short supply. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Drought Monitor Map for Southern Region

Beth- The OP's plant is still kinda on the small side. Small-ish plants will tend to flower early if they have had some sort of stress, whether it be transplanting or a water shortage or whatever. Your plant is in a completely different situation than the OP's. Yours is larger and is flowering because it's time to. Nothing to fret over. The leaf damage is something you need to look into though. Several diseases/fungi affect cucurbits. Here's a good link to check out: http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/pests/plant_pests/veg_fruit/hgic2206.html "Yes, mine is producing, but not near at the rate of the number of blooms I am seeing." Squash have separate male and female flowers. Females have a little fruit behind the bloom whereas males have just a skinny stem. I see a lot of male flowers in your pics. That's why there are more flowers than fruit. Nothing to worry about. Rodney