Weather Difficulties Here, Too

[so lucky]

We have had rain every day in July till today, about 8 inches. Today it was 95 degrees blazing hot. About a third of my tomatoes and peppers are wilted; they look like they have been cut off at the base and left there trying to stand up. That bad. I don't know if they will perk up with the night air, or if they are goners.
Right now, between the JBs and the weather, the only thing in my garden that looks great are the cucumbers.

 

[lesa]

Mother nature can be cruel! Hopefully, things will perk up and you will have a wonderful harvest.

 

[digitS']

I hope so too, So Lucky.

It finally rained here. Six weeks since we had .06". It rained a lot! Almost all day ...

I didn't expect it! The Weather Service didn't expect it. I hope it benefits our trees. Oh, and "a lot" of rain for here -- I think we've had about 1/3" today .

Maybe the weather will break in the right direction for you too.

Steve

 

[dickiebird]

I'm a bit north of you but my garden is just going nuts.
One of the better years I've had in a long time.
For several years the stuff in my greenhouse and on my back deck would always out produce my garden, not so this year.
Thursday I picked over 100 tomatoes and about 4 lbs of green beans, my corn is tasseled and my sweet potato vines look great.
Tomorrow I will most likely pick a ton of okra.
I do have a low spot in my garden that's soooooo wet even the weeds won't grow!!!

THANX RICH

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've been having the same issues. It's been so wet all season I've had trouble even planting everything I wanted to, let alone manage weeds and grass and get it mulched. My garden is slightly lower in the middle of the rows so things in the middle were not doing really well. Even the stuff on the slightly higher ends wasn't doing great. My carrots and beets were about 1/3 to 1/4 the size they should have. My onions produced about 1/3 of what they should have but at least they did not all rot in the ground. My potatoes died just as the potatoes were starting to form, drowned out. My early bush beans barely produced enough for one meal and now the vines are yellow. I thought those would like the cooler than normal and wetter conditions, but no so much. My broccoli at least produced some but the cauliflower just melted in the wet. I can't even get wheat straw for mulch from my normal source. It's been so wet they can't harvest the wheat. Then I lost my plums and peaches to brown rot. I've always done OK with them when I did not get a late frost without spraying any chemicals but now I'll have to spray a fungicide weekly since I have brown rot in my orchard. At least that only affects the stone fruit. Not sure I can blame that on the weather.

Then I got 7.3 inched of rain in three days, 4.7 of that the first of those three days. The ground was already saturated. The garden was a river. What little I had mulched had most of the mulch wash away. Some stuff, mostly beans I'd recently planted, washed out of the ground. Most of my tomatoes, peppers, beans, kale, and chard are wilted a lot like you described. I don't know if they will recover or not. The forecast for the next several days is hot (90's) and dry with practically no chance for even a pop-up shower. The weeds and especially grass are taking over but I'm hesitant to get out there until it does dry out some. I think even if I leave it alone until it dries it will bake hard. If I disturb it while wet it will turn to brick.

I put the last of my spring cockerels in the freezer yesterday and have two broodies running around with chicks, one with 9 and the other with 5. That 5 should be closer to 10 but that's another story and not weather related. Due to a snake eating eggs out from under a broody hen I got a zero hatch earlier and need to make up for it. I'll do another hatch in late August to get all the chicks I need but I'll be overwintering a lot of chicks and butchering them in the spring. I may run out of chicken in the freezer while I'm waiting for them to grow. It will be close. Again, not weather related.

Mom's in rehab and will probably go to assisted living when she leaves instead of returning home. She's not happy about that but even with people coming in every day to clean and help her out she just can't live there alone anymore. We almost lost her this time.

It's shaping up to be a challenging year. I'll admit to being a little down right now but that will change when I can actually get back out there and do something. My blueberries and mulberries did great. I have jelly and jam canned with enough blueberries in the freezer to can a few quarts of blueberry pie fillings. My apples and pears show great promise. Grapes look like they may have some fungus issues of their own, we'll see. I haven't sprayed them either. My first batch of corn is probably a week away and looks pretty good. My garlic did great. I have a lot of garlic hanging up.

I never thought having too much rain in the summer would ever be a problem here. Shows how much I know. Some years are just going to be rougher than others but we will get through it. At the end it probably won't be as bad as it looks now.

@so lucky I apologize for turning this into a whining post about my problems but this just kind of snow-balled when I go started typing. I decided to post anyway.

 

[digitS']

@so lucky I apologize for turning this into a whining post about my problems but this just kind of snow-balled when I go started typing. I decided to post anyway.[/QUOTE]

I imagine that we all have that feeling at times and just kind of decide to click that button and put an end to the internal conflict.

A couple of years ago when the Midwest was burning up, I was complaining about how our growing season would just not start.

Warm weather just would not arrive and clouds hid the sun for weeks/months!

It was because Pacific storms had nowhere to go. They piled against the mountains because a huge pillow of warm air covered the country on the other side of the Rockies.

I can still remember when I finally got around to paying enuf attention to the weather and learned that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico had something to do with windstorms in Africa ..!

All connected ...

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

@Ridgerunner , for your mom.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks, Thistle. I know a lot of us have gone through issues with our parents or others recently. There are also issues going on with my wife's father and an antibiotic resistant bacteria and her mother has been in a care facility for Alzheimer's for over ten years. It's something we all have to face at some point.

 

[baymule]

The short version of my garden report.

I AM GOING TO MOW IT.

 

[Smart Red]

Bay, I just finished mowing. Yup! For the first time this spring -- for some of the places -- I have everything mowed to a proper length. Now I need to get off the computer and bale the grasses that I cut.

Not really bale, of course, but I have a leaf catcher that does a good job of sweeping the rows and rows of grass clippings that need to be removed before the area needs to be mowed again. And with the next 5 days projected to bring rain. . . Times like these when I wish I knew someone nearby with cattle, horses, goats, sheep, etc.