Yes but a good many of mine like alot of water.We might be wishing for rain alittle later. Good luck Jim

After all the dry weather that we have had on the MS Gulf Coast, the rain is very welcome. I was about to start wishing for a tropical storm. It has really been dry here (burn bans and all). I think last year was the wettest summer that I remember and my plants have never been better. I have sandy loom soil with a gental slope to the east. Never had too much rain.
Lynn

I hear you with all this rain! I have several plants that are definately stressing out! What do you do?

If I lived in an area that was too wet I would go for raised beds or pots.
Lynn

We DO go for raised beds and pots but even that isn't helping with the 2-4 inches of daily rain that we've been having. Even the caladium bulbs are rotting. Let's hope we don't get the locusts, too, like some parts of the U.S. have.

I think part of the problem is having several rainy days followed by hot, dry sunny days. Too much of a swing for the plants to handle. I've lost several plants and my tomatoes are not doing well at all.

I live in SE Louisiana, where 3 summers ago, Tropical Storm Allison dumped 28 inches of rain on us in 36 hours. My plants sat in water for three days. The water lovers (cannas, gingers, irises) grew a foot and several other plants croaked. The only drought tolerant plants that survived were lantana and crepe myrtles (although one of them did get partially uprooted - it did pull through though). I gave up growing plants that only tolerate a minimal amount of rainfall.

We are about to wash away here in Baton Rouge....All the rain killed my tomatoes. GRRR! Got a question about Cardinal birds...Mama bird must have known that her babies would drown if she built her nest in a bush, so to my pleasent surprise, she built it in a hanging spider plant on my patio! Lucky me, I can set at my dining table and see her on her nest. There are 2 eggs. I have not seen Papa Cardinal, what is his part in this? How long will it take to hatch and then leave? I have just had bypass surgery and this sure gives me some pleasure while I heal.
Gladys

Papa Cardinal helped build the nest. Then, when the babies arrive he will help to feed them. In a couple of weeks there should be two very ugly little naked babies and slowly they will get their feathers and their strength and learn to fly, hopping about a bit at a time from this shrub to that shrub. Be sure no cats are around.
Glad this is a distraction, or therapy, while you heal. Good luck to you. If I knew how to post a photo on this forum, there is a great one of a dove's nest made in the crown on a statue in the Old Ursuline Courtyard in New Orleans. Part of the straw is hanging down in the Virgin Mary's face and the dove is sitting quite beautifully in her nest on her head.

Cardinals are great fun to watch. Several years I watched Papa bring his son to the feeder and Mama bring the daughter. This year the @#$%squirrels busted the 'squirrel-proof' feeder I had, and the new one is indeed squirrel-proof (more or less!) but it is also Cardinal proof, and the other feeders get emptied so fast I don't get to watch the Cardinals as much. Gotta get another feeder!
About the rain swamping plants--a few years ago I started investing in very large pots, thinking that maybe some of the plants I wanted to grow that wanted a little more winter-chill would be able to get it in a big pot rather than in the ground. That first one was a half-barrel. I discovered it also provided good drainage, and some things I hadn't been able to grow before did well in them. Since then I have continued to get a few really large pots every year, but I've gone to self-watering ones. The purple fountain grass I'd grown and lost in the ground two different times is a little less enthusiastic this year after three years in the same pot without dividing. The little ground-cover salvia (S. sinaloensis) with the electric blue flowers is taking over its pot. The acalypha (copper-bush?) that's supposedly not winter-hardy made it through without protection (well, frosted back, but thriving). If I had the money and could figure out where to put them, I'd get about a hundred. Don't have to water when it's dry, don't have to worry about drainage when it rains as much as it has lately. I'm afraid to say 'too much', 'cause then maybe it'd stop, and I like 'too much' more than 'too little', and so do my plants! I do find a pot that's very small heats up too much to grow plants well, and by 'very small' I mean less than maybe 16" or so. In the shade they can be smaller.

Same here. Most of my yard is very flat. Beds are raised a little but roses are suffering. I have several young trees that I got from the Arbor day foundation this year and they are having trouble also. Anyone have a 3/4 acre umbrella??

Plumcrazy

I live in Guntown,MS, about 10 miles north of Tupelo. We had rain everyday in June except for 2! I measured over 20" of rain for the month, now the offical total is something like 8, but I think they took that under the bridge while they were being swept away by the flood! I'm really concerned about my TB Iris. My tomatos plants have turned yellow. My gourds that were planted on June 1 are about 8" tall and not growing. I had many sunflower seed planted and none have germinated. I've got a lot of plants that really need to be planted but I can not get the ground ready for them. In other words, it's been a mess. I too have raised beds in part of my garden including the gourds and tomatos and if the Iris weren't in raised beds, they would be totally rotten by now.

I found myself complaining to a friend yesterday about the high on July 4 being about 78 degrees and raining and I stopped just long enough to realize by this time next week it will probably be 100 in the shade and I'll be wishing I had rain and cool. It's hard to please an old gardener when it comes to weather! But! I agree, we've had enough rain for a little while. Oh by the way, the Bermuda grass that grows only in my flower beds, thinks this weather is wonderful!

May God bless each and everyone with his loving Grace, Mona

This year's rainfall in June has been like nothing I can ever remember -- which makes me wonder about something I would have never considered otherwise. Please give your opinion.

Last summer I put down 10 pallets of zoysia in my part shade yard (has many mature oaks and hickories which I "limbed" to about 18-20 feet two years ago). In late April I fertilized with a fertilizer called "Sod Starter" (18-24-10). I fertilized a second time with this same mix a little over two weeks ago and it has rained EVERY single day since then. If we make it through today without rain it will be the first since the second application.

The grass never responded to the second application and I think most of the fertilizer must have washed away without being absorbed by the grass roots. This zoysia is not thriving the way the zoysia lawn at my former (sunny) residence did. The grass appears to be thinning and a lot of weeds are coming through the patchy areas.

I wonder if it would be OK to apply more fertilizer, this time with more nitrogen? If not, what can I do? At this rate, it will not make it through the winter to next spring.

Your grass is probably struggling just to stay alive with all the rain. Don't stress it further by making it think it has to be beautiful, too. Fertilizer might just send it over the edge.

Want to see a view of how much our gardens are suffering?This is a photo taken in the man's yard where he usually gardens. It is located 25 miles upriver from New Orleans on the Great River Road. Lighting of the candles might drive the rain away--probably could make it a "southern superstition"?
Go to http://www.pbase.com/image/31006222

Wonderful,

We got thru today and did not have any rain!!!!!!! Hope everyone else had the same sunshine, wonderful sunshine!

Love to all, Mona

I have some new Zoysia to samething to much water they say not to fertalize untill it starts too spread.When it's time I use Ver-gro it's high nitro roots well grow better in the winter. Good luck Jim

My mom's tomatoes were really slow starting out with all the rain, but now they are starting to produce better; just in time for the heat!

I think that I just lost a salvia regla to root rot. Most of my tropicals are thriving. The others are suffering. The heat after the rain fried the salvia.

Okay, I gotta say it--I WISH IT WOULD RAIN!!! The weather reports keep saying it will 'next week', and other places in the general area have gotten pretty good rains, but I think we've had less than half an inch in about the last month. A group I was in once did a play where one of the characters was a medium, and we kept hitting her. Wish I had a happy medium to hit (strike).

I'm right there with you now greenelbows. Amazing how quickly the ground dries out when the temperature gets above 95 F.