Drowning?

[b54red]

I finally was able to get out and check my plants and found that not only did we get a huge flood of rain and high winds; but obviously hail. I started checking my tomatoes and ended up removing at least half the leaves and would have liked to remove most of the others except the ones that have sprouted out the last couple of days. Almost every older leaf had multiple holes in them and some were just shredded. Looked like someone took a shotgun to them. It must have been fairly small hail because it didn't puncture most of my broccoli and cabbage leaves that bad but many of the newer tender leaves had the same small holes in them. Wow I'm just glad it wasn't dime size or larger or I would have no garden left. You should see what used to be my big beautiful spinach and lettuce plants with much more delicate leaves were nearly totally destroyed.

The other downside to so much rain has been how yellow all my tomato and pepper plants are. I hate to try to fertilize them with the soil so saturated but I may have too. The wind is really blowing so maybe the soil will dry out some more with the sunny day along with the wind. I think I will give them a shot of high nitrogen liquid fertilizer later today and see if that will green them up some.

Bill

[Starlight]

Sorry to hear about your damage Bill. It's never fun to see your hard work destroyed by mother nature.

My plants and soil just finally dried out a bit and now in a few hours the rain is back on again, but since they said this one is supposed to be a fast moving storm, I went ahead and gave my plants some TT and a tiny amount of Epsom salt. Like yours mine really needed it. Hopefully it won't rain so hard that it washes all the ferts out the bottom of the pots.

With the temps dropping big time again and frost a very likely , I'll be bringing all my plants back in and turning heaters on in the home.

Hope your plants survive this weekend.

[clkeiper]

We have had snow.. snow! and 2-4 more inches for Friday night and 1-2 more for Sat... I am not sure which is worse.

[My Foot Smells]

welp, I guess this will test your grafting in regards to disease resistance. sometimes things bounce back with vigilance after getting abused.

this has certainly been the most windy year I can ever recall. was getting 40+ yesterday, again.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by My Foot Smells

welp, I guess this will test your grafting in regards to disease resistance. sometimes things bounce back with vigilance after getting abused.

this has certainly been the most windy year I can ever recall. was getting 40+ yesterday, again.

The grafting is really not a factor that I can see as far as foliage diseases but it is a major factor when it comes to fusarium and nematodes. I have not noticed any drop off in foliage diseases since I started grafting but using rootstock that are resistant to all three races of fusarium has worked a miracle in my garden.

The tremendous rainfall that I have experienced since setting out my plants has done a lot of damage by depleting nitrogen and other nutrients out of my raised beds and with the soil so wet it is hard to add more water in the form of fertilizer mixes. Despite the wet ground I am going to add some more fertilizer either this afternoon or tomorrow before the plants become too yellow to recover quickly. Most of my plants are blooming now but the lack of nutrients available may cause lower fruit-set but only time will tell.

Bill

[b54red]

Well I went out yesterday afternoon and applied Liquid Lawn and Epsom Salts with my hose end sprayer. That is the first time I have ever used LL on tomatoes but I had to do something to counter the leaching of nutrients from all that rain the past few weeks. Went out and checked on them this morning and they look a lot better and are much greener in just over 12 hours.

Bill

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by b54red

Well I went out yesterday afternoon and applied Liquid Lawn and Epsom Salts with my hose end sprayer. That is the first time I have ever used LL on tomatoes but I had to do something to counter the leaching of nutrients from all that rain the past few weeks. Went out and checked on them this morning and they look a lot better and are much greener in just over 12 hours.

Bill

Sounds like it might be good for onions and other leafy vegetables.
Worth

[Starlight]

Bill... I wondered how your plants did. With 9 tornadoes come through, even though they were low rated, I was hoping you didn't get hit.

We got more rain coming Mon or Tues. Ugggggggg. Normally I would be out watering every day. Now I want to plug up my hair dryer and go blow the soil dry on my babies. I've already lost a couple from all the rain and high winds.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Sounds like it might be good for onions and other leafy vegetables.
Worth

I have been using the Liquid Lawn mixed with the Vegatable, Apples and Oranges, or Texas Tomato Food about 50/50 to give several things like mustard greens, broccoli, nest onions and others a boost and it worked for them so I thought I would try it on the tomatoes and peppers which were looking so pale. Most of the time all the tomatoes need is the TTF but this was an unusual situation that I thought might need a bit of an unusual solution. It seems to be working but I can tell from the growth the last two days that I will be doing a bit of pruning; but at least I will be pruning green plants.

Bill

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Starlight

Bill... I wondered how your plants did. With 9 tornadoes come through, even though they were low rated, I was hoping you didn't get hit.

We got more rain coming Mon or Tues. Ugggggggg. Normally I would be out watering every day. Now I want to plug up my hair dryer and go blow the soil dry on my babies. I've already lost a couple from all the rain and high winds.

Since all my planting is done in raised beds the vicious persistent high winds have already dried the beds out fairly good. I had to actually water my broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower yesterday afternoon only a few days after getting 10 inches of rain in a couple of days. Wow that is some wind! My tomatoes and peppers didn't need watering as they were heavily mulched and so the beds were still quite wet under the mulch but they just had to have the fertilizer.

Bill

[Starlight]

Looks like neither of us will have to be watering again for awhile. Sheesh. Been raining since about 6 pm and will have bad storms later during the night. Staying up tonight. They said on early news, no severe weather alerts expected. They said that the other day and we got like 8 tornadoes during the night.

We get a little chance to dry out Wed and then more rain for thurs and friday. Heck, I haven't had to water mine since last rain and they was just starting to fully dry out .

One good thing, bet we have the cleanest leaves around. ; )

[SueCT]

The last time we had as much rain as you are describing, it was the worst tomato and gardening year I ever had. Not only too much water, but not enough sun. Plants were small, with little fruit and lots of disease. I swore next time I would buy rolls of plastic and run it between rows of plants and use lawn staples to hold it down so the rain would roll right down my little hill and off my garden, lol, or come up with a better idea. I hope it lets up for you guys soon. Too much of a good thing is not good.

[Gardeneer]

You can cover your raised beds or rows w/ black plastic and make "+" shape incision to plant your tomatoes. This way the rain water won't water log the roots. This can also help the soil stay warmer.
But the the wet foliage is another issue.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by SueCT

The last time we had as much rain as you are describing, it was the worst tomato and gardening year I ever had. Not only too much water, but not enough sun. Plants were small, with little fruit and lots of disease. I swore next time I would buy rolls of plastic and run it between rows of plants and use lawn staples to hold it down so the rain would roll right down my little hill and off my garden, lol, or come up with a better idea. I hope it lets up for you guys soon. Too much of a good thing is not good.

I agree and it is doubly bad down here where the humidity is so high even when it isn't raining that diseases just take over. Fungicides are useless during these frequent heavy rains so I may have to get out the bleach again soon I already used it on my tomatoes two weeks ago. It has been raining since last night but is clearing right now but the forecast is for more over the next few days.

Bill

[My Foot Smells]

...has been one of the least humid years so far. we are getting 30% despite the rain. it's been a weird year over here in Arkansas. however, did see where Texarkana got baseball size hail yesterday, always good to dodge the big ones.

"they" (gub'mint) is trying to work up a good scare with this new mosquito virus here and it looks like they are going to fog the whole state. we shall see.