Larry,

I'm so glad y'all got rain and sorry to hear about the damage. In our part of the country, it seems like we get as much damage as rain with most summer thunderstorms. I wish the rain would fall without the winds bringing all the damage.

We haven't had much rain, but light rain is falling now and we have about 0.40" in the rain gauge. That's not bad considering that yesterday's forecast didn't give us much hope of rain---I think our rain chance overnight was 10%. Our weather radio went off around 3: 45 a.m. or so for a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, but that rain missed our house. The light rain here didn't start until around daybreak. The winds got a little bit rowdy---gusting briefly in the 40s, so nothing like a lot of y'all had overnight---but the only damage I could see from standing in the driveway in the rain and looking into the garden was pepper plants snapped in half.

When the rain stops, I'll go out and salvage whatever peppers I can from the broken limbs, and I'll prune off the damaged limbs that are hanging from the plants by a thread. I'm sure the peppers will rebound quickly and continue to set and ripen fruit until frost. Pepper plants are brittle and break easily so I cage and stake them, but even that didn't prevent the plants from being damaged.

It is so nice to have rain that I don't even mind the damage. I've lost some plants this week because I didn't water them and they wilted too much and couldn't recover from the wilting. Mostly it was flowers, but also a few cucumbers in the front garden. (I watered my main planting out back, but hadn't watered the front garden in a couple of weeks, though I did finally water it yesterday since they only gave us a 10% chance of rain. I figured if I went ahead and watered, it would rain...and it did.

Our rain forecast for the next few days looks a lot better than it did yesterday. I guess the storms are going to bring the rain further south and west than previously expected. Yay!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: OK Mesonet-24 hour rainfall totals

Larry, sorry to hear about your plants. That wind sure was something. The rain was nice though, although im not real sure how much we received, i still havent replaced my broken rain guage.

My only plant problem right now is on that beefsteak that i couldnt get to set. It finally set and now the fruit is so big, im having to use strips of cloth to tie and hold the tomatos up at the stem end because they are so heavy they are bending over. Not sure what else to do about that.

I do have 2 big mixed pots that the grasshoppers have really been stripping away at. I almost chucked them, but I decided id keep them fed and watered and use them as sacrificial plants so the grasshoppers wont move on to something else. Seems to be working so far.

Hope your having the same cool down that we are. It was brutal yesterday.

Emma

Glad to hear about the rain! It sure would be nice if it could come without the damage, but hopefully a little trim is all your plants needed. I feel for everyone without power in this heat, for sure.
We got 1.6 inches here in ne Cleveland county and no wind damage (a good thing since big trash is three weeks late picking up our debris from the may storms.

Well things are not too bad. The corn was actually some African Maize I was experimenting with. I found out all I needed to know about it. It takes too long to mature and it grows too tall. The ears were 5' to 6' above the ground, and the stalks were at least 10', no way can I grow something like that in this valley. I have trouble keeping Early Sunglow from blowing over. I have 5 large Caster bean plants blown down but they will still have plenty seeds on them. One of them blew down on a pepper plant and broke it, but I have more peppers than I need anyway. The rest of my peppers and okra were protected by the trellises I am building. As far as I can tell, I got a great deal. The rain was well worth the little damage I got. The tomatoes will be splitting now, so I will have to pick them pretty close, but they have about quit anyway.

Larry

Larry glad you got some rain. They say we have a good chance over the next 2-3 days. Today it was only 91 after 105 yesterday. And at least a few cool days ahead. Some don't show any 100 degree days for the next 10 days. If so it should allow some good fruit set and hopefully with some natural rain it will relieve some of the stress the plants have had. Overall to this point though a lot better gardening season than the last two. There was a large rain form two miles south of town last evening and then moved straight south. The storms have moved very odd this year. Last week they moved from the east to the west which we seldom see here. Jay