From today through the middle of September, we’ll be running your Garden Gallery pictures on our 6pm weathercast, Monday through Saturday.

If you’d like to enter a photo for a chance to be featured and to win a $10 gift certificate to Sargent’s on 2nd, please e-mail photos to weather@kttc.com, subject line “Garden Gallery”, and include your name, town, and a description of your picture (help me out a little with flower names, please).

Posted under gardening, Viewer Pics

Topsoil moisture is being reported as short or very short in 53% of Minnesota, but 80% of the corn crop is being reported as fair to good. Only 9% of the corn crop is being reported as poor to very poor, and only 11% is being reported as excellent. Thanks to a warm March, all of Minnesota crops are being reported as being well ahead of last year and ahead of the 5-year average.

Click here for the full, July 16th MN Crop Report from the USDA. cw071612

The latest drought monitor update came out last Thursday, and the data for the latest report was measured from the 3rd of July through the 10th. Drought conditions have increased throughout Minnesota in the past couple weeks, and the rate of increase is very high due to the recent warm weather. Nearly 50% of Minnesota is at least abnormally dry or already in moderate drought. I believe it is likely we’ll see abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions expand across much or all of southern to central Minnesota in the next couple weeks.

Posted under climate, Drought, Farming, gardening, heat

We kicked things off on today’s 6pm news and the Garden Gallery will run Monday through Saturday through the middle of September. Would you like to submit a photo?

Photos will be shown on our Garden Gallery page and I will make every effort to update the page after each winning photo has been shown. If your photo is shown, you win a $10 gift certificate to Sargent’s on 2nd in Rochester, which can be picked up there after your photo has been shown on-air.

Rick and Mei-O Shabsin are the 1st winners of 2012 with the photo of their Tree Peony.

Good luck!

Posted under gardening, Viewer Pics

A line of thunderstorms, non-severe so far as of 9pm Tuesday evening, is moving across Minnesota and north Iowa and bringing another round of needed rainfall to the region. You can always get a good look at radar by checking out our Interactive Radar in case you’re curious about where it’s raining and where that rain is going.

Since the beginning of June, Rochester is running about 1″ behind normal – at least prior to tonight’s rainfall. Our heat wave of the 3rd through 8th really dried things out around the region, so tonight’s rainfall is welcome in area fields and gardens.

Speaking of gardens…

We’re showing viewer’s garden photos every Monday through Saturday evening at 6pm. We’re also showing off those pictures here on our site. Just click the ‘Garden Gallery’ image on the left-hand column or click the label on the header above. That’s where you’ll find instructions on how you can share your pictures with us and win a $10 gift certificate to Sargent’s Gardens in Rochester.

Posted under gardening, rainfall, severe weather

That’s right, this is such a big deal that I had to use 3 exclamation points in the subject line. We’re kicking off this year’s Garden Photos starting this coming Monday, May 16th.

Posted under gardening

Don’t forget that our 2010 season of Garden Gallery is kicking off on May 17th!

Visit our Garden Gallery page for more info on how you can submit your pictures and what you get for a prize if chosen! 

Enjoy the pleasant stretch of weather this weekend…and next week!

Posted under gardening

For tonight: Freeze Warnings for our entire viewing area. Not just us though – look at how widespread the Freeze Warnings and Frost Advisories are. Cover any tender vegetation outside that you care about keeping or bring it inside. This Warning goes until 9AM Sunday. Lows tonight will dip to the lower 30s, possibly some upper 20s.

Posted under climate, gardening, spring

We’re excited to welcome back the Garden Gallery for another year – and we’ll be kicking things off the week of May 17th.

Whether you’re a Garden Guru or Garden Gopher or Garden…Gullible (“But I thought you said rabbits won’t like what I’m growing!”), as long as you’re growing something, you’re eligble.

Send us a photo of your labor of love this season. Then sit back and watch the NewsCenter at 6, Monday through Saturday, to see if you’re a winner. Winners receive a $10 gift certificate from Sargent’s Gardens in Rochester, and will also have their photo on our weatherblog’s Garden Page, along with on air.

For more information on how to send stuff in – click here . Good luck!

Posted under gardening, KTTC

All good things must come to an end – our Garden Photos are wrapping up for the year!

We’ll have one more week starting Monday, the 14th, before we put the shovels and gloves and pots away for a few months.

To get you through the next several months of Midwestern Cold, you are encouraged to visit the Garden Photos page, where we’ve featured all the winners from 2009. We guarantee it’ll help get you through the winter blues (no money back guarantee, though).

Thanks to everyone who submitted garden photos this year – between email, snail mail, and iSubmit on KTTC.com, I got tons and tons and tons and tons, which makes it so much fun and so difficult to choose!

Posted under gardening, KTTC

Early Girl Tomato

I’m just getting started with this gardening thing, and am enjoying the entire process so far. This past winter I started a good chunk of our vegetables and flowers from seed, and I’d say I was about 50% successful with that. Overwatering stunted quite a few of my pepper plants, so of the 21 pepper plants in my garden, about 6 of them are my own. The rest were supplemented by plants I purchased from some good folks at the Rochester Farmer’s Market.

Purple Cherokee

My tomatoes still aren’t ripe and ready, but I’ve got quite a few on the stem. The largest so far is a purple heirloom variety (Purple Cherokee) that I bought from Seed Savers in Decorah. So far it’s even ahead of the Early Girl and roma varieties. Aside from the peppers and tomatoes, we’re also working on a hodge podge of other vegetables.

Flowering Pumpkin

My son really wanted to grow pumpkins, so we gave it a try. Despite only 1 of 6 seeds growing, it’s overtaking our back fence. It’s flowering quite a bit and we’re looking forward to carving our own homegrown jack-o-lanterns. We’re also growing eggplant, onions, carrots, cucumbers, squash, a couple varieties of lettuce, dry beans and green beans, and the ever-producing rhubarb plants that we’ve managed a couple harvests from already this year.

Pumpkin vines on fence

I’m waiting on more seasonably warm weather and more frequent rains, as all gardeners and farmers are, to help us out in the watering department. Rain chances over the next week are only for the occasional and isolated thundershower, so we’ll have to keep watering until this pattern shifts.

Posted under gardening, weather