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things were looking up until June 1, when in started raining every day in the northeast. its only hit 90 maybe twice this year. most of the “sunny” days were only sunny in the afternoons, so missed the morning sun. tomatoes are garbage, and the peppers are not very happy either. onions did so-so. the cucumbers were the happiest in the cool, wet summer. squash is coming hot and heavy right now too.

the need for some of the upgrades i know i’ve needed - raised beds w/ hoop house covers, and more wood chips and weed blocker to stop soil from splashing up onto leaves - were plainly obvious this year. it would have been nice to regulate back some of the moisture and retain more heat in the soil.

some silver linings from the wet summer - the browntail caterpillars mostly died away. they’ve been bad in recent years, but looks like they don’t like the rain so much. my young fruit trees also put on a lot of growth, even too much growth as the root systems are still not established enough to hold the trees up. i’ve had to re-stake most of the trees. i’ve also done a lot of expansion with new perennials and trees this year - things that weren’t going to produce this year but benefitted from the excess rain.

i haven’t watered anything since May. the ground is constantly wet. the rain barrels have been constantly full. i just pump everything down to keep the skeeters under control.

the browntail caterpillars did not like the rain, but i’ve seen a good 10 varieties of caterpillars i’ve never seen before. the chickens and bluebirds have been quite happy with all the extra protein in the yard this year.

things were looking up until June 1, when in started raining every day in the northeast. its only hit 90 maybe twice this year. most of the “sunny” days were only sunny in the afternoons, so missed the morning sun. tomatoes are garbage, and the peppers are not very happy either. onions did so-so. the cucumbers were the happiest in the cool, wet summer. squash is coming hot and heavy right now too. the need for some of the upgrades i know i’ve needed - raised beds w/ hoop house covers, and more wood chips and weed blocker to stop soil from splashing up onto leaves - were plainly obvious this year. it would have been nice to regulate back some of the moisture and retain more heat in the soil. some silver linings from the wet summer - the browntail caterpillars mostly died away. they’ve been bad in recent years, but looks like they don’t like the rain so much. my young fruit trees also put on a lot of growth, even too much growth as the root systems are still not established enough to hold the trees up. i’ve had to re-stake most of the trees. i’ve also done a lot of expansion with new perennials and trees this year - things that weren’t going to produce this year but benefitted from the excess rain. i haven’t watered anything since May. the ground is constantly wet. the rain barrels have been constantly full. i just pump everything down to keep the skeeters under control. the browntail caterpillars did not like the rain, but i’ve seen a good 10 varieties of caterpillars i’ve never seen before. the chickens and bluebirds have been quite happy with all the extra protein in the yard this year.

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Terrible results because of the heat. North Texas, we haven't had rain since early June, and hardly any cloud cover. Even the irrigated grass that isn't in shade has been heat damaged. The last bit of rain we had (in early June) left with some high winds that showed me that my tomato trellis wasn't strong enough, so it collapsed and it was too damned hot for me to get out there and install the over-engineered one I'm replacing it with. Even with drip irrigation, I wasn't able to get enough water on everything, because my window of temps (between ~0400-0530) wasn't enough to deal with all the heat during the day, and if I tried to water before the heat had finally come out of the ground, I would have just steamed the roots. All in all, just can't grow with 40 days of lows in the mid 80s. The 104-108 days didn't help, but it was really that lack of cool temps where I could soak the ground that mattered. Hoping for the fall planting to go better, and maybe a good crop of winter cabbage.