Your plants look good as they always do, Jay.

I feel your pain with regard to the rain - I am not sure of our day count but I am pretty sure it is over 30.

We pay for city water so I have held back on planting and transplanting a lot of things and am watering what I have planted just enough to keep them going and to keep the ground cool for the lettuce. I really hope we get some rain soon or all our market profits will go to the water bill.

You could have had ours. 4" in less then two hours.

We do have our own well, that helps, but I am sure the electric bill will be high. I spoke to a fellow market gardener in Oklahoma. They had a hot dry summer last year and I picked her mind for advice.

PAFlowers: Send that rain this way, I will take it.

Jay

PAFlowers, drop some off to me on the way. Weatherman just announced that my area needed 6" just to catch up, some other areas need at least 12". Another hot, dry and windy day tomorrow. 50% of rain tonight, but nobody is even guessing about how much some of us MIGHT get. Been watering what we do have in, but have just about given up marketing this year due to this. Last year was dry, but nothing like this year. Thank goodness, we have a good well.

Marla, westcentral Indiana, near IL border.

It also included hail, probably 40-50 mile an hour wind gusts and flash flooding that washed away the end of my driveway, took large hunks of amesite out of the state road in front of my house (still closed), washed away a lot of topsoil from the field and covered with mud or totally washed out hundreds of newly planted flowers. Also flooded my basement cooler with about three inches of water and submerged the cooler compressor. Still want it?

We have had the winds, you can keep those. Just send the rain. Last June, we had a 6 to 8 inch rain from in about 5 hours. We had some serious flooding. At this point, I am interested, maybe just a test drive!

Wow lots of awesome stuff to see in those pics! I take it you use the plastic laying tractor. I might switch to that someday. I saw a farm nearby like that on Saturday but they were unforunately flooded. We have had 6 inches in less than a week. Sorry to tell ya! We never have that. Plus the forecast was for continued drought and I was fine with that.

little minnie,
All my plastic mulch was laid by hand. It has taken a while to do, but it is so worth it! When the ground was moist, it would take about 30 minutes or less. Now with the ground so dry, it is taking 45 minutes to an hour. However, the advantage is 1 hour spent prior to growing season saves hours of weeding during the season. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to weed the holes in the plastic and I can run my tiller down the rows. I wish I would have done this sooner.

Here is how I lay plastic mulch. Basically, I have deconstructed a mulch layer and do everything it does by hand. I put a link below to show how I lay plastic. I really wish I had a tractor and mulch layer, don't get me wrong! :)

Jay

Here is a link that might be useful: Plastic Mulch laying by hand

Wow, PAFlowers! Do you have flood insurance to cover the replacement/repair costs?

Hope you all in mid-West get some rain but not that rain. We could use a little more here (threatened all week but we only got about 1/4" last Monday), at least we've been having overcast skies most days and heavy dews at night, been watering berries and cool-weather crops near the house but potatoes and onions (at least the tops) look OK without it so far. Better than the head lettuce (which may never head) and kale (which the ants are now eating the roots of?!).

I'm going to plant my curcurbit seeds today, and transplant my tomatoes Friday - we're supposed to have low in the high 40's Thurs night (and sunny Thurs day) so I figured might as well wait, then some showers predicted for Sat, should be perfect rather than putting them all out in high-80 degree weather today.

Jay, I've got black plastic contractor bags on the beds I was going to plant cukes in, was thinking maybe cutting them in half (so only single layer) and keeping them there for mulch (I do have drip hose to lay under)? Or would it be too hot (all day sun) for those, best to use the plastic for tomatoes (but those I'm mulching with burlap and hay, too much area to use plastic bags on and DH won't let me spend the $ on rolls since I just spent over $500 on remesh and T posts to use as fencing)? How thick (mils) is the plastic mulch you use, and is it reusable? Do you cover the plastic with anything to keep the roots cool in the summer?

The plastic mulch I used is a 1.25 mil embossed black plastic mulch. It was $85, plus shipping for 4,000 feet. It is a single use, but you could plant two crops into it in a year.

Now that the plants are so big, you can hardly even see the plastic mulch under the plants. So now I probably won't cover the plastic to keep the roots cool.

Jay

Thanks - where did you order it from? Really doesn't seem that expensive - maybe next year though since I already have burlap and hay for the tomatoes. Oh, and how wide is the roll - 3-4ft? Assuming 4000ft long, or did you mean 4000sf so 1000ft long?

I'll have to check to see how thick the contractor garbage bags are - what do you think about using that for cukes, squash, etc.? Might mulch with some hay over top while they're young, the leaves will cover later but the hay will help keep the fruit off the hot (and sometimes, hopefully wet, plastic)?

ajsmama, no insurance just pick up the pieces and move on.
jrslick, 1.25 mil at $85? good price. I pay about $90 for 1 mil

Most insurance will not cover vegetables UNLESS you are planting at least 2 acres of 1 crop, the last I heard.

I would use the 6", just not all at one time, a steady easy light rain adding up to 6" would be OK. I'm on rolling land, so most of overflow will just flow down to the creek at bottom on my land. It's so dry that it might not overflow at all.

We got rain this morning, just enough to turn the windshield wipers on, then it quit. I wasn't home, so it probably didn't rain on the farm. Typical for this year.

I was thinking more of the cooler, not the veggies. My insurance doesn't cover veggies, bacteria, fungus...

91 degrees today (and we thought yesterday was hot!), no T-storms or showers as promised, but Severe Storm Warning out for the next 1/2 hour. I sure hope we don't get the downpours. But I can't complain about drought anymore - we did get over half normal for April and May, after being really dry the beginning of the year.

1/2" of rain would be nice, would be really nice if we all could get 1/2" - 1" every night (not during the day).

Don't know how much we got in the 2 hrs since I started typing this (interrupted by having to unplug everything) but hard enough that I wonder if some greens got flattened and potatoes need to be re-hilled. We'll see in the AM.

Storm is heading east of Hartford now, not sure if going to hit RI or not.

Ack I have a tractor sized roll and it tires me out if the soil is fluffy! Anyway if you are laying it by hand why have the space in between like a tractor does? Just put plastic everywhere.
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I even transplanted onions and corn into it. I have tons of weeds you see. I do not find it oppresses the soil at all. If you saw how many worms I have you would believe me.

The plastic mulch I used is 3 feet wide by 4,000 feet. I bought it from BerryHill Irrigation.

Here my girls are helping me out, holding the plastic tight.
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Jay

We are using landscape fabric, the expensive stuff, 4-6' wide and we're using BETWEEN the rows, with just enough 'open' for planting. We need more weed suppression between the rows, and we will only need to weed WITHIN the rows. Plus, since we are not cutting any holes, we will be able to use for several years. We got our from someone that thought they would be able to buy land cheap around here, but found out differently. He moved from MO/AR area to Indiana with everything to plant and harvest except the land. His loss was our gain.

Sunday/Monday was 96, still no rain.

Hope you get rain soon - I don't know what official was since it lasted past midnight (I think) and my rain gauge was cracked, but Weather Underground station near us recorded 0.18", TWC says 0.28. Guess I'll have to get the wheelbarrow on level ground and measure how much was in that (DH leaves it upright - drives me crazy but I don't always catch it and til it over before a storm).

I'm using a double layer (uncut bags) of burlap covered with bark mulch, hay, whatever I can get my hands on, between rows near the house. Out in the 3000sf area with raised beds that we just fenced, I started putting wood chips but only got about 1 cy and the weeds are growing up through it even though I put it on about 3" thick at the end where the weeds were the worst. I didn't pull them, just tried to smother them - didn't work. We have something really tenacious that even started growing (weak and spindly-looking like bean sprouts) under the burlap on the beds, but practically have to dig *those* out, stems just break when you pull.

I haven't been out there to check potatoes and onions, but the greens, strawberries, peas, blueberries near the house look fine, not flattened, no berries knocked off. Looks like a deer nipped off a couple of shoots of 1 of my raspberries though - spit 1 out but I didn't find the other. Guess I have to fence/net off those 2 rows while they're growing. I hope they won't bother them once they're tougher and spinier - though I don't know about the TC blackberries since those are thornless. I don't really want to have to fence off the whole area since we have grass/weeds growing between the mounded rows (24 ft long), just the width of the lawnmower. But if I have to I'll put burlap and mulch down there too, try to smother everything (after mowing first!). And make a gate at 1 end between the 2 rows (was going to add a 3rd eventually) so we can get in. I hope a 6-7ft wide x 25 long area sloping downhill (rows run across the slope) doesn't need to be fenced 7ft high to keep the deer out.

That's why I haven't left my tomato plants out at night - take them into garage - the wildlife around here is so bold, the motion sensor light doesn't deter the bear getting into garbage right outside garage, and the deer and turkeys will come right up to the house at night, and into the backyard during the day. Found deer prints going over my potato bed (1ft high) and a couple of seed potatoes pulled out of the ground before we put the fence up. Of course, down there (1000ft from house) it's like a deer/turkey/bear/coyote superhighway, from all the tracks we find.

Our animal problem at this time is raccoons. They love to get into my flower pots and eat all the cat food.

We're supposed to get a good chance at rain tomorrow night, maybe 1/2".

We're finally getting a good soaking type of rain, don't know how much, but every bit of it is appreciated.

Soil moisture here was still decent, but we too are needing rain. We ended up w/a couple showers that netted us about 8 tenths. I'm amazed at how early everything is and how other things are hanging on. I'm still picking lettuce! Our temps have been upper 90's then down to 50 back to 90's now down to 60's this week. Like Marla, my biggest problem has been predation. With the dry weather and ripe berries, the critters are really taking their toll. Then again, who ever heard of ripe blackberries in May??

We have absolutely no water on our property. Every owner has tried to find water and failed. That's why we're digging a pond. I cannot imagine the luxury of having running water on our farm. Right now, we bring in every drop.

While I acknowledge others' great success w/plastic, I have failed repeatedly using it. I have no answer why, but everything I've planted on it has died--maybe it's been the floods. This will be the first year I won't even try, so I just persist w/grass clippings and leaves. I bag my 5 acres, and friends give me their clippings as well. I also collected 1200 bags of leaves last fall to put down. It is labor intensive but does well w/weed suppression and gives back to the soil. Preemergent herbicides have failed miserably as well.

I had a dr's appt today that ran longer than expected, so all I got done was pot up some dwarf tomatoes I picked up at the greenhouse yesterday (2ft tall in 4" pots so I went up to 2 gal) and water most of the tomatoes (didn't even get into the garden/field) before having to get kids from school.

Yeah on rain Marla! Brookw - wish we could get 0.8" - that's about how much we've gotten in the past 3 weeks not counting the .57" we got on the 15th - so we HAVE gotten 1.28 in the past 3 weeks and 2.71 for the month but most of that was from two 1/2" days, two 1/4" days and a 1/3" day early in the month - we actually only got .14" the other day. We're about 2" under for May, 2" under for April, and Nov - Mar were way below normal.

No ripe berries here yet (except for strawberries). Lettuce, kale, snow peas, etc. are not doing well - though I did count 3 pods on DD's plant that we kept in a glass until it had a pretty extensive root system (and 1 more on another pea plant). The chard and beets are looking pretty good, wish I had more of them.

How do you think you will get water in the pond if every owner has tried to find water (drilled wells?) and failed? I have a pretty good pond, still trying to figure out how to use it since I don't want to run electricity another 1000ft back, was looking at diesel powered "trash pumps" but Dad and DH said that's not what I wanted - I think it would work with a good filter on the output, at least I wouldn't worry about the pump.

Well we finally got some rain last night. Luckily we missed the big hail and 70-80 mph winds. We ended up with 1.14 inches. It was fairly slow, but soaked in good. There are so many cracks in the fields, it just ran into those and filled them up! It had been 46 days since the last significant rain. Now tonight, it is suppose to get down to 42 degrees! It will be June 1!

Jay

42?? Crazy! I don't know what it got down to here, but it's supposed to be 47-49 as lows all week (and showers, but we'll see how that goes - best chance for rain is tomorrow.

Glad you finally got a good soaking rain.

ajm, My pond will be in a dammed up ravine that will fill up w/run off. It will be at least 15 feet deep and a little over an acre in size. There is still woods surrounding it, so it should be real pretty. When I get a building and electricity next year, I'll pump water from it to irrigate. It may take up to 2 years to fill up, depending upon precipitation, of course. There is also a water company that is running lines out to our rural area. Eventually, I'll also hook up to it to have all the potable water I will ever need--finally.

Are the bottom/sides of the ravine pretty nonporous? Seems to me that if you just depend on rain/runoff to fill and don't have any groundwater, it might not fill very fast, and might run dry quite often (heck, even if it were lined, depending on how much precip you got, how much you used, and how hot it gets in the summer, you could lose quite a bit from evaporation over an acre in surface area).

I'm lucky we have springs (so why did we have to go over 500ft and frack our well when we built the house? Neighbor 200ft away has so much water he can't use it with 2 teenage girls, had to put in overflow!). Our only problem is electricity. Actually, not a problem, just a big expense.

Good luck with the pond - keep us updated on how it works out.

AJM, ponds around here can usually hold without much on their own after awhile.

We were supposed to get about 42-45, but it only got to 52. Nothing was bothered since everything is well established and hardened off.