We have plenty to share. I was looking at the solar radiation map earlier and thinking I could trade you some rain for some sunshine, but I think I'll pass now that your temps are dropping. Even with 6 inches, we still have more rain on the way. We always seem to have heavy Spring rain but it usually is in April and May. It is early this year like everything else. Our temps are going back down in the 40's starting tomorrow night.

It isn't raining at the moment but with a humidity of 96%, it might as well be. It looks like we will have a couple more days of thunderstorms.

My plants needed oars! And they got them. I was at work and dreading all this rain and when I got home things survived! Some leaves are gone, but they made it. I was shocked and delighted.

I am hoping it dries up enough to work in the garden this weekend!

Jay,

Hooray for the sound of rain on the rooftop! I hope you get more.

Brrr! Your temps are too cold for me. I hope the cold doesn't stick around long. Our overnight lows here are supposed to stay around the mid 40s for two more nights. Our low temp this morning is 48 degrees, and I think we'll be a couple of degrees lower tomorrow morning and maybe the next morning too. I will have to watch carefully because if the skies clear, we might get a bit colder, though probably not enough to harm anything I have growing.

Carol, I looked at the radar this morning and sighed on behalf of all of you in eastern OK. Mother Nature has a hard time knowing when enough rain is enough, I guess.

Ezzirah, I looked at my garden last night and sighed. I have pathways between my raised beds that had 4 to 6" of water standing in them. The same techniques I use to slow down runoff and decrease erosion unfortuntely also cause water to stand in the pathways after very heavy rainfall. Today I am going to put on my boots and venture into the land of goopey mud and dig a trench through one bed at the end of the garden that is serving sort of as a dam to hold in that water to see if I can get the pathways to drain and dry. As long as I stay in the pathways and don't walk in the raised beds (which I try to avoid doing all the time anyway), I can work in the garden, but my work will be limited to weeding, mulching and scouting for pests. The only areas left to plant are those that aren't raised, and I cannot plant in them without walking in them due to their size.

We have pond-sized puddles all over our property. From past experience I know that the largest of them will hold water for 1 to 3 weeks. A neighbor of ours had a pump out in his yard yesterday, trying to pump a small lake of water away from his trees and lawn. I was thinking that I wished I had a little pump like that in my garden. What I really want is some sort of specialized shop vac that could suck the excess moisture out of the soil. If only they made such a thing!

Rainfall only comes in too amounts here---too much and too little---and it is hard to say which one is the worst.

Dawn

Too bad you can't pump all that water into a giant cistern to use in August...

Dawn,
Thanks. We haven't received a lot yet but still raining some. At my station it hadn't came much at all but was showering when I left. Hopefully we will get some more over the next few hours. I was sure you didn't send any as you seem to greedy with yours. LOL. A lot better than the blowing wind. I think everything will be fine. I will get serious about planting again when the weather warms back up this weekend. Going to an auction to try to buy a Troy Bilt cultivator plus Saturday. Have heard good things about them and there was only 200 made. I still have a little rototilling to finish but too wet now. I'm heading out to graft some more and then pot up some also. Jay

Jay, You can have all my rain, but guess what comes with it? Mud. Standing water in the garden paths between raised beds and that water stays there so long that algae starts growing in it. What looks worse--brown water or green slimey water? I have both of them in my garden, and if you want my rain you have to take the side effects. Did I mention grass and ground that "squish" when you walk? Winter rye grass that is growing an inch a day and is holding so much water it is hard to cut? You also have to take all the water standing in the driveway and the pastures, the fire ants popping up out of the ground and making mounds, etc. So, if you think you want it, I swear I am not being greedy with it...you can have it all!

It is too wet to do much of anything and we have had clouds and rumbles of thunder all day but no real rain.

We don't need no stinkin' rain!

I don't know if I'll ever be able to rototill my garden again this year unless I wear water skiis.

I mowed wet rye grass today. It had grown 1 to 2 inches since Tim mowed it Monday morning. I did have to dodge and go around a bunch of puddles.

Dawn

Jay, I hope you can get the Troy Bilt Plus. I enjoy old things like that. I have a 1981 Troy Bilt Horse that still works very well, but its a complete different design than the Plus. The chain drive on the plus will be more energy efficient and the 12" wide tines will put much less load on the engine. A machine like that should out-last a dozen Mantis tillers.

Larry

Jay, I know you have a tractor, but I have heard people say that if you garden less than an acre you could get by with that tiller. Now, you would get a work-out, but who cares.

Larry, You are probably right, but be careful. My Mantis is a family member, and I couldn't do with it. LOL Actually, I have used it less this year than ever, because I have been experimenting with planting without tilling. We have tilled in a few places that needed to have the compost mixed in a little better, but in other places, I have just planted without tilling in an attempt to not disturb the soil. We did use it to dig the trenches for the potatoes though. The only drawback I have seen so far, is that when I till I mound up the soil better to give it a raised bed effect and the two beds that are ground level are holding to much water.

Of course, I wasn't expecting this much water at one time. The Mesonet shows my 3 day total for this storm is now at 6.61 inches. Jay, isn't that about your annual rainfall amount?

I am still not comfortable with this storm since it is moving in an odd direction (when it moves at all). The wind direction is strange and when I view it on the NWS radar, there seems to be an awful lot of activity out there. I'll feel better when the weekend arrives.

Dawn if I took the rain only then your lakes wouldn't get any bigger! In this country it is feast or famine. I had only received 2 tenths when I got home. In my deep sand and as dry as the top is I was able to till the straw in a few inches. It rained lightly the whole time. This is an area I just pulled the mulch back and planted last year. But wanted to work the mulch in as it didn't decompose much with the dry summer. The snow from the blizzard did decompose it some. I wanted to work it in some and then let it rain and settle it down. Since I've been home we have received another 3 tenths and still receiving a nice slow rain. The bigger rains are headed towards us but just like last night die before they get here. Every drop is soaking in. The rain has the row cover laying down.

Larry I know you are like Dawn and many of the others tired of the extreme wet. I bought a Troy Bilt Horse last fall at an auction. I've been using it quite a bit. I have a JD 3 pt tiller I attach to my tractor. But there are areas where I can't get with it. The Horse fills many of those gaps. I do have a Mantis tiller also and use it some but not a lot. I've been told the Troy Bilt plus will break up hard ground better and it great to cultivate or till with. With the bicycle wheels they say it is easy to handle and use. If I get it bought it should fill the only tiller void I still have. Supper is ready so better eat, water plants and then head out to the lean to for a while. Jay

Good grief Jay, you aren't just a seed addict. LOL

It was dark but we have received over an inch of rain. What a blessing. This will be of great benefit to the wheat and also my garden. Not a drought buster but we are in much better shape at this time of year than we've been for several years. It brightened my morning. I wanted to update for all of those who check to see if I've received a drink. Thanks again for all of the thoughts.

Carol if I get the TB Plus bought and like it as much as many claim I will probably sell my Mantis. I use it very little anyway. Basically brand new and gets used very little. I like the older TB products. The newer ones are not as well built. Jay

My Mantis is not of much use either. It is a great digging tool but not great in the garden. I have too much wet soil and the rye roots collect on the tines badly. I think I can rotate the tines to the cultivate position and help with the root collecting, but only sunshine and wind will help with the wet soil.

Larry

Jay, I pulled up the radar loop when I woke up this morning and saw the wrap-around rain coming across your area. It brought a smile to my face. I'm happy for you.

I'm not sure what type of storm system could give you large quantities of rain there. The ones that bring us the large rainfall don't stay long enough there and there isn't enough moisture from the south to do much anyway. I remember some of those northwest to southeast storms that come from Colorado at night in the spring did a lot for you one year.

We are coming through your area again in July. Last year it was 113 and bone-dry the day we drove from there to Tulsa. Maybe this year it will be green and cool. Maybe this year I won't get a speeding ticket there either.

Carol, We are tilling less in general but it is a really hard habit to break. I love my Mantis. I only use it in raised beds that have well-amended soil or in the band of sandy soil outside the garden. If we have hard ground outside the garden to till, or want to till the grade-level ground in the garden, Tim gets out the big Troy-Bilt tiller, which is more tiller and more power than I can handle. The last time I tried to use the TB by myself, I was no match for it and the tiller and I just about took out the garden fence. I have left the heavy-duty rototilling for Tim to do ever since that day.

In my part of the state, I could watch the storm clouds build to our west and southwest yesterday. Then they would head our way, go slightly south/southeast of us and begin moving north and northeast. On the far northern and northeastern sides of the county, you could sometimes see them circling back north/northwest. Everyone was watching the sky because it was so odd. After a wave of clouds would come through, we'd have a little sunlight and blue sky and could watch another round of storms build out west and southwest and head our way. That cycle went on throughout most of the day.

Once this low pressure system gets on out of here, the coming high pressure system ought to give us a warm, sunny weekend and I'm looking forward to that. I hope the heat and sunshine will dry up some of the mud and muck.

Jay, Lake Texoma rose over a foot in the first day or two after all the rain fell earlier in the week. It takes a whole lot of runoff to make a lake that size rise a foot.

I'm not surprised your mulch didn't decompose much last year. Mine didn't either, and in many places this spring, I had a good layer of dry mulch on the beds that hardy decomposed at all. By the time it began raining here in the fall, I guess the temperatures were so low that the mulch didn't break down. It is rare that the winter rains don't finish off whatever is left of my mulch from the previous year.

I hope you had productive time in the lean-to. I'm embarassed to admit how much time I spend puttering around in the greenhouse, even when I could be out in the yard working. It is always warm and nicely humid and the only wind is what is coming in open doors and vents so I can control the wind to some extent.

Once I get the plants out of the GH and into the ground, I could put a lawn chair and a little table in there, and sit in my warm, muggy greenhouse and read and relax. However, that's unlikely to happen. At our house, the cats are the only ones who use the lawn furniture. If we're outside, we're too busy doing stuff to sit down.

Dawn

I checked and emptied the rain guages in the daylight. We ended up with 1.20 inches. I have heard everything from .50 to 1.56. So for a change we didn't receive the least. Things are nice and wet now. In the garden there was moisture from the snow melt 4 to 5 inches down. In areas where I had mulch not even that far down. I won't have to water for a while now. The mulch and tree leaves I had worked into the garden before the blizzard has decomposed well. The areas I didn't get too is where it hasn't. I got it tilled in the top 4-5 inches of soil so should start now. And they are the new areas that really need more organic matter. They say we may have another chance of moisture the first part of next week.

Scott usually our heaviest rains move in from the Colorado mountains or from the SW. But the wrap around moisture covers the most area. Jay