Houston Weather

[nmasi307]

How are you guys faring with all this weather? Since I was lazy this year, I havnt hit the ground with my toms yet. That means I have a few seedlings if anyone was devastated, they may be a little late, but they are better than nothing. Ill post a list of what I have when i get home.

nate
nmasi@earthlink.net

[feldon30]

Thank you for the kind offer!

I have many backup seedlings under a canopy in case my main plants get wiped out.

Yes, it is frickin SOAKING out there. Hopefully the wave of storms going through right now will end in about an hour and be the last storms until Friday.

My tomato plants do seem to be holding up. I just hope I haven't got a million foliage diseases less then 72 hours after planting. I did mulch, but there's a limit.

I had a framework up over my garden beds, but the S.O. took them down with the intention of building something better, so I couldn't use my plastic tarps for this purpose.

[kwselke]

My neighborhood has received 4.5" over the last three days. Fortunately I was not planning on planting out until 3/15, so it was easy to move the starts to a covered area. With the ground soaked I'll probably wait until Saturday to plant. I do not think the rains predicted for Friday are to be anything like the last three days.

Ken

[duajones]

I feel fortunate to just get around 4 inches of rain total with this storm system. I took the tarps down this morning. Just looked at the radar, looks like houston is getting pounded.

[kwselke]

Nate,

How did the Seabrook area fare today? I saw two sets of powerful storms passing through there today. Ten days ago, I helped a newbie tomato friend start two plants in containers up the road from you in Shoreacres. I left her one back-up plant and told her to keep it under cover. I do not know if she did or left it out in the open?

Ken

[nmasi307]

seabrook got hammered...we actually had hail here...my raised beds look like swimming pools

[MikeInCypress]

We are swimming in Cypress. I'm glad I have procrastinated and still have 18 more to plant. THe four in 5 gal gro bags look great and the 3 in the ground look ok. But I'm not real sure about the 20 inGro Boxes. I've got my fingers crossed.

MikeInCypress

[Suze]

Weather Underground shows my area got ~8.5 inches for the month of March. The vast majority of that was over the last three days.

I was scared to even look at the tomato plants today, but I did, and they look amazingly good for the most part. Most of them have already grown quite a bit too. Luckily, I had a chance to get them sprayed and mulched right after they were planted.

On the other hand, the peppers could look a little better, but I think they will be okay.

[duajones]

My plants took a pounding before I put up the tarps but look good now, sprayed them with daconil this afternoon. I had it easy compared to you guys

[feldon30]

My peppers are all hiding under the canopy. I will plant the rest tomorrow and then they go out in the sun.

[kwselke]

For anyone in the southwest Houston area that may need replacement starts or who is just getting around to planting, I was just at Southwest Fertilizer 5828 Bissonnet at Renwick. They had an amazing assortment of tomato varieties in stock. My guess is they had about 15 heirloom varieties and about 20 more standard OP and hybrid varieties. They were in 3" pots, with the standards going for $.99 and the heirlooms going for $1.49. All looked healthy and well cared for. I just wanted to pass the info along.

Ken

[feldon30]

That's a good price and great information. Thanks!

I was at Houston Garden Center on 610 near I-10 last night and they still had a ton of tomato starts, both 6 packs (even Homestead 24) and 4" pots of heirlooms and hybrids alike (almost all the ones at ChefJeff.com) plus a ton of spices. They had about 1,000 Sweet Basil starts, as well as some other varieties of Basil. They also had cantaloupe, watermelon, and squash starts too. In Houston it's really time to just start seed of those, so for $1 you're shaving off 2 weeks of growth.