Joy, If you planted the seeds just a few days ago, they shouldn't be very tall yet. They ought to be sprouts that are just barely above the surface of the soil. If brand new seedlings that have just sprouted are already 'tall', then that tells me they probably need more light. Otherwise, they get leggy, fall over and then often die, because the stems are too thin to support their height/weight. When I start seeds indoors, I start them on a shelf under a fluorescent light that is so close to the soil surface that it almost touches the soil. Under lights that are close to touching them, the seedlings stay short and stocky. Then, as they grow, I raise the lights (they are on chains so I can move them up and down) a little at a time, keeping them low enough that the lights are always just barely (and, by that, I mean maybe a quarter-inch) above the top of the plants. If you are raising seedlings that have a light source that is several inches to several feet away from them, they will stretch and get leggy. Try moving them to the brightest location you can to slow down their upward growth. Also, you can slow them down by keeping them in a cool (preferably unheated) room at 50-60 degrees. I usually set out broccoli plants when they are 3 to 5 weeks old, although you can stretch that to 6 or 7 weeks if you absolutely have to--like if it is pouring down rain every day and you cannot get outside to plant. The older they are when you transplant them, the more likely they are to have a little transplant shock and "stall" in their growth. I'm aiming for a planting date for broccoli sometime in the last week of this month or the first week of March (my ave. last freeze date is Mar. 27th), and I choose my planting date based on how cool the nights are.....and whether ice or sleet is expected. If you want to plant your broccoli plants outside, look at your 10-day forecast and see if the temperatures are going to stay no colder than the 30s, although it is OK if they go down into the upper 20s, although not preferred. There's a somewhat critical period when the broccoli plants are 4" to 6" tall that they cannot be exposed to temperatures below 40 degrees for a prolonged period. If they are exposed to temps below 40 for a long period of time while 4" to 6" tall, the plants are forced into dormancy and then, when it warms up, the often set their heads prematurely and flower prematurely, and you won't get much of a harvestable crop, if any at all. The best guideline I can think of is that you can set them out about 10 days to 2 weeks before your average last freeze date if the extended forecast looks good for that time. If you put your plants in the ground and very cold weather then threatens, you can cover them with floating row covers or frost blankets (sheer curtain panels offer some protection too), sheets, blankets, etc., at night or set milk jugs ot 2-liter bottles filled with water close to them. The bottles build up heat during the day and release it at night and that tiny bit of heat may be enough to keep them a few degrees warmer. I hope this info helps. Dawn

Thanks, Bon. Muddy is always good, except when I'm mopping up the dog and cat pawprints off the floors. (grin) We're dry so often that it seems abnormal when we're wet. After two wet years, I hope I'm not forgetting how to garden when it is really and truly dry. It is sad that being abnormally dry is normal for y'all, but there's nothing you can do to change it.

I agree. I was going to link it yesterday but wasn't sure it anyone cared during this holiday week. It's been drizzling and raining here all morning, which doesn't mean we have much in the rain gauge to show for it. Right now the rain gauge has recorded a whopping 0.04", which isn't going to add to the overall rainfall total very much. Here's this week's Oklahoma Drought Monitor: Oklahoma Drought Monitor And, here's the one for the whole USA: U S Drought Monitor I can't help noticing that the season-long pattern of pre-drought and drought conditions moving inward from the east and from the west has continued and now they're meeting in the middle more and more each week. This cannot be a good thing. Some parts of California have improved over the course of 2016 and that's nice to see, though they need a lot more improvement.

Robert, How can you be dry when you get about 100 inches of rain per year? All kidding aside, your soil drains too fast. My garden wilts daily too, so you know, in an odd way (since misery loves company), I'm glad I'm not the only one with that issue so early in the summer. We only went up to 96 (at our mesonet station) and 97 (at our house) but our heat index was 110. That's ridiculous, and it is at least the second time this year we've had a heat index that high. I feel a miserable summer coming on. The bigger problem is that it isn't cooling of much at night. When it is something like 85 when you go to sleep and 77 when you wake up, then you know the plants and animals outdoors didn't get much of a break. Hi Jack, I didn't do any food preservation today. Yay! I do have a big pile of tomatos, peppers and squash staring at me as I type this, so tomorrow is going to be all about food preservation. Probably Saturday too. It will be too hot to be outdoors, so I might as well be in the kitchen. I'm glad you got rain. Things are getting pretty bad here. Last week some vehicle on I-35 either was dragging a chain or had a tire shedding pieces that started several fires alongside the road from mile marker 27 to mile marker 16. Even the green grass was burning (and making tons of smoke) and it was windy, so the firefighters were working hard to try to stop those fires. To have that happen this time of the year, when we usually are enjoying our two rainiest months of May and June is just bizarre. I noticed all the firefighters are wound up and quickly doing vehicle maintenance, buying supplies, etc. to gear up for a very early start to the summer fire season. It seems like there wasn't much of a break this year between the winter fire season and the summer fire season. It is almost like we skipped Spring. I have to hurry and finish all my canning as soon as possible because it is impossible for me to leave when the pagers go off if I am in the middle of a canning batch. I weeded a little today but then gave it up. We have too many venomous snakes and the plantings in the garden are so thick now that I cannot see where I am putting my hand when I weed, so it officially now is too dangerous to weed, which makes me crazy. Every time I put my hand down to pull a weed today, I worried a snake was going to strike it from the shadows or from beneath the plants. I just cannot function that way, so the weeds will be trying to take over now. Hazel, The guys who track the moisture levels are monitoring broad trends (and we in our gardens are monitoring the more narrow trend of moisture on our own places) and have certain parameters they follow. If you read the OK Mesonet's Daily Ticker, Gary McManus often drops hints about what is coming. If I picked up on his hints correctly, y'all are going to move into drought pretty quickly if you don't get some good rainfall very soon, and he didn't seem to indicate that he thought that sort of rainfall is in the works for central OK. Right now he is using the term Flash Drought because we have progressed into it fairly quickly. I believe the kind we have in our county would be the Flash Drought caused by a lack of precipitation. Some years we get the other kind of Flash Drought---the one where rainfall (on paper, anyway) has been adequate but the onset of persistent, extreme heat is causing so much moisture evaporation from the ground (and, I guess, the accompanying excessive transpiration by the plants) that an area progresses quickly into drought caused more by the heat than a lack of moisture. Often I feel like we are progressing to the next drought level well ahead of it showing up on the Drought Monitor map, but I do think we gardeners (and farmers and ranchers) are more sensitive to perceived dryness than the average person. I've always said that by the time the Drought Monitor finally puts us in the Abnormally Dry category, it already is so dry that I can keep the garden plants alive with irrigation but that I cannot keep them producing. So, it hurts my gardener's heart to see we have moved into Moderate Drought. It was bad enough being Abnormally Dry. It is early in the summer for this, and the plants still are producing pretty well from the Spring rainfall, though we're extremely short. I think we're about 8" below normal and that's a horrible way to go into the summer. If this heat and dryness continue, I don't know how long the garden will continue to produce well. Once the canning is done, tomato plants are expendable except for a couple for fresh eating. The onions are beyond needing water, so I don't have to water them. Even the asparagus probably can get by without irrigation. Everything else, though, will need water and I cannot abandon the perennial bed along the driveway because it has several new perennials growing in it this year. I tried to group all the heat lovers together in the back garden so that, if I have to, I can stop watering the front garden (except for the perennials) and only water the back garden. It just kills me to do that, but continuing drought and 2 large garden spots force hard decisions to be made. I am having to make water puddles daily for the visiting ducks, Augustus the turkey, the wild birds, the frogs and turtles and the bunnies, deer and wildlife. Tomorrow I'll drag out the old green Mr. Turtle sandbox that we use as a wildlife waterer in drought and fill it with water for the wild things. As the water in the ponds and creeks get low and the water is sort of stagnant and gross, the wild things flock to the Mr. Turtle. It is sort of comical to watch. Animals that normally sort of avoid one another will stand side by side in the evening and drink as soon as all our animals and people are indoors. I can watch them from inside the house if I put Mr. Turtle close enough or at least at the right angle. I am not ready for drought. Really not ready. Only 1.26% of the state is in drought and I live within that 1.26%. That irritates me, but I guess the garden and I will just keep on going for as long as we can and we'll keep hoping for (but not expecting) rain. Dawn