Still around month away from starting seed here. As soon as the garden is dry enough to work I will start hauling in composted manure and till it in and level everything out. Like seysonn I will build my hills that I will plant on and cover them with black plastic or landscape fabric to begin warming the soil a couple of weeks before plant out. For tomatoes that will probably be in the first week or so of May. For some of my other crops I hope to have in by early to mid April it will be highly dependant on soil moisture because if you work this heavy clay soil too wet it will be a cloddy mess the whole summer.

I'm using containers and pots because nematodes are pretty vicious in the underlying fine sandy soil and can even find their way into pots that are very wet all the time. Got all the ingredients which will include some Black Kow compost but haven't decided how much I can add. Trying to figure it out ... when I break open all the bags by trial and error. Depending on whether it will be really rainy or relatively dry the results will be moving targets, so I'll do a range this time and hope to find the sweet spot in it. That makes watering a pain though. The hard part is to have a mix that can be soaked daily by rains, and then go longer into summer when the pot has to be watered twice a day and starts drying out too quickly. Would use larger containers, but there simply isn't enough room for all the varieties I want. But I'm not the only one having that problem ;-)

PC

Someone should develop an opaque bath-hat to put over our seedlings in round pots to keep the rain out!

I also have heavy clay soil. For a few years now we have added loads of aged cow manure at least once a year (sometimes twice) and all the veggies love it. Using a mulch really helps to keep the moisture in and reduces the need for me to water.

Linda

OK, Folks, you are all doing great things, I believe.

Everything works better with planning and doing it.

@ Linda,

I have a grand plan to protect pots from too much rain.

HERE IT IS HOW:

1- Cut a round plastic, several inches bigger than the top of pot diameter.

2- cut a hole at the center, slightly bigger than the stem of plant

3- Make a cut from center outward.

Now you can insert it in , on the pot (under the plan's canopy) and then bring the cut ends together. Hold them together with things like kabob skew or whatever. You can put some crumbled newspaper under the plastic so that you won't have a puddle on it and the rain water goes out.

Seysonn

I have two 4'x8'x1' raised beds. I spread some compost out last fall and just turned that in and added another topcoat of compost from the bin. I plan on adding a few bags of garden soil to the beds, carefully, as the garlic is already poking through. Don't need any black plastic this year - it's been so unusually warm here that the soil temp is darn near high enough to plant if it didn't still get down to freezing at night. Everything is about a month early this year - apricots have bloomed, peaches and cherries are starting to, and I noticed the apple trees were starting to show bud swell. It warmed up so fast that I darn near didn't have time to do a dormant oil treatment on the trees.
I almost envy those who need to worry about too much rain; we're lucky to get anything more than trace precip between now and October the way this drought is going. I decided after a similar summer last year that I'm not messing with tomatoes in potts anymore, I can't install an automatic irrigation system and it's just too much hassle to try to keep consistent moisture in the pots, especially with the constant wind. With a good layer of straw mulch in the raised beds, I can go days between watering even in July and August.

aniajs,.. that sounds good.

Today I amended my raised bed by adding some fertilizer and compost/manure and some dolomitic lime. And then covered them with black plastic. Her in PNW we get too much rain, too little sunshine.

So, anyway my raised bed should stay rain free and start warming up a bit til plant out time late April.

Seysonn

aniajs,

It really is a double edge sword. If someone is in a drought someone else is getting an excess of rain and cooler temps. As far as tomatoes go you are in a better situation at least early in the season. Here the last two years it has been well below normal temps and above normal on moisture. The rain isn't even the worst problem. There are several days where the dew does not come off until very late afternoon if at all. Disease is almost uncontrollable. Last year I sprayed with Daconil about every 5 days and managed a decent early crop but by July it was over. The year before I didn't spray at all and it was a total loss. 2012 we had a record drought and the tomatoes did very well. Hopefully we both see some relief this season but I am not very hopeful at this point.

I know what your talking about, the last two years my plants have mostly drowned from too much water. I had soaker hoses out that I did not use even once. This year I am going to try to plant them higher and maybe put a ditch at the foot of some of them. I started with 80 tomato plants last year and hardly had enough to can. I have been plotting about what to do this spring. We could also have a very dry summer but that would be better since I can water them. Can't do much with too much water in the beginning of the season. I tried planting few tomato plants later, around July 1st. They grew nicely but the tomatoes didn't have time to ripen.

I did some cutting similar to yours Helen, but they didn't do as well due to our September being super rainy (like 8 days of *no* rain) and mold. What worked was keeping some uncared for transplants from the original crop inside like house plants, and taking the cuttings from their tops and discarding the bottoms, and then using the tops - they develop very healthy and didn't bring any of the outdoor problems.

PC

I could also start some seeds a month later. I think I will try something like that this year. I'm also going to plant some hybrids this years with all the "vffnt" behind the name to see how they do.

Helen,

This is what I did last year. After tilling my row I set the plants on top of the ground and hilled up around them. As the plants grew I kept pulling up soil from both sides until I had a long continuous hill the length of the row and 12 to 18 inches high with a ditch along each side. I set my cages about halfway through the process and just hilled over the bottoms. I didn't protect them from soil splashing up when it rained and that is something I intend to do this year. The caveat of this like you said is if it is dry more frequent watering would be needed although with the roots being buried under all that soil will help along with mulch or plastic. I too will be mixing in more hybrids with resistance this year.

Hoosier,

That sound like a real good idea. I am definitely going to try that. I will have to put some kind of ground cover around them. I usually use the black landscape plastic or heavy paper grain bags around them but I can do it later as the plants get established.

Helen, .. that is like planting tomato's cousin, Potato. That is good if you are planting in a row.

Talking about Spring Training: Today (Mon, Feb 16) we are going to have an incredible weather, SUNNY and high reaching 60F. So I am going to do a little more work. I have to empty the rest of the pots, clean up, and refresh the old soil by adding some more fresh ingredients and cover the soil , to prevent from getting wet again. So when I am ready for my container planting (Mostly peppers) stuff is ready.
I might also start making some cover cages or make another mini hoop.
So far February has been more like April. But I am sure we are going to get a lot of cold snaps til mid April.

Seysonn