Overnight low in Norman was 39. Tomatoes and peppers made it through fine. I forgot about two basil plants I had out yesterday getting sun. They are not happy at all. Looks like high 30's or low 40's again tonight. Starting to feel good about my planting strategy.

I have been spending quite a bit of time prepping for planting. I have a lead on neighbor, so I spent some time running a siphon hose to a new area we are planting.

This is the down hill end of my 700' siphon hose. I am not getting a lot of flow, but if I let it run 24/7 I should catch a lot of water.

The above picture is yellow squash and zucchini patch. This latch was planted in seeds, we have another that had plants planted in it.

We are trying to be wildlife friendly also. Note the brush pile we are building and letting the brush grow up around the field. We hope to start some small grain plots soon, hoping we can encourage quail to hang around.

The gardens are doing okay, but need rain.

Hey Larry , my order of Covington sweet potato plants(slips) just came in.

They're tied together in a bundle with a paper towel and look a little wilted.

The instructions say that that's normal and they're pretty tough.

I'm not ready to plant them just yet, maybe in a week or so.

Should I wet them down a little or just leave them as they are in the box they came in.

Rick

Rick, some times I pull slips and just lay then in a flat and put wet potting soil over then ( one end), you can keep them a couple of weeks like that. One year I had my grand daughter working for me. I had her to cut about a foot off the runners from the sweet potatoes in the north garden, strip all but 2 or 3 leaves from the one foot runner and take it to the south garden and lay the slip in a groove, cover it and wet it well. I don't think she lost a slip. She thought she was Mrs. Green jeans after that. Sweet potatoes plants are tough as a boot.

I use to buy sweet potato slip at the Farmers Co-op, they were in a tub, packed just as you described, I expect that they would keep a week or two like that, and you are right, they looked terrible.

I just got back from the greenhouse, would you believe that we still have over 1000 plants to plant.

Wish I was there to help out.

That greenhouse seems to be quite an asset, despite all the problems with tending to it.

I'm still figuring out how to make the best use of our cattle panel hoop house.

First off I wish I had made it a little larger.

But it's helped out a lot for keeping plants until ready to put them in the ground.

Rick

Rick, I would love to live close to you, in my feeble way I could help you also. It is great for me to have outside contact, I think that is one reason that I enjoy working with neighbor. I don't have a lot of contact with other people.

I hope to plant some tomatoes today, I often don't plant early because it too much trouble to cover plants to protect against frost. My min/max shows a low of 35 last night, it is clear and still, but I doubt that we had frost. My tomatoes are long past planting stage, but I may start a few more seed for a fall crop.

I have approx. 50 more tomatoes to pot up, and a few more sweet potato slips to pull and that will about catch me up with my share of the work, other than watering new plants. You could see my watering rig in the above pictures, I have a short garden hose attached to the barrels in the back of my RTV, with the wide row spacing we use I can drive between the rows and water from the drivers seat.

I have about 1/2 acre spot that I want to start on for a small grain plot for the wildlife. I hope to plant it in foxtail millet, brown top millet, buck wheat, and deer corn ( if I still have seeds ). The area is a very rough place that I need to level, and there is no need in working the land and not planting something, it should give cover and food for the wildlife, and provide a spot to make a winter food plot also.

I got 200 some tomato plants out now over at the east garden.

Just heard that it got down to 33-34 this morning, hope it didn't frost there.

The beans just getting up wouldn't like it either.

Rick

I read that cucumber seeds need soil temp of 60* to germinate. I've only got two sprouts after 11 days. I'm sure this cold/wet weather is not gonna help anything.

I don't know if any of our cucumber seeds have sprouted yet, but we have plenty plants out, and I am sure this rain is making them happy. We still don't have all of out tomatoes planted yet.

I don't have anything in the ground yet here at my house, We had surprise company yesterday and that put me behind, but I did manage to get all but the back lawn mowed. And I got caught up with my potting, now it is time to get caught up with repairs.

I'm regretting not starting the cucumber from seed, since I reworked my seed planting equipment, I now have room to do that. I will next year.

I need to be working, but it is a little too cool, wet, and windy outside, so I have just sit and read on my laptop.

I did go to the greenhouse this morning to get some plants for Madge to take to a friend about 70 miles south of here.

I hope everyone is as happy with their rain as I am with mine, although I think we have more coming, so far I have seen no erosion, but we did get a good soaking rain.

I checked the greenhouse this morning and pulled and potter more sweet potato slips. I noticed that neighbor has planted at least 100 sweet potato plants. The Covington slips are still slow, you almost have to build a fire under then to get them to sprout. We still have a lot of peppers, egg plant, tomatoes, plus the never ending sweet potatoes to get in the ground.

I also went to the back side of my property to check on our Irish potatoes, and was not over joyed, the squash are still not up, and very few more potatoes. I wish that I had taken a soil test before planting, but it looks like that will have to wait till next year.

Well , well. A good soaking rain without all the bad storms for a change.

Even Western OK is getting baptized.

And there's another wave of it tonight.

Just hope it's not into the middle of June waiting for it to dry out.

Rick

Our rain gauge has right at 2 inches.

I actually had to water the things in the hoop house. I'm SO ready to get them all planted out.

Obviously I couldn't do much in the garden tonight, but I did work on my herb book. I've finished my writings on chamomile for now, so moved to calendula. I just need those little beauties to bloom.

So far nothing looks too bad except my Dr. Wyche's tomatoes. Only one looks good.

That's about all...

Our peppers, egg plants, and sweet potatoes look good, but a lot of out tomatoes are root bound, the ones in Solo cups just don't have enough room. We have more rain on the way, but we need to start planting again soon.

Neighbor planted 201 sweet potatoes a couple of days ago, and wants another 300 plants, I can have another 200 plants by the end of the month, but I am not sure I can squeeze another 100 slips out of my potatoes. Maybe the plants planted day before yesterday will grow enough for me to cut slips from them around the first of June.

The circle bed has some peas just barely sprouting, some potatoes, and the coneflowers I transplanted over there. But for such a huge space, it's pretty barren. I've tossed out a bunch of zinnia and have some gaillardia to put out there, and possibly can move some of the cosmos once they bounce back from the hail damage. I want a tree, or bush, maybe the elderberry I got at spring fling a few years ago. Then fill the rest with perennials that can survive mostly being ignored. But until then, I'll use it for annuals and anything I can get to grow to improve the soil.

And aside from the tomatoes that pretty much all got wiped out, the rest seems to be recovering. My potatoes are doing ok. The sunflowers are still taking over the entire bed. The chamomile that HJ gave me has about tripled in size, the 2 little comfrey are starting to grow (the bigger ones didn't survive sadly) and I keep finding feverfew seedlings in everything. I didn't even plant feverfew last year! And my lone celery started growing new leaves. Doubtful it'll actually do much, but I just planted it as an experiment. Most of my wintersown containers have sprouts; only problem is the sprouts look alike in multiple containers so I'm pretty sure they're weeds. Or sunflowers. Down side to recycling your dirt, you don't know what you'll get. Next up is to start planting cucumber and squash. My neighbor asked about squash so I told her I would start a few for her, even though I've never had good luck with squash.

Jen, I hope you do well with your squash. I also need to plant squash, I have good luck with the squash plants, till the bugs show up, then It is pretty much a losing battle for me. I have been kicking around the idea of planting some squash down by the pond, hoping that the visiting ducks and geese would eat the squash bugs, although it is hard for me to believe that anything will eat a squash bug.

We have had wonderful rain, never raining hard, just slow and steady, the creeks have risen very little in any of the recent rains.

I potted up 20+ sweet potato slips today, I doubt that I will have another 200 by the end of the month, but I should have 200 by the time the ground drys enough to plant.

I have some volunteer sun flowers, but I need to hoe the grass and weeds that are coming up around them. The area I want to plant zinnias was over run with morning glories last year, so I expect to be using Glyphosate in that area this year, trying to get rid of the morning glories. We have around 250 roselle, the old zinnia area may be a good place to plant some of them.

Jen, I wonder how an oakleaf hydrangea would do there?! I am having a hard time finding one locally, tho.

Maybe if no one has grown squash there before, you'll have a year or a few before the squash pests find you.

I don't have my plants ready for SF yet. I'll do it in the morning. Tom will put the pork on around 1 am to have it ready for the SF lunch. We got all the meat purchased tonight and the pellets for his smoker and BBQ sauce and buns too. Prices of everything sure have gone up.

Larry, I've seen that people are using glyphosate to clear out areas to reintroduce native plants too. Otherwise, there just isn't the time to do it. No one thinks that glyphosate is a good thing, but no one has time to dig acres of bermuda grass or other non native invasives.

It's been a week....

And it will be a busy weekend and another busy week.

Jennifer, I have a love/hate relationship with glyphosate. I hate using glyphosate, but I started trying to pay to have fence rows cleaned by hand, and could not afford it. I love the fact that I can sit on a tractor, or atv seat and just drive along the fence and spray the weeds and brush to kill it. I am not man enough to use a weed eater anymore, and, even it I were, I don't have the time.

Trying to clean out a spot to plant some tomatoes in the south garden and noticed the wind and rain had broken down some iris, so Madge cut them and placed on the dining room table. I like iris, but wish they would last longer, and if we don't stake them they nearly always break.