Rain Rain and More Rain

we have gotten 5 inches in the last 2 days and looking at more The Weather Channel reporting that Little Rock had a record rainfall for Nov. 21 yesterday

Thankfully we have had some good rains too (much needed after the summer we've had.) So the collards and turnips are looking real good! Yipppeeee!
Does your yard and garden drain okay? They aren't becoming ponds, I hope!

Most all of my yard and garden is rocky so it will empty in a matter of minutes

We are good here and have more on the way Friday night. It is nice when it isnt 100+ degrees and the ground dries up immediately.

This fall has been / is a welcome relief for most of us.

So raining again today and has me kinda thinking I maybe should have planted my garlic before Thanksgiving instead of after ..I had my mind set for the day after and stuck with it ..Last year I planted too early and it came up and was greeted by cold/icy weather and survived but the yeild was next to nothing due to the bulbs using all of their strenght to just barely come back ...Oh well plenty of time to get it in if it quits raining soon if not will just use it up ...

I am near 3 inches in the last few weeks.

Grits, where did you get your garlic to plant? By the time we started getting some rain and I decided to order garlic, all the companies I knew about had sold out.
Yep, Jujube, I think we've gotten 3 inches in the last couple weeks also - it's wonderful! But I was turning over a spot in the garden to transplant some collards the other day and found that it is still very dry below about 8 to 10 inches down. Sure hope we continue to get rain for the benefit of the shrubs and trees with deeper roots.

I just bought some at wall mart was $2.78 per pound which is cheaper than at the Co-Op i checked some seed places and it was higher and the shipping was just outrageous for a 1lb item..

Okay, that's a good idea. Yep, shipping is so high now!

Have Y'all noticed how lots of places are offering free shipping ,now that there is a move afoot to tax internet sales

Me thinks we pay enough taxes already. Like the free shipping when it's offered, of course.

Rained all day yesterday and steady untill right now but has eased up some I don't know how much as I have turned my rain gauge upside down so it can't freeze

It started raining here this a.m. Thanks Grits for sharing finally... lol

I was out walking when the front came it. It roared like a large truck in the distance. I looked and saw a bank of dark clouds rolling toward us and realized it was wind and possibly rain. Me & the boyzos hustled back to the house and just got in the yard when it hit. It had been warm and humid but the temps dropped almost immediately.

It's arrival was reminiscent of the blue northers I've seen in the past. The rain has been slow getting here but is now steady and we hope it will saturate the ground and rain for a few days.

I hope the rest of the drought stricken areas are savouring the rain also. Thank you Lord...

This message was edited Dec 4, 2011 2:09 PM

We had more rain Saturday (1 and 1/4 inches). Our 55 gallon rain water barrels are full and there is standing water in places in the ditches along the roads. What a beautiful sight! Has anybody heard predictions if next summer will have rain or be another drought?

It is leaning towards drought up to end of spring last time I checked. They arent forecasting past that. However, this good rain should take us a long way through the winter. I am on clay which means I shouldnt have to water for at least 6 weeks.

The rain has been a blessing here too, we got over 2 inches this weekend.

Snowed here the last 2 mornings not very much but enough to make the gtround white looks like more tonight

We got some snow along with a hard freeze yesterday. I had the garden beds covered but don't know if it was too cold to matter. Some winters the lettuce, mustard greens and collards will keep on growing till spring (and then bolt most of the time.) It's nice to go pick lunch out of your own garden (in the milder winters). This fall when the temperature (and rain) started coming down so we could plant a few things, kept checking for aphids and flea beatles (they are bad to get on the greens) but didn't see a one. Maybe the drought did some good (got rid of some pests for a while.)

We have clay here too, thankfully (having gardened in a sandy soil in central Alabama, I appreciate clay. It seems like you can never add enough organic material to sandy soil.)

Anybody else growing anything edible over the winter? What works for you?

Lady Pearl Yesterday I went to in laws place and pulled a 5 gallon bucket of turnips came home a peeled most of them then got busy with them again this morning and cut,blanched and froze 12 qt.bags of them ..They will go so good with a lot of the greens that I have growing have Mustard ,Chard,kale,and chines cabbage it will all stand quite a lot of frost but a really hard freeze will put an end to it with the exception of the Kale..It just keeps on going..

Grits,
MMMMMMmmmm, turnips are so yum! Thanks for list of your winter veggies. I haven't tried chinese cabbage yet....

The chinese cabbage is just like another mustard to my taste anyway,rained hard here last night and then started in again this morning with a steady COLD rain,....I am trying to get a new shelf built in the den for my computer suport stuff IE: router ,speakers and other stuf that just seems to accumulate but it is so cold and nasty can't seem to stay out very long anymore,no hurry I guess if I were to try and apply a finish it would take a week to dry ..i am trying to get it right the first time I can build most anything just a very poor designer...

another rainy night here in bubbaland then a cold foggy morning but I am not about to utter one single word of complaint......I live about a hundred feet above the valley floor so it can just kee raining..Everything is turning nice and green once more

We got just a snudge over an inch of rain over night. Lost of lightning and thunder. I loved it! Our pasture is growing a bit, but those who took a gamble and fertilized and top seeded in September are really getting a big pay-off now. Their pastures are green and even growing around our area.

Yep, the pastures and yards are greener now (in December) here than ever were during this last (blazing hot) summer. So there's plenty of winter rye grass for the chickens and guineas. Hopefully the coming winter storm will be kind to the garden (vegetables). When am I going to get around to building some cold frames......?

I'm doing like you Grits, working on some inside projects since it's cold out. We are remodeling one of the bathrooms.

On the street where I live the first snow of the year...

Wow! Snow! For me, snow is fine on Christmas Eve, but that's all I need! Looks pretty, though.

a pic of the coldframe we built in our gardening class last spring Made from a simple plastic barell with a couple of cheap kinges,just one of a series of images i used to show the various steps without exposing the class to a saw and drill ,then use the finish project as a demonstration for the class,After the class we auctioned all of the projects at our Library fundraiser..

I for one am very interested in the steps to make that coldframe, Grits. I have access to some of those barrels from a friend that lives near a dairy. How hard was it to cut that barrel in half?

Don't send that snow down here... we don't like snow (too hard to drive in.) : D

If you send your e mail addy I can send all of the pix as an attch. for now here is step one ==Using the slight line left by the molding process use a sharpie marker and mark out the line to be cut

Step 2 checking the line for straightness

Step #3 cut the line on one side only using any kind of saw skillsaw makes very short work of this

now attach the hinges to the side that was just cut this makes it much easier as the barrels tend to warp when cut completely

The hinges attch.

Next cut the other side and the two ends

Drill as many drain holes as you think is appo.

the finished job there are nots more pix in the slide show ,it was created for a class project in a gardening class that I teach at Talihina Public Library strictly informal and fun for all .....

grits74571, your instructional photos are perfect. Hmmmm, now to find a plastic barrel. All we get here at work are the metal ones. I'll ask our shop foreman, he knows everything! All the good stuff to know anyway =).

They are fairly easy to find around here but the price has really gone up in the last couple of years ,the barrels cut in half lenghts ways are what I am starting to use more and more as raised bed type planters as all of my older wooden ones were rotting away..

Thank you for the pictures and information Grits! Now that the company/family has gone I can get back into gardening.

So you also use these white barrels like big pots, then. Do you leave them in the same place all the time?

What do you do to protect your plants when it is windy there in Oklahoma?