At least you can find your onions. Every thing in my garden is so unhappy, except the weeds and grass. I have just started throwing hay on top of the weeds and grass around my melons and cantaloupes. They are just starting to run and I am hoping they will run over the top of the hay.

I think this is my worst garden EVER. There are a few really nice gardens in my area, but they are all on higher ground.

Im not expecting much out of mine either. If I can get tennis or baseball size out of them Ill be happy.

most of mine look like they did the day I planted them. not going to make any this yr. had to hold them too long before planting them just sitting in mud.

Same here!

My father in law lost all of his, he is south of Gainesville. Hes been there 30 years and has never had this much water in his gardens.

Kim, Things are bad down here. We are expecting epic flooding on both sides of the Red River if this weekend's rain falls in the amounts they predict and, to me, the flooding seems the worst between Gainesville and Denton. It has been especially bad over in and near Krum where Hickory Creek flooded people out of their homes about two weeks ago, and I don't think the water has gone back down. Some people had to be rescued off rooftops and porches by a SAR team using a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter. Nothing like that has happened here since we moved here in 1999, and we had really bad flooding in 2007. To me, this year feels worse than 2007, partly because the flooding in 2007 wasn't until June. If this rain keeps falling several times a week, I think there could be many more weeks of flooding. The old timers here have told us about an epic year (variously described as 1985, 1987 or 1990) when the river was physically brushing against the bridge pavement as they drove over the Red River bridge, and some of them feel this year is going to be worse than that year (whichever year it actually was).

My garden is either living or dying. It depends on what it looked like the last time I was in it. Right now, it is dying because when I was out there yesterday I was standing in 3" of water sitting in the pathways, which now are no longer pathways, but canals. Plants at the lower end of the garden are waterlogging and dying, and so are the poppies and larkspur at the SE corner of the garden where there's no standing water, but they're at grade level in that upper corner of the garden and it is just too wet. A couple of days ago we had some sunshine and warmth and the puddles dried up and I was sure everything left was going to live. With lots of rain and little sun in the forecast, I'm swinging back towards thinking it all will die. I bet my corn is about to start growing corn smut, just because it almost always does when it is this wet.

One out of my five onion varieties got some sort of fungal thing, and I pulled up that whole bunch, saving the ones that weren't yet rotting, and tossing the ones that were rotting onto the compost pile. It was the 6" of rain in one day on top of already heavily-saturated ground that got those onions even though they were in a raised bed. Then we got dry for a couple of days and the other onions dried out a little and perked up and I got all hopeful they'd survive. Now that hope is dying. Even raised beds cannot save everything when it is this wet week after week.

I have been doing my best to remain positive and upbeat, but the weather forecast is just beating all the positive thinking right out of me.

I think we are going to have epic flooding over a large area before all this rainfall ends. If we end up having a really strong El Nino, I think it will be a flood year we never forget, and we're already so close to that kind of flooding now. We still lived in Texas in 1997 when we had the last really strong El Nino, and all I remember about that year is that summer was cool, almost cold at times, and the roads were flooded constantly. This year reminds me so much of that year.

Flash flooding is bad, but if you stay where you are and don't drive or walk into water, you will be okay most of the time (assuming your house isn't at risk). The kind of flooding that is more worrisome to me is the slow, steady rise of water we are seeing here day after day. The Red River and Lake Texoma get all the press because they're major, but it also is all the little creeks and streams, the ponds and stock tanks, the bayous and the sloughs that carry water away. What happens to the people who live near those areas when the water cannot flow down into the overly full river and the water backs up into the low-lying areas? It isn't going to be pretty. The slow flooding kind of sneaks up on you over time.

I'm kinda through worrying about the garden. I've got everything in raised beds that I can put there, and even that stuff is too wet. I have flowers in containers that never made it into the ground. I have done all I can do and there's just no point in fretting over it any more. The plants will make it or they won't, no matter what I do. It is out of my hands. I am more worried now about our community, our roads, our flood-devastated county courthouse, etc. Folks who have river bottom land alongside the Red River have had to move their animals and equipment 11' higher than the nearest bank. Eleven feet....and even though that now is down to ten feet, it could be 11' or more again if we get the rain that's in the forecast.

I feel like we are watching a historical event unfolding right in front of our eyes, and the garden is becoming the least of my worries. I remember being so amazed and filled with awe at the rising water in 2007 as it really was our first bad flood near us. In Texas we lived on high ground and never saw much flooding in our neighborhood. Now, the feeling is different......more of a gloom and doom type thing. Inflow into Lake Texoma is much higher than the outflow through the flood gates and the water is going to go over the emergency spillway sometime in the next 2 or 3 days. I feel bad for all the folks downstream. When this happened in 1990, a lot of them didn't move their cattle and either lost them or had to pay guys with choppers to airlift the cattle out, which I cannot even imagine. Those guys are taking this a lot more seriously and were moving their cattle today, not waiting another day in case the water starts going over the dam a day or two earlier than forecast.

Y'all stay safe, turn around don't drown, etc. etc. etc. Someday we'll get to indulge in normal, happy garden talk again, but down here in southern OK, a lot of folks already have lost their gardens and there is no joy in Mudville. Friends of ours who didn't even bother planting their garden this year are looking pretty brilliant at this point because they didn't waste their time or money.

Dawn

Dawn, you are right- I need to turn loose of my sad little plants and try again next year.

Oh this makes me sad. I know how y'all feel. Last year most of my garden was lost and I finally gave up with very little harvest. I wasn't sure of what was going to happen here so I have planned ahead for a fall/winter garden also.

my father in law needed his garden to motivate him to get out of the house. he told me today he wished he could just wake up next January and start over.

My garden is really, really sad, but I go out and check it every day. It is sorta like going to the hospital to see a very ill friend.

You know you are getting too much rain when the crawdad are roosting on the tomato trellises to get a break from the weather.

Harriet, It is just one of those years, isn't it? I think a week of warm, sunny weather with no rain would perk up a lot of the garden plants that are still alive and possibly save someone's garden, but I don't know when or if we're going to see a week of sunshine.

I'm not giving up on too much yet. My bean plants are in low raised beds only a few inches above grade level at the low end of the garden and look pretty bad, but we've already harvested tons from them so if they die, it is okay. At least they have lived long enough to produce. The sugar snap pea plants tend to rot slightly earlier in wet soil than the beans, and this may be the week I yank them out. I'll give them a few more days, though, so I can produce the peas they're producing. They have produced a moderate harvest, but not a huge one. Still, in a year like this, I'm happy to have peas at all.

I'm losing more flowers than veggies or herbs at this point, but I plant tons of flowers, so it still is possible that a lot of flowers will survive, though all of them will not.

The mid-season corn is too wet and isn't going to make it, but the early corn is getting close to maturing ears (usually we are harvesting them on Memorial Day weekend, but they're a little slower than that this year).

It is the hot-season plantings that are most delayed, because I haven't even planted them yet. If we are going to have melons, pickling cucumbers, Armenian cukes, winter squash, okra, avocado squash and southern peas at all, it won't be for a while because none of the seeds even have been sown yet. They would have gone into the back garden in May only it remains waterlogged and the soil isn't even workable back there, although the weeds are growing just fine. So, I actually have half the garden I planned to plant, and some of it isn't doing well, but it is hard to give up on the dream when at least some of the plants ought to survive.

This week probably is critical for my garden. We got really lucky last week and got less than half the amount of rain predicted to fall here, and I am supremely happy about that. Of course, it is so wet that any rainfall at all is bad news, but at least we had less bad news than expected. If we avoid getting much rainfall this week, the garden likely will survive but if we get a lot of rainfall, then I think more plants will start dying. They are sort of teetering on the cusp of drowning, even in raised beds.

And, it makes me crazy that while the veggies and flowers struggle to survive in heavily waterlogged soils, the weeds still grow like crazy!

Kim, Can your father-in-law plant a garden for fall? In a hot year, I know it is harder to get a fall garden going there in north Texas, but with all this moisture in the ground, the summer temperatures shouldn't be as bad as usual (though the humidity may be worse than usual).

I more often plant a fall garden in rainy years than in dry years, because in dry years, the drought and heat have beat all the energy out of me before it is time to plant a fall garden. This year I'm planning for a big fall garden since spring and summer plants never made it into the back garden. I should have plenty of time to get it ready for the planting of the fall garden beginning in latest June or earliest July.

Larry, That's a great description and it is exactly like visiting an ill friend. Since my garden slopes, the friends at the lower end are in intensive care (and hard to visit because I don't like walking in standing water) but the ones at the upper end of the garden are not so ill and many of them are likely to survive unless the rain keeps coming in huge amounts.

Usually I do not lose plants in raised beds, but this year is so much more wet than usual that the onions growing in their raised bed at the upper end of the garden continue to struggle. The tomatoes and peppers growing right beside them are not struggling nearly as much.

Last night Tim and I walked one of the dogs down the driveway to the road and looked at the garden as we walked past it. Then we looked at our driveway, lying alongside the bar ditch for 70-80' or more, and decided that on the first dry day we have (maybe tomorrow), we'll go down to the road with shovels and scoops and try to recover as much of our washed-out driveway as possible so we can fill in the big gullies and ruts in it caused by all the runoff. At least with the driveway, we can fix it if we can recapture the gravel before it washes further away. With the garden it is more of a waiting game to see which plants can recover and which ones can't.

Dawn

I am going to look into what I can help him do July 4th weekend. Maybe get some tomatoes started and winter squash. I am not sure but he needs something to cheer him up and the great grandkids love to go help him.

DH built a new raised bed this year that despite my protests he put cedar boards for a bottom. That is where the onions were planted and when it got wet the boards swelled and the bed didn't drain. So finally I took a drill and bored through some drainage holes. It seems the onion bed is in a low spot in the yard. I'm wondering if the bed is floating, it doesn't seem to be as wet as the ground around it. Maybe those boards are keeping the standing water from the paths from creeping in. The onions did not like all the rain this weekend, though, some are kind of leaning.

Has anyone heard of stomping? I've been seeing it mentioned on facebook. Intentionally bending the onions over? I thought to myself, Dawn says when they're bent over they're done, why do it on purpose?

My father in law always did that until he got a Dixondale catalog. He thought that's what you were supposed to do to get big onions.

Stomping doesn't help the onions any and it is sort of an old wives' tale thing that has been around longer than I have been growing onions. It comes from a lack of understanding of how onions mature. When onions mature naturally, the carbs in the leaves eventually get pulled into (or maybe pushed into, I don't really know how to word it) the bulb and help it enlarge. As that occurs naturally, the leaves shrink down and shrivel and dry because they have accomplished their purpose and they are done. Eventually you have fully mature bulbs with shriveled, browning leaves that look like they died.

If you try to stomp your onions down to the ground to force that process to occur at the timing of your choice instead of the plants' choice, you fail because all you're doing is breaking their necks. With broken necks, the carbs do not pass from the leaves to the bulbs and the bulbs do not benefit from all the energy stored in the healthy onion leaves.

For some reason, people think you should stomp your onions down to the ground to hurry up the maturing process, but it doesn't help and probably results in onions that spoil faster since they were not allowed to mature naturally. Some things just cannot be rushed. : )

Amy, It might be that the board is keeping water beneath it and the onions are growing above it. I hope you have a lot of soil above the bottom boards so they aren't keeping the onions even more shallow-rooted than they already are.

See how much I learned from you last year, Dawn? I knew they were wrong! The onion bed is shallow. I couldn't figure out what else to plant in a stupid "in ground pot". They are almost all about half way above the soil now, which is also probably good for them.

DH read the square foot gardening book and thinks 6" is enough to grow in, I think I have convinced him the roots need to go deep in OK to get water (most years). We are learning. He put the cedar on hoping to keep the grass from coming up in the bed. When we harvest onions the bed gets emptied and rhe boards come off.