Monday Garden Club

Monday again. Time for a garden update.
This is what we woke up to last Thursday morning. I'm actually surprised that the damage wasn't worse. The weather overnight was so severe that we had the kids sleep downstairs in the living room in case we all needed to make a mad dash down to the basement. The lightening alone was terrifying enough but when a big CRACK of thunder followed along quick and loud, Binny freaked. Not a fun night. She finally crawled in bed with us around 2 and both kids got up when the Gardener left for work at 5, oh and it was still raining and storming. Shortly after the sun started to rise, the storm moved out over the lake and it was over, leaving us 3.2 inches of rain and one hell of a mess to clean up.There were branches down all over the yard and shingles in the back field from the barn, again in addition to the muddy, mosquito-y mess in the garden. The worst was that the sunflowers (and pole beans!) fell over with the heavy rain and high winds. They uprooted just like big old pine trees. The ground was incredibly saturated and the whole garden was one big muddy mess. My brother came by that morning anyway to borrow a trailer and was quickly recruited to help stake up the sad looking sunflowers and ferocious pole beans that had already started curling themselves onto the tomato plants across the aisle.
It was just a quick fix until I had a chance to get a lot more staking supplies the wind went down and the rain had a chance to soak into the ground.
Did I happen to mention it was muddy?
So after 2 days of staking and re-staking after the wind would blow down the sunflowers and the piece of re-purposed conduit and baler twine they were staked to, they are back up and not one pole bean plant was lost in the process!
I also trimmed up the leaves on the sunflowers again, allowing the beans to continue to climb up the stalks and not branch out onto the leaves and tangle themselves together. It also allowed for some room between the sunflowers so they aren't constantly being pushed around by their neighbor sunflowers in the wind. The tomato garden was hit pretty hard too but I'm having trouble getting the plants to stand up in their wimpy cages. Seriously, does anyone have a better way of staking and training tomatoes other than the flimsy wire cages I use? Maybe next year the Gardener will build something better for me. Hint, hint.

Now for all you gardeners out there who wish to participate, either leave a comment on what's growing in your yard, or post a Monday Garden Club update on your blog. Don't forget to drop your link in the comments and I'll add it to this post.

Participating Blogs:
Secret Mom Thoughts
Naked Opinions
Easy Eco To Go
The Local Cook
Out In Them Sticks