Anyone want to go halfsies on an ark?

Dang it, I really don't want to re-cover everything, but I hate watching my little sprouts drowning! Our crazy spring weather! I hope we don't get too much in Edmond!

Visiting with nearby friend, who asked if we needed anything taken care of while we're gone this weekend. I said, yes, if it flooded, he could come fix the driveway (which always creates a few gulleys in a flood, replace the drowned plants, and siphon the excess water out.

I don't know how well the soil drains in each of your particular gardens, but I know how well it drains in my raised beds---it drains well enough that most of my plants survived rainfall of 12.87" in one day on April 29, 2009. It drains well enough that most of my plants survived a little over 12" in one day in May 2015, a rapid rain that fell in just a few hours and flooded out county courthouse, and over 24" just in that month alone. I say that to offer you hope for your plants because y'all know I have heavy dense clay which, even if well-amended, tends to hold too much water. The plants hurt most in May 2015 were root crops like onions and potatoes, but most everything else did just fine. So, have faith in your soil and have hope for your plants. If you don't have raised beds, your plants might be in a little bit of trouble if you get 3-5" over the course of a day or two, but they ought to survive it. Unfortunately, seeds sown recently but not yet sprouted may wash away in heavy rainfall or rot in ground that stays too wet too long.

Y'all know that here in this state, it often takes flooding (and not just one weekend of it) to end a drought, so let's do our best to think positive and view this wet spell as another step to roll back the drought conditions.

My least favorite thing about this much rain at one time is that the grass grows so fast and is so waterlogged that it is hard to keep it mowed. Oh, and weeds sprout like crazy too.

This rain should help most of you who remain in some stage of drought. There's worse things than too much rain. Remember 2011? Some folks went 30, 45, 60 or more days with no rain to speak of and often had high temperatures in the 100-115 degree rain for pretty much the entire rainless period. To me, that sort of year is much more of a challenge than one rainy weekend.

Now, if you're out driving....the runoff may be a challenge. Turn around, don't drown.

If your plants get really waterlogged, the roots can stop taking up nutrients temporarily because they are so clogged with water. If this happens, you can see the foliage discolor, most often turning light greenish-yellow and/or purplish yellow. Don't become unduly concerned. Usually the plants return to their normal green as the soil dries out and the roots once again can take up nutrients properly.

Everything is going to be okay. Repeat that three times. And, for all of us who neglect our housework to play in the dirt outside every chance we get, well....Friday and/or Saturday might be a good chance to catch up on the house cleaning, except for the floors. It seems pointless to mop floors when it is so muddy, though sometimes I do it anyway because at least for an hour or two then the floors will look great.

Thanks, Dawn. I'm .. like .. hyper-focused on your comment. It hasn't even happened, yet, and I feel like hyperventilating. lol All my hard work. MY BABIES!!

There comes the moment, after you've done the best you can, to let it go (Let go, let God?), which I'm doing tonight. Will leave them to sink or swim! Bwwwaaahaaaa, as Bon said. I moved all my 15 gallon patio pots under the covered part of the deck, as they're already soaking from rain earlier today, and hadn't dried out since the rain a few days ago. So good luck to all the plants this evening and tomorrow evening. . . they'll be fine, I think.

Boy you said a mouthful, Dawn, about the grass and weeds! Schnikes! Wanted to mow today but instead got rain. Weeds are sayin', "Woo-hoo!!! ParTY!" The grass and weed lawn is obscene today; can't imagine what it'll be like by Monday when I get to mow, hopefully.

Bon, Breathe, breathe, breathe. If you have an area you really feel panicked about, can you dig a little trench in advance, just a shallow one a couple of inches deep, to carry water away from the plants' root zones?

Nancy, I want to know why the undesirable weeds and grass grow four times as fast as our plants that we'd like to see growing that quickly? Life just isn't fair.

I weeded the poppy patch yesterday, trying to keep out all the weeds that sprout with every rainfall, and today there were new things sprouted and an inch or two tall. I know that I did not miss that many weeds yesterday, so they literally sprouted and grew overnight. We mowed last week and then it rained and now you cannot even tell we mowed. I'd like to mow tomorrow before the rain gets here (unless it arrives here tonight) but that would mean sacrificing garden time and I'm not very likely to do that either. We need goats. Goats that would eat the grass and weeds, but not the wildflowers.

Dawn

My awesome weed eater is down. It's only the plastic primer button, but still... The riding lawn mower is old and takes about a week worth's of maintenance to get going. There's the push mower, but we haven't $ for gas right now. (That comes Saturday.)

I pulled out the machete and the hatchet and went to town on some weeds and poplar saplings this afternoon. Took out my anxiety onto something constructive. The compost pile is happy. ha

You guys are killing me. ROTFL.

Found some roof leaks. Man that was a lot of water

We are on an evening schedule due to dh hours at the hospital so that means we don't normally go to bed till around 12:30 - 1 am and don't get up till 9:30 - 10am. Not today. I could not sleep. Woke up at 2:45 to the overwhelming sound of the thunder. I can normally sleep through it but I heard it loud and clear even over our air purifier and dh sound machine. Good grief, Charlie Brown!!! After a couple hours, I started worrying about my seedlings. Oh my little babies, are you ok out there?!?! I finally got up about 7 am and went to the patio. I completely forgot to pull up my plants out of harms way. I think a couple rows of seeds just floated away out of their containers. Then a couple rows of tomato plants looked like they'd given up. I ran out there immediately and poured off the water and scooted them backward out of the rain. I glanced over at my raised beds........I felt an overwhelming rush of anxiety and I want to cry. I KNOW we need the rain, but dang it my little seedlings that I put so much love into are screaming help to me and there's nothing I can do. I am trying to be positive, Dawn, so I'll just say that at least I hadn't planted ALL of my seedlings. I think the only thing that I might lose is my spinach, peas, cabbage, carrots, and possibly my beets.

Oh, and my flower bed is absolutely under water. My poor little flower seedlings, they were looking so good. Hopefully, they'll survive this. I really need to put some gutters on this house. The rain just downpours into my flower bed.

I hope everyone else is fairing well and if you are traveling, be safe. Not only do we have to watch out for ourselves, but other crazy drivers who don't consider the slick roads when wet. I won't be taking my kids driving today and so far Monday isn't calling for rain which is the day my son takes his driving test.

I need rain galoshes. Anyone have any suggestions that won't break my budget?

We had an inch overnight. A new wave beginning now. Going to be a long day.

An inch here, too, Amy. . . I slept through the whole thing--that's not like me, but glad I did. A few things are whipped around a bit, but lookin' fine overall. Good luck and happy weekend to you all!

It hit hard in southOKC about 30 minutes ago and it's still going. And it's picture day. Everyone looks wet and windblown for pictures.

And I'm thinking that I should have put the wreaths and decorative pillows indoors before leaving my house. I'll never see them again.

Just so badly hope my plants (and everyone's plants) make it. That wind is insane.

Be careful, Everyone.

Bon, I swear...every single time I use the mower, weedeater, or any other equipment with an engine, something breaks down, or the carburetor or the air filter clogs, or whatever...and Tim complains that I break "his" equipment. I tell him that the reason I break it is because I am USING it. No one breaks it if it sits in the garage unused. Then, that makes him feel bad and he fixes everything and uses it to catch up on mowing and trimming and such. The equipment breaks just as much when he uses it, but he doesn't whine or complain to me that he is breaking his own equipment. lol. He just comes to the garden and sticks his head in the gate to tell me that he has to go to the store (in either Gainesville,TX, or Ardmore, OK) to get a part and do I want to go along for the ride? The answer always is yes because I can shop for plants, seeds or gardening supplies while he looks for some part in order to repair something at home.

My solution is to, as much as possible, leave the power equipment to him so he can break it and repair it without blaming me, and in my garden, having gone no-till in the front garden, I only use manual hand tools nowadays and I don't break them either. The back garden still is a work in progress in terms of soil amendment so we do use the big rototiller back there to break ground for Spring planting. We have a scythe and I can use it to cut tall weeds in the bar ditch or whatever, but during snake season, the scythe doesn't scare away snakes out of the all grass like a weedeater does. I do find machetes to be very useful for some things---like chopping corn stalks down to a reasonable size before putting them on the compost pile. I have friends who keep their hoes sharp enough to chop up copperheads when they encounter them in the garden. I hate hoeing and would rather pull or dig out weeds, so doubt my hoe is sharp enough to chop up a snake...and I am not sure I could bear to stand there and do that anyway. I really don't want to hurt them. I just want for them to go away.

Sorry to hear about the roof leaks. That just sucks.

I'm watching the weather on TWC right now and parts of OK have been pounded with rain and wind already today. Chickasha recorded a wind gust of 77 mph.That line of storms moving across the state sure has a lot of lightning in it.

Down here in SC OK, we are in the 'enhanced' risk area today on the SPC's Convective Outlook, and our biggest risk (for which we are in the hatched risk area) is for large hail. I'd rather have flooding rain and strong winds than large hail any day of the week, but we don't get to choose our weather. Of course, we always get a hail storm right after I remove the hoops and bird netting from the tomato and pepper beds so I can cage the plants. I didn't want to remove it and cage them this week because I knew what was in our forecast for today and tonight, but I had to do it. Had I waited even a couple more days, the tomato plants would have been so wide that I couldn't have put cages around them without breaking limbs. Now that there's 8' tall tomato cages around the plants, there's no way I can get netting over double rows of that to protect from hail. My poor baby fruit are on their own now.

Our forecast low for Sat night has dropped to 42. I am becoming increasingly uneasy with the way it keeps dropping. Considering how far south we are, it shouldn't drop this low this late in the season, but it consistently does.

Melissa, Here we go again...breathe, woman, breathe. Plants will be okay. What doesn't recover can be replanted, except that you cannot replant cool season stuff this late, so you'd have to wait for fall. Think positive. At least you aren't dealing with a tornado, big hail, microburst, etc. You and Bon need some yoga or meditation or something to help soothe your jangled nerves. For the most part, plants will survive, though seeds and seedlings may not since they are so young and relatively delicate.

I couldn't sleep last night because I saw a wicked little thunderstorm with a big pinkish-purplish hail core on the radar well west of us, heading straight for us, but it was hours and hours away. At the time I read the first Severe TStorm Warning on it, it said baseball sized hail. Uggh. I would doze off, wake up, check the radar to see that the storm was another county of two closer, and that the hail had dropped to ping pong ball sized. Finally, when it got to the TX county just to our SW, the storm kept heading our way, but the hail was down to quarter sized and then the hail core broke away from the main storm and made a turn to the SE instead of heading due east. Then and only then could I finally fall asleep and stay asleep. I swear, we all worry about our plants like they are our children. It is wet today here but I am not sure if from dew or if the remnants of that storm dropped a little rain on us. I forgot to check the rain gauges while out there. You can get a rain boots/muck boots on the boot aisle at places like Wal-Mart, TSC or Atwoods. Last time I bought a pair of boots there, they were under $20.

Those of you with an inch already, I am afraid it will be a long day. Stay safe from all that lightning and rain (and wind if you get it). Remember that nothing will happen outdoors that cannot be fixed, remediated or replanted later. Gardening is supposed to be a stress reliever, isn't it? With our intense spring weather it seems to be more of a cause of stress than it ought to be.

I am the worst chicken mama in the world because I left all the poultry inside their fenced chicken runs today in order to protect them from strong wind or hail. The poultry are sulking and most of them are so mad they won't even leave their coops to roam around in the runs. I told them to just get over it and be happy they will be safe and sound. I'm not going to give in to pouting and temper tantrums and let them out to free-range. From their reaction, you'd think the world was about to end. They are spoiled babies. Any time you change their routine, the chickens respond badly with lots of stomping around angry and fussing. It is funny to see, but they probably wouldn't appreciate me laughing at them.

Dawn

I just went out, during a lull to check on the chickens. They have a lake house, and they look cross.

There is 2.25 in my gauge now. I put my tomato plants in the greenhouse, in case there is hail, and to keep them from drowning. They were under the eave of the house, so not floating. You know those zippered roll up doors on greenhouses? They hold water. And when you bump it walking in with a cat litter pan of tomato plants it releases said water down the back of your neck. Brrrr, it was cold water. I think Sat night everything comes inside that's mobile. I will cover beans and tomato plants. I have straw, but it's under a tarp in the chicken lake.

DH put my fuschia out side. I forgot to bring it in, but it's coming down hard now. Need to go research what low temps it can tolerate. I know they don't like too much heat.

We just left Joplin, heading north for Kansas City. Solid rain from Wagner to Joplin without a let up.

It finally let up here just N of Edmond. I still hear it thundering though. Haven't stepped out to peek at my water gauge yet.

Amy, you crack me up about your chickens.

Dawn, I am TRYING to breathe, lol. Thinking positive thoughts: at least I didn't lose ALL my tomato seedlings. And, if I lose my cooler weathered seedlings, as you said, I'll just plant for fall. And, I am the same way with the yard equipment. I hate to weed eat, truly I do. But it has to be done and I don't think I'd hate it so much if the stupid thing wasn't so hard to get started. Ugh.

Nancy, safe travels!!

I haven't spent too much time looking at the news. All in all, it looks like most have avoided major flooding. My yard is somewhat flooded, of course, but not as bad as it could be. These storms have been huge, but we're lucky no tornadoes.

Dawn, I read from one of the news stations that south/southeast Oklahoma is getting the most tornado pressure out of the storms later tonight. Be safe.

bon

Just floated out to the raised beds to get a gander at my rain gauge. It is right at 5". Good grief. How does it say that when the news is only saying we got 3" ?

OMG .. Payne Co. isn't under any flood watch. I just created emergency water diversion in the garden so my beans wouldn't be standing in 2" of water.

How is everyone else doing? If we're not bad, I can only imagine everyone else under the watches!

bon

50 miles south of Kansas City. Finally out of the rain. Lol

Oh my goodness....it just started pouring down again. Darn it, I should've emptied my rain gauge earlier. I didn't even think about it. Ugh!

Bon, I feel ya girl. I had to dump more water off my seedlings before it started pouring again. When I checked my raised beds the only thing I THINK I could see that was in trouble was my cabbage and spinach.

My teenagers decided to go for a short bike ride earlier. Why?! Because they are teenagers I guess. They got home about 10 minutes before it started pouring down again. Although, I kinda thought it'd be funny seeing them walk up to the house soaking wet and me being able to say, "I told you so!" *snickers sarcastically*

Things look OK so far here, although I just studied everything through the windows. Lettuce and spinach and herbs are flattened, but everything else appears to be still standing. I slept through the rain last night. The birds are coming out to look for worms, so I think the worst is over for us.

OK gardeners, don't bellyache about a little rain. LOL

If you remember, we got 5+ inches with the last rain. Today I emptied the rain gauge at four and a half inches, so it wouldn't be bouncing out the top like last time. It is almost up to 2 inches again and we are still getting light rain with a 90% chance of thunderstorms again tonight. Glug, glug, going, going, gone.

Nancy, I'm jelly!
Rebecca, such a relief to hear from someone who is not floating away. less to worry about.
Melissa. Yep. I think most things are going to be okay, but maybe not some of the green beans. These were only a week old, so no biggie. My tween wanted to go out today, too! Crazy kids!
Carol, I'll cry if I want to. It's my garden and I can cry if I want to. LOL U know, with that much water, a garden would be the least of my worries. I hope your property is structured well.
About a month ago I added some grading to an eroded area up against the foundation wall. Glad I did.

bon

Bon, all is OK except for some wet carpet. We will survive.

Lol Carol!! I think for me it is just that I'm really getting started again after moving. I've decided I'm just going to deal with what I have and buy more from a local nursery if I need to. I'm not giving up without a fight! Glad everything's ok up north.

It hit 83 degrees here today and I worked in the garden until 4 pm. I figured I might as well get it looking all neat and tidy and pretty before severe tstorms start popping up and dumping rain, hail, wind, whatever on it.

We're under a Tornado Watch thru 1 a.m.

Amy, Ouch, I can feel that cold rain water running right down my neck just from your description of it. Thanks for sharing. : )

Nancy, Y'all should had to go a long way to get our of the rain. Have a safe trip.

Melissa, I'm sorry you didn't get to share that special 'told you so' moment with your kids. It probably is a good thing for your floors that they weren't coming in dripping wet though.

Rebecca, Maybe the flattened plants will stand back up after they get some sunshine. It is amazing how well plants can recover without any help from us, at least sometimes.

Carol, You seriously need to stop hogging all that rain and let some of it come down here to us. While we aren't dry, we're certainly not wet like all of y'all are. Hopefully some rain will fall here tonight.

On the bright side, these are the kinds of drought-busting rains that lots of OK still need. There was a lot of improvement on this week's drought monitor, but the spring rains haven't wiped out all the drought yet. Yet. I think that today they are doing their best to knock out as much of the remaining drought conditions as they can.

Bon, It is a good thing you got that grading work done.

Melissa, It is so hard to start over after moving. I hope you are able to have time to make your yard what you want it to be this spring and summer. At least it is raining---it is easier to get new plants established in a wet year than in a drought type year. Well, unless it becomes a constantly flooding type year. OK weather doesn't do things in moderation very well---feast or famine, flood or drought.

Storm chasers have been spotted across the river in Gainesville, TX. Let's hope they stay on that side of the river. A new Tornado Warning was just issued for Ravia (near Tishomingo). Hmmm. Maybe those storm chasers are racing across the river as I type. Hope everyone stays safe.

Dawn

So I take it we start spraying fungicide and scattering Sluggo tomorrow?

Have you been hit hard Rebecca? It seems to be heavier in tulsa, northern fringe and still 3" here... It just keeps on coming.

If the rain ends by tomorrow, go for it Rebecca. Watch your overnight lows. Some folks will be going into the upper 30s on Sat nite/Sun morning. Fungicide won't be needed immediately if yall are real cool tomorrow, but it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and get it on the plants before temperatures warm up too much.

We had all kinds of wind and hail and thunder, and got a whopping 0.25" of rain. However, the storm knocked down trees and power lines in downtown Marietta and blew a roof off a building on Main Street. They might have gotten more rain there than we got here, and they definitely got more wind.

There's a big thunderstorm we've been watching for a couple of hours throwing off hail and funnel clouds in Cooke County (and part of that storm is what was once in western Love County) so those storm chasers I mentioned were in the right place if they stayed there in Gainesville. Hail has fallen up to the size of baseballs.

Kim if you are reading this, the storm is in between Gainesville and Denton, and has traveled from Muenster towards Tioga and Gunter and then will cut across the northern edge of Denton County. I believe they're dropping the Tornado Warning now and just continuing it as a Severe TStorm. Lots of hail of all sizes from this storm, and I'm glad the hail missed us. I don't know if Cooke and Denton counties needed rain, but they're getting some or about to get some.

Y'all are still getting rain up there in northern and northeastern OK ???? What a day, huh. Remember all that rain you didn't get in 2016. Guess what? You're getting it now.

Amy, I think I've gotten a little more than you have, but I don't have a rain gauge yet (gotta do that). My mom lives in south Tulsa, near the Jenks bridge, and has had more than I have. I should get a rain gauge for her too. I'm still getting occasional quick showers here, but she had a few small intense cloudbursts that I didn't have.

I just love reading y'all's posts. And I'm so happy to be able to say "y'all" as often as I like without criticism here.

Our range gauge had about an inch and a half this afternoon. It's been sprinkling all afternoon/evening, but not enough to prevent me from taking the dogs for a walk. They are so bored.

Speaking of fungicide. I sprayed my plants a couple of days ago. Is it good to spray them before a big rain? Still trying to figure out how fungicides work best. I know that I do not want to spray too often...probably less that the recommendation.

Well, we didn't wash away! But we had a little hail, and a ton of rain!

This is my front porch!
The chickens survived, and the raised beds drained just fine, but we probably lost some topsoil from parts of the yard. Oops. I have a 2.5 gallon bucket that's half full from the rain, does that count as a rain gauge?! I'm glad everyone survived the storms! Rebecca I'm sure most of your little seedlings will bounce back, at least I hope for!

I'm sure I lost all the amaranth seeds I sowed a few days ago along with about 6 other packets of various flowers/ herbs. My neighbor will not appreciate amaranth popping up everywhere in his perfect lawn, but what can ya do! (Grin)

Dawn I need to check our weather! Those lows your talking about are scaring me! Sorry you didn't get more rain. I can't remember if you've had your fill already. I think you've been talking about soggy soil lately but my memory is soggy too! Our weather is so sporadic!

I'm off to bed. I hope everyone is warm and dry this evening!

Oh man!

Hazel, With fungicides, it is hard to know what to do. It seems smart to spray them before the rain occurs as that gives them added protection from fungal spores that might be splashed up onto them during the rainfall, but then if it rains heavily enough, the fungicides may get washed off the plants anyway. I sprayed one plant with Daconil because it had the beginning of some black mold on it a couple of days ago, and then I got paranoid and sprayed the plant beside it and the one across the road from it. I didn't spray the rest. As little rainfall as we received here, I expect the fungicide I sprayed still is on the leaves. If you got more than an inch or two (and, really, the speed with which it fell means more than the amount because I expect a hard, fast rain would wash off more fungicide than a slow, gentle one), the rain probably washed your fungicide off the plants. I don't like spraying anything on the plants, but sometimes it is necessary. I don't think I'll ever be one of those people who sprays fungicide regularly throughout the growing season because I'd rather eat food that wasn't sprayed. I think the most I've ever sprayed fungicide on the tomato plants was 4 times in one year, about once every couple of weeks during the worst of the high heat/humidity part of the tomato season, which at our house occurs in June most years. I am thinking it will be earlier this year.

You can add a sticker-spreader product to the fungicide to make it adhere better to the foliage. Some folks just add a couple of drops of soap (not detergent, but actual soap) to their fungicide spray to serve as the sticker-speader.

I do not know what the rest of you are looking at in terms of temperatures next week, but at our house we're looking at highs in the upper 80s by mid-week. In combination with wet soil and high humidity, that will give us prime conditions for fungal infections to occur on plants, and likely some bacterial infections as well. Then, there's more severe weather likely at the end of next week. Must be Spring!

Rebecca, I find it amazing how much rainfall can vary even over a relatively small area. Often, our three rain gauges vary a lot--a half-inch to an inch, for example, and they are in a relatively small area. A few times we've gotten 9-12" or more in one day while our Mesonet station, clearly missed by the heavy rainfall, showed 2-5" fell at the same time. Sometimes we compare notes with friends who live within a mile or so of our house and often we have a difference of an inch or more from the same storm.

Alexis, That's too much rain! We have been sporadically wet, but our last really good wet month here was January, so have been veering towards being too dry in recent weeks and I've had to water the garden a bit. We had good rainfall about a week to ten days ago, and by good, I mean a bit over an inch I think. Clay soil holds moisture forever, so even an inch or two of rain means we stay wet, wet, wet, wet and wet. Then, we have one perfect day when the soil is just wet enough to make pulling weeds easy but not too wet to work, and then the very next day we are dry, dry, dry and the ground is cracking. I have to really watch the soil to ensure I take advantage of the one perfect day. Otherwise, I avoid working wet soil. If you've ever seen the big clods formed by breaking up wet clay, you understand why I behave myself when it comes to working in wet soil.

Maybe your neighbors will let you come dig up your amaranth and flowers and transplant them back to your place when they start sprouting? Our rain runoff from our place runs right into our creek, which then empties into a bigger creek up the road, which then empties into the Red River. So, when my seeds wash away, I figure they're gonna end up in the river.

I think your forecast low up there in central OK ought to stay around 40-44 because your forecast lows in central OK are often the same as mine, and my forecast low has been fluctuating back and forth between 42-44 for tonight and slightly warmer for Sunday night. I don't think it is fair that our place gets as cold as areas 100-150 miles further north, but that's what we get for living in a low-lying microclimate that tends to run cold late in the year on cool Spring nights. People outside the OKC and Tulsa metro areas may drop colder than those in town by a few degrees since we more rural folks don't benefit from the heat island effect caused by all the warm, heat-retaining concrete found in cities. I do think the further north and further northwest in the state one lives, the more likely that tonight's lows may be worrisome.

Once we get past this cool weekend, we are headed into the upper 80s by midweek, so I just hope my plants can tolerate two coolish nights without sulking too much. I believe that we will have strong enough overnight wind down here to keep any patchy frost from settling on the plants so I don't intend to cover up the tomatoes and peppers...or the sweet potatoes, squash , cucumbers, southern peas or corn either. I do reserve the right to freak out around 4 pm this afternoon and run out and cover up plants if they drop our forecast overnight low down to 40 because we have had patchy frost at 38 degrees before. My garden thinks it is mid-May, based on the weather we've been having, and I would like for it to be allowed to go on thinking that.

Today is going to be cold and windy, with wind chills making it feel colder than it is, and it is too muddy to work in the yard or garden, so I am planning on doing all the grocery shopping and errand running and such today in the hopes that maybe tomorrow the grass will be dry enough to mow. The good thing about grocery day is that we'll be going to CostCo, which takes me very close to Marshall Grain Company and Mike's Garden Center, so guess where I'll be going while we are out? One nice thing about rain is that when you know you cannot garden, it frees you up to do other things that need to be done, like housework, laundry, grocery shopping, running those errands you've been putting off and, my favorite, garden shopping.

One onion bolted yesterday. It is a red onion from the Dixondale Short Day Sampler, so I guess that means it is the Red Creole variety. I wasn't shocked to have it bolt as a lot of the onions I received were way too big this year and I expect bolting from those. Really, I'm more shocked that I haven't yet had a lot of bolting. I still do expect for the bolting to occur, especially among the short and intermediate day length types. My long day types and the storage variety were more the normal planting size so may not bolt.

Dawn

Man the wind is cold. I am TOTALLY spoiled to warmer weather. I forget what our forecast low was last night, in the 40s I think. Green house low was 51. They are still saying 39/40 for our low tonight.

My onions are pretty big. I'm afraid this cold snap will make them bolt. I have not noticed bolting yet. I may cover them, but tomatoes get priority today.

I'm with Amy - this wind is not inspiring me to be a gardener today. The peppers can wait another day. I'll be inside making soup and muffins in my fuzzy fleece PJs. So, like Dawn, I ran my errands and grocery shopped, including Stringer's for more Sluggo. I also delivered a half dozen tomato plants to a friend who saved milk jugs for me to wintersow in, and she's thrilled with them.

Amy, I agree the wind was miserably cold, and I don't even think our wind down here was nearly as strong as the wind further north. Luckily I was gone most of the day so wasn't out in it for long yesterday. It was windy when we were out shopping, but walking from the car to a store in the wind is nothing at all compared to being at home working outside in that same wind.

I know our Saturday weather was quite a bit cooler than average, and then I think it felt even worse because we've mostly had warmer than average weather lately. Our bodies are so used to warmth already that a little bit of cool weather feels even worse.

Rebecca, I bought Sluggo Plus yesterday too---a 2.5 lb. jug of it, partly for snails and slugs but mostly for the pill bugs and sow bugs that are eating everything in sight. They're going to get that Sluggo today, which ought to help the plants a lot. It seems like there is a massive pill bug and sow bug explosion this year, which isn't abnormal since it often happens in the spring after a previous rainy year.

You've been making a lot of your friends happy with tomato plants this year. It is so sweet of you to share your plants.

Dawn