Here's the map of the whole country.

Jay, Kansas is going downhill fast, especially near you. I'm guessing the rain stopped falling there.

Colorado looks horribly dry. No wonder they're having such awful wildfires.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: U S Drought Monitor Map June 26, 2012

The D3-D4 is just miles from us. We're 576 on the Keetch-Byrum scale as of today, and I can definitely associate the rising number with what I'm seeing with the soil. The ground is so dry I'm having to water everyday now. If the soil has any moisture left in the morning it is extremely dry by the end of the day. Getting some tomatoes though! So I'm going to keep watering.

Sheri,

I'm excited to hear you're getting some tomatoes because you have had such tough weather there this year (as always).

There's a new water monitoring feature on the OK Mesonet map today. It could be that it has been up for a while and I didn't notice, because I've been too busy canning to do much else, but I saw it this morning. I'm going to link it below. I think we will find it helpful. It is supposed to show us how much of the water present in the specified soil depth is available to our plants. We may be able to use this map to track and understand soil moisture levels in the same way that you and I have been using the KBDI to understand how dry our soil is. Of course, this will be most effective for any of us only if we have the same type of soil found at our local Mesonet station, but at least it gives us a rough idea of whether there's any actual moisture available in the soil.

I hate to hear that your KBDI is so high this early in the year. You have the kind of KBDI I normally see here in the fall after a long, hot summer. Y'all need rain, rain and more rain! One year (I think it was 2008) we started having awful grass fires that moved fast and were hard to control in September, and what sticks in my mind is that those fires started up when our KBDI was 535.

FYI--after my KBDI hits 500, I find it really hard to keep enough moisture in the soil to keep the plants happy. Once we hit 600 it is not just hard, but almost impossible. Mulching will help, but rain would help more.

Yesterday I found a 1-1.5" wide crack in the soil in my garden when I was harvesting pole beans and yardlong beans. I couldn't believe it. We have had 7" of rain lately (between about May 29th or 30th and June 11th, though none since then) and still the ground is cracking.

If I were you, I'd keep watering too for as long as the tomatoes keep coming.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: 4-Inch Available Plant Water

Thanks Dawn. It's showing us at .08, so that's telling me .08 is pretty dang dry!! I'll keep watching this map and comparing it to the KBDI and what I'm experiencing here with the soil. I noticed my neighbor's 2nd round of tomato plants looked like they lost their color and are all curled up and brownish just like mine did last year.

Yep, I've had several tomatoes off of the Sir Speedy and Fourth of July plants, We like the Fourth of July much better for flavor (more acidy, strong flavor) although they haven't produced as many tomatoes as Sir Speedy. The spider mites are really hitting some of the tomato plants I planted in the back yard that I got from you. I'm going to try dustin-mizering some diatomaceous earth on them tonight, in hopes they don't take out all of the plants back there. I didn't get cages on them and they are sprawling into huge masses. Remember me asking you for the Brandy Boy, and telling you how something always happens to my Brandy Boy every year? Well I have a story for you about this one, that tops all other brandy boy stories, respectively, I'll try to post it this weekend. Sheri

I hope Brandy Boy has not been a Bad Boy. : )

I am picking lots of tomatoes everyday, but not for long because my plants are bad, bad, bad. Just for the record, while I am still thinking about it, my most productive hybrid has been Early Doll and my most productive OP is Carbon, both in the ground and in containers.