Rain, Rain. Go Away!

Beginning Thursday afternoon, we've had rain. Lots of rain! We were shin-deep in water on our property. Where we live, we are pretty much at sea level...maybe 1 foot above. If we dig a hole, we get water at about 1 foot. Sometimes a little more. This means we have to have a deep ditch around the perimeter of the property in order to grow things. Well, sometimes it still floods, but the ditches make the water clear off quicker. Needless to say, Thursday, Friday and Saturday our strawberry patch was pretty much flooded. One low end was under water along with our mustard greens and onion sets, which is planted in front of the last row. This is not good because the strawberry plants grow from the crown. Those shouldn't get soaked like that. I may lose part of the strawberry patch. As soon as I can figure out why I can't post pics, I'll get pics to show you the strawberry patch and part of the food garden so you can see what I mean.

Also, the chickens were partially under water. On days like this, I call them duckies because they sometimes have to wade through water. Luckily there is a large portion of their run which is high and dry. I'm sure they get upset when they get water like this. I'm thankful it only happens a couple of times a year.

Today, we have no rain. It is sunny! Yay! I went outside and got my potting soil and compost mix so I can transplant seedlings from indoors. Right now, I have red peppers, yellow peppers, eggplants and summer squash transplanted. They are sitting outside under the picnic pavilion hardening off for a bit. It's a little over 60 degrees F outside, so they'll be getting a little bit of air. Hopefully they will get good stalks from being outside. They're a bit spindly right now.

I've sunk the summer squash stems about 2" into their new pots. Some say that the squash won't transplant well and they'll die. I've wondered why this is? They sell the squash starts at the garden centers. I've always sown the squash seeds directly into the garden. So this is one of my experiments for this year.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be transplanting all into the garden after the frost has finished. Wish me luck!

Good luck to all of you with your gardens this year!!!