My garden is fine. I SFG in raised beds and the only thing I (might) have lost is marigolds. They are pretty well sprawled out right now. My Cavendish Banana which I planted in July did very well in the storm, as did my gardenia and butterfly bushes. I have lost all three of my surviving tomato plants, but they were about done anyway. They will go into compost tomorrow, along with all of my squashes: cucumber, pumpkin and watermelon. All three are stripped of leaves, although I think they lost the fight because of the squash bugs I've been fighting all summer. My roses are great. I have no clue what kind they are, but they were over 8 feet tall before hubby had to cut them to lower the awnings over the front windows. However, they seem to have liked the haircut..and it kept the wind from uprooting them. We didn't have any flooding on our lot, thank goodness. We did have about 3 feet of water in our roads for 3 days, but someone finally found the part to open the locks, so we're dry now. I posted pics of the flooding earlier, but never thought I'd be so darn glad to see blacktop! In other good news, we were lucky all around. We only lost power for about 6 hours total, and not all in one chunk of time. Our phones and cable/internet stayed active throughout the mess. And, everyone here was able to work even during the aftermath. We've been blessed, while other people in our county suffered complete flooding of their homes. I'm thankful that my garden gets to be my biggest worry right now. :)

O nut... Is there a reason you are not concerned about damaging your soil in the rain? Claire... It is a very long post for sure. :-) I think all this rain is great for a new garden. I put in new shrubs last spring and then got hit with drought for 2 months. I barely kept up with the watering enough, and this year, they are loving all this rain. So are my trees that got hit with caterpillars bad this spring. DtD... I am glad to hear you had improvement with adding compost. It seems like compost is the cure for everything. [g] You must have a lot of shrubs to end up with that many trimmings. Ego... This year, I don't have much to deadhead yet, with all this rain. [g] Thanks for the reminder to try to keep out of the beds when they are wet. drippy... looking out my window this morning, it looks so still and dark, with no air moving at all. Sooner or later, we are bound to have sun again..and then probably no rain the rest of the summer. lol So, deadheading, pruning, weeding, transplanting with bagged potting soil. I am all for it. I love being out in the rain. I just have some lingering concerns about whether the pruning, deadheading can spread disease. What about something like Hollyhocks that often have rust? Would touching those leaves and then touching other plants spread that? I know with tomato plants, I have read not to touch the leaves while wet so as not to spread disease. Isn't this the type of weather the kind that promotes tomato diseases? I noticed some of the lower leaves on one tomato yesterday looking a little funky, even though they have been mulched. That and the zinnias I had last year were very mildewy, so if I don't have obvious problems like rust on Hollyhocks or mildew on zinnias, is that something I should be concerned about? Speaking of boots...really pretty blue color. Does anyone have any particular brand of clogs/rain boots that they prefer? So did we cover all the bases, of what everyone is doing in the garden during the rain? Any other jobs that you attempt to do in the rain? [g] Has anyone heard of a 'rain garden'?

Like you, I have a neighbor who is very controlling of MY property. Problem is, we live on less than 1/4 acre and we're practically on top of eachother. In no time, we put up a fence, but he was really bitter because of that. He liked having access to our yard, and would always comment that he comes in our yard when we are gone - very weird. He was upset that he had to trim the grass along our fence, so instead he started spraying grass killer. In the process my plants along the perimeter of my fence started dying. We also put a LOCKING gate at the back of our property, and keep it locked at all times. Who actually goes into their neighbors property all the time like it is their own? He would also yell at me (he's an older guy) because I over fertilized my own hostas one year and they started dying. What business is it of his? He has also sprayed my basement windows with his hose because they get dirty after it rains. In the process, he cracked one of my window panes. Luckily, I was getting the windows replaced with glass block anyway, but he wears on me at times. Trying to be "nice" to people like that who are inconsiderate in the first place is not the way to handle it. You have to be very frank with them. I told him to never spray along my fence again because he's killing my plants. Enough said, he got the point. I agree - send a certified letter outlining dates, times, take pictures and tell them that if they continue to destroy your property you will consult with an attorney regarding your rights. This is a civil matter. You may also want to consider posting "no trespassing" signs. we have a woodpile behind our garage, and found out that a neighbor, who happens to be an ATTORNEY, was helping himself to our wood. We had to cover it with a tarp and post a NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY accordingly. The message is clear. They have no regard for your property, and people like that will eventually try to take it over.

More times than not, but that isn't to say 'always', when I ask a question of an employee at a nursery, greenhouse, or plant store, I get an answer so off the wall I instantly recognize it would be futile to respond with anything but a thank you and a hasty retreat. That sort of encounter is a bit like calling a fireman because you're stuck on a burning roof and when he arrives he tosses you one end of the rope he's holding and tells you to jump. You just KNOW you're pretty much on your own. Repotting includes bare rooting, root pruning, and a change of soil, so it's much more extensive than potting up. Potting up is a half measure that ensures your plant will forever be limited by the root congestion inherent in plantings only potted up, while repotting ensures the planting will be free of those limitations until the approximate point in time when the root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact. As your plants grow, you can avoid the need to repot often by potting up before they reach that stage of congestion where the root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact, but at some point you'll need to start repotting (or dividing if more appropriate) if you want your plantings to be free of limitations due to root congestion. Soils run the gamut from unusable/poor to superlative/almost perfect. If there is a useful point of delineation that determines good from bad soils, it would almost necessarily be soils you can water to beyond the point of saturation (so you can flush the soil of accumulating salts at will) w/o the plant paying a tax levied by prolonged periods of saturation. That arrangement can sap a huge fraction of your plants' genetic potential. If only for the fact they will fight the grower tooth and nail for control of a planting's vitality, they should be avoided at nearly any cost. Media that provide appropriate structure and long term structural integrity, which are key elements of a good container medium, make your growing experience soo much more rewarding; still, they are not easy to find on the shelf. I used to recommend any of 3 formulas of Fafard brand media, all of which were based on chunky material (pine bark), but Fafard was acquired by Sunshine and the bark they are using is quite fine and quite advanced in stage of breakdown due to composting. It's unlikely you'll find a medium on the shelf that is as good as you can make for half the price, if you can find a source of pine bark that is appropriate in size from the bag, or can readily be screened to an appropriate size w/o significant loss of volume. I've always been lucky enough to be able to find appropriate. Witness the products at 3, 6, and 9 o'clock from 3 different packagers. All are or are very close to ideal for use in container media: I use a 5:1:1 ratio of 5 pine bark (ratio varies slightly with the size gradient of the bark) to 1 peat to 1 perlite + dolomite garden lime. It produces a superb medium that works for you instead of against you. You can also make an extremely productive medium from mostly inert ingredients. Who would think that you could grow well in a medium that provides almost nothing in the way of nutrition? Lots of little rocks and a bit of pine bark, all of which are screened to a size range that ensures the medium holds no excess water. In Frisco, you should be able to find fir bark prescreened to 1/8-1/4" easily. Ewing Irrigation has Turface MVP (tan particles), and you can use Manna Pro Poultry Grit in place of the white particles. That's what I grow all my trees in (around 250-275 in pots at last count. Al