My pea's are 8-10" tall already! I've had them outside all day and night in mostly indirect sunlight.... except for yesterday and last night. Too windy and cold.

They'll go back outside today though and stay there. Next week it's going to freeze most every night so I'll probably have to bring them at night.

I am new to seedlings and not sure how much cold I can adapt them to, or rather how quickly they can adapt to that cold.

Hopefully I can get them nice and cold adapted next week and then get them in the ground. They're trying to wrap around each other!

Dorothy, I've been dragging my feet on sowing seeds because I feel like the cold weather is going to linger longer than we like, and then the seeds are confounding me by popping up very quickly. I asked them "can't y'all slow down a little?" I've now got everything up and growing in flats in the spare room and likely will spend next week pricking out seedlings and separating each plant into its own little paper cup.

Our forecast low for last night was 36 and I woke up to 25 degrees this morning, so I'm not trusting whatever the forecast says anyhow because undoubtedly it will be colder here than our point forecast says. The only good thing about it was that first I checked the Mesonet station and it said the low had been 21, which made me unhappy since the onions are in the ground, but then when I came downstairs, my Min-Max said 25 here, which certainly is better than 21. The soil is warmer than I'd expect, but we have had some delightfully warm days even though the nights are cold.

Dulahey, Peas are extremely cold tolerant. I generally won't see much damage on them at all when they are young as long as the temperatures don't go lower than the 20s. When they are older and are in bloom or even when they have peas on them, air temperatures around 20-22 can knock their blossoms off or shrivel the young peas and foliage, but the plants bounce back quickly. The exact temperature that will damage them seems variable and might be related somehow to whether the humidity is higher or lower. Also, sometimes it will snow on peas after they are up and growing. If the snow is deep and is piled up on top of the plants, they can tolerate temperatures lower than 20 thanks to the insulating effect of the snow.

The trick when raising them as seedlings is not to keep them too warm because that can make it harder for them to adapt to the inevitably colder weather they will endure in late February, all of March, and sometimes even into April. I try to get them in the ground when they are just a couple of inches tall because the bigger/taller they are, the longer it takes them to bounce back after being transplanted. Once mine are sprouted and seeded into cups of soil, they have to stay outside all the time, even if that means I move them into the greenhouse at night. I don't want them getting used to the warm indoor air temperatures.

Dawn

I try to plant mine when they are pretty short too. But last year they got too tall--5-6"--and I am afraid that may happen this year too. But I always plant two batches, two weeks apart. I will plant this batch in a week or so and then start the next batch. I plan on no more than 3 weeks from soaking the seed to putting them in the ground. I do remember one year--was it 07?--that I lost 1/2 of my broccoli and a 1/3 of my peas in late March when the temp went to 18 overnight and stayed cold the next day. I had covered them with sheets too.

I goofed today. DH was sick and I got busy taking care of him and doing laundry and didn't get to the greenhouse til 1pm. The peas were still in the hot bench with the plastic cover down and the temp in there was 90. Yikes. So tomorrow I will get out there earlier and get them moved out.

Dawn, it always surprises me to hear how much colder you get some nights than we do. But you say you are in a low area next to the river and we are up on a hill above a valley. We barely got below 30 last night.

Dorothy, Tim says our weather is crazy and it is hard to argue with him. I kinda think our temperatures are psychotic. It doesn't matter what the NWS forecast says---you cannot trust it. We use the NWS point forecast for our specific tiny portion of the county and all I can say is that you have to take the temperature forecasts with a grain of salt. It isn't just that we often go lower than forecast---we went 11 degrees lower than our point forecast a couple of nights ago, after all. We also often go 10-12 degrees higher in the summer too, and I don't think we can blame that on our cold microclimate. Until I started comparing our actual temps recorded on the Min-Max thermometer I had no idea how very different our actual temps were from our forecast temps. That is another reason I started using the point forecast instead of the more general forecast for a larger area. I figured the point forecast would be more accurate, but it isn't. After seeing such wide differences between forecast temps and actual recorded temps , Tim won't even pay any attention to the NWS forecast at all---he has lost faith in it. I still want to believe our forecasts are somewhat close to bring accurate, but they are making it hard!

Dawn

Can you guys recommend a good thermometer/weather system to use for the garden? One that maybe also has a probe to monitor soil temperature? Does that even exist? I'm gonna start doing a little research I guess.

I need a good soil thermometer too. I love my min/max thermometers. The first one I bought only went down to 30 F. But then I found one at Lowe's that went to 0, so I bought 4. The one in the greenhouse showed 11 on that -4 night a while back.

Snap Peas seemed to have held up very well last night. Looks like it got down to about 29 or 30. I sprinkled a little straw over them just to help them out a little.

I also kept my lettuces, broccoli and the few spinach seedlings I manged to sprout on my back porch. I just pulled them close up to the wall. They all looked perfect this morning. I feel comfortable that I'm successfully hardening off my coolest weather plants.

This is good because Tuesday and Wednesday night are looking to be in low to mid 20's. Will definitely cover with straw those nights.

Mulberryknob, I use a digital meat thermometer, from WalMart. ;) Werks fer me.

A few of our direct sow snow peas have started to peek out, now. We have four more beds that need some pH adjustment, which is on the to-do list for next month.

We've also started adding mulch to our proposed berry beds! Most of the 'deep' soil amendments have been accomplished - finally. When damp, the soil in those beds is almost black, and when turned over, some of it is almost blue-black in color, if you know what I mean. Now, it's just normal gardening with the occasional added top dressing, as needed.

This year we - finally - get to plant some blackberries and raspberries! Veggie production will drop a bit, but that was in the plans, all along.

Dulahey, You can find soil thermometers and compost thermometers (they have a longer probe on them so you can stick them into the middle of a big compost pile) in nurseries and sometimes in big box store garden centers and also at many places online. I merely use an old (very old) kitchen thermometer I've had forever and forever because its probe is long enough to reach 3 or 4" deep into the soil, which is adequate for my purposes. I did notice the last time that I bought a kitchen thermometer at a store it was different from the one I've had forever, and its temperature scale doesn't go as low as needed to measure garden temperatures. If I ever have to replace my old thermometer, I may have to buy an actual soil thermometer. Hmmmm. Maybe I should do it while I'm thinking about it.

Our Min-Max thermometers are the cheap ones from Wal-Mart. We have one in the greenhouse, one in the big chicken coop, one on the east-facing front porch (it is shaded year-round by the porch roof) and one on the north-facing side porch (also shaded by the porch roof). I also have several thermometers in other places, but they are just regular thermometers, not Min-Max types. I think we have 7 or 8 thermometers outdoors. That makes us sound obsessed by the temperature, and I don't think we are obsessed.....

In 2011, when we noticed that a forecast of, let's say, 103 or 104 was giving us a day with an actual high of 108 or 110 or 112, so we kept buying "one more" thermometer and putting it in the shade outside. We did so because our temperature varied so much from that recorded at our mesonet station and also from that recorded by our local cooperative weather observer that we kept thinking our thermometers were malfunctioning. However, the 7 or 8 thermometers all record more or less the same temperature---sometimes 1 or 2 of them will be a degree off from the others--that we finally realized that the thermometers were fine and the issue was that we kept getting significantly hotter or colder than forecast. Understanding how our temperature routinely varies from what is forecast as well as what is officially recorded helps me know when to protect plants.

Just yesterday my son asked me the date of our average last frost, and I gave him an honest answer. I told him our official last frost date, based on long-term averages, is March 28th or 29th, depending on the source you use for the data, but that for 6 of the last 7 years, we have had our last frost in the first week of May. If I didn't understand that, I'd lose my whole garden to a late frost most years. I have to cover up stuff a lot more than I like, but waiting until May to plant most things isn't a viable option because the heat arrives shortly after the last frost.

Dawn

Just covered my snappeas with lots of straw. Sprinkled a little over my onions too. Snap peas were already not looking so hot after today for some reason. Some were slightly wilted.

My snap peas are still inside the greenhouse in a plastic covered stand sitting on sand with a heating cable buried in it. The broccoli is there too, but I brought the tomatoes and peppers inside as I don't trust the bench to stay warm enough for them tonight. It's supposed to get into the high teens here.

Dulahey, Did you have strong wind? The pea plants might have been a little dehydrated or windburnt. Young pea foliage is pretty tender and easily damaged.

Dorothy, I left everything in the greenhouse except the tomato plants. I brought them inside just in case. We are only supposed to go down barely below freezing tonight, but around here you never know how cold it might get. I'd rather be sure the baby mater plants are fine than to worry that they aren't.

I have tried to arrange my garden chores last week and this week so I could work happily outdoors on the days with good weather, and I have saved up a lot of indoor chores like potting up and seed sowing for the next few days while it is so cold. With the cold expected to hang on for so long, I may run out of indoor chores before we run out of cold weather. Temperatures early next week are looking pretty grim, and the rain keeps missing us too. I really think that this January and February have been the driest Jan/Feb we've had since moving here, and that cannot be a good sign.

I did finally check the daffodils and they are up about 3" out of the ground and likely will bloom next week. It took them forever to emerge, but now that they are up, they seem like they're in a big hurry.

Dawn

15 F here this morning. 27 in the greenhouse and 42 in the heated bench where the peas and broccoli are so everything is fine. I may start the second soaking of peas on Fri, unless I decide to hold off a few more days.

The daffs are a bit bigger than that here. I have a small bouquet blooming in the kitchen window that I picked a couple days ago.

I am also going to start another round of peas tomorrow. This round of cold is getting really cold. Looked like about 17 last night. We are actually high up on a hill, so that might have been a littler higher. (I have got to get some min/max thermometers!) But yes Dawn, we get high winds up on this hill.

But anyway, yeah... another round of peas because there's a good chance the ones outside are NOT going to make it! It's okay, I gambled.

We had friends here in our neighborhood who built their ranch house on the top of a hill, Dulahey, and it seemed like they had wind about 360 days out of the year. Their garden plants really took a beating from the wind even though they carefully sited the garden to give it as much protection as they possibly could. We get wind here in the valley too, but it isn't as crazy as the wind up on the top of their hill.

Your peas still might make it if they are still pretty small and low to the ground. One advantage of a windy location is that steady wind often can keep the frost from settling as heavily on plants as it otherwise would. Of course, if any of the wintery precip in the forecast falls, you need for it to fall as snow in a large enough amount that it could settle in around your pea plants and insulate them from the cold air.

I did throw row cover over the onions this afternoon during the warmest part of the day (it was a whopping 39 degrees but the wind chill was pretty dang cold), but I haven't put peas in the ground yet because I've been waiting for this cold weather to get here and do whatever it has to do and then leave. I only carried in the tomato plants from the greenhouse tonight and I left them in the mudroom. Everything else out there in the greenhouse ought to be okay. I am not at all worried the onions will suffer freeze damage under the frost blankets tonight, but if I hadn't covered them, I just know our temperatures would have dropped to 17 or 18 and I would have had frozen onion plants.

I used to gamble a lot with early planting, but because the general trend at our house for the last 7 years has been for us to have colder nights later and later in spring, I don't gamble as much as I used to. When I do gamble, I tend to gamble more with warm season plants than with cool season plants. Maybe I just run out of self-restraint later in the spring that previously has kept me from planting much of anything too early when it was cool-season planting time.
I think that I'd be outside this weekend putting pea plants in the ground if our local TV guy wasn't talking tonight about us having a decent chance of having some form of wintery precip around Sunday. He seems more bullish on the idea of wintery precip for us than the NWS is, so I'll watch and see if he hangs on to that part of his forecast for the next couple of days.

I used to gamble more with early planting than I do now, but our winter weather in those winters was a little more stable. It seemed like if it warmed up early, you could plant early and only have to cover up those early plantings once or twice that season before the warmer weather arrived to stay. In more recent years, our weather at planting time is a constant roller coaster and if you plant too early, you may have to cover up those early plantings once or twice every week. That just gets pretty old and it has broken me of putting plants in the ground when there is a little voice in my head saying 'don't do it'.

I actually did not want to gamble, but this is the first time I'm starting things from seeds and I'm not real good with when I should start them.

Clearly, I started my peas way too early. I started my lettuce and spinach at the same time, but I'm fine with keeping them on flats and moving them inside from the back porch on these really cold nights. The problem with the peas is they were getting tall! Some of them were nearly 10" tall. That was the main reason I just went ahead and planted them. I still have some shorter ones that germinated later than the first round and I'll probably start some more seeds tonight as well. They germinated super fast so I don't think it's going to hurt me too much.

On my way out to work, I took a glance at the peas and most of them look pretty pitiful. Very wilted. There were a few here and there that actually looked pretty darn good. Onions had minimal straw cover and appeared to be perfectly fine.

But anyway, I don't want to gamble. I do not possess any kind of floating row covers or anything. I'm not entirely sure I ever want to build anything for my raised beds anyway. Seems like a headache to store. If I ever did though it would be like the one in the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Raised Bed Hoop

Dulahey, since starting peas inside makes them germinate and grow so much faster than putting them in the cold ground you can actually start them a bit later than the outdoor planting time and have them do better, be further ahead. My second sowing around March 1st usually catches up to the first sowing and they come off only a few days apart instead of the two weeks apart that they got started. I started this year's peas, by soaking the seed, on Feb 14, planting them in the tubes (toilet paper tubes) on the 16th. If I had known how cold it was going to be next week, I would have held off a week. I like to put them into the ground when only 2 weeks of age but I will hold them longer this year, as I did last year. It's supposed to be 10 degrees next week. No way I would subject my babies to that.

Dulahey, We cannot let ourselves get too fixated on planting by the calendar because if this was 2012, you could have peas in the ground already and they'd be fine. It just happens that it is 2014 and the weather is not the same as 2012's. Plants and weather ignore our human calendars, so I try not to look at the calendar too much and fret about what I "should be" doing at a certain point in time. I watch the weather and try to figure out what it is going to allow me to do.

I watch the soil temps and air temps and plan and plant accordingly because seeds sprout and plants grow when soil temps and air temps are in the right range---no matter what the date on the calendar shows. It still is challenging because our weather can see-saw wildly back and forth from one extreme to another at this time of the year. One day last week it hit a gorgeous 80 degrees here, and this morning it was 14 degrees around sunup. I never would make any planting plans based on one day's weather. Otherwise, on the day it hit 80 degrees, I would have been making plans to put some tomato plants in the ground, and that wouldn't have worked out too well with the weather we are having this week.

Notice how Dorothy talks about her second pea seed planting being around March 1st---she doesn't say it always is exactly on March 1 which gives her leeway to adjust her plans as needed if her weather is acting too unsettled. Since none of us has a crystal ball and can know what the weather will do a few days down the line, we look at the calendar when it is about our usual seed-starting time, we look at the weather we are having, we look at the 7-10 day forecast, we think about previous years with similar weather patterns and then we try to guess if "now" is the right time or if it isn't. Sometimes we guess right and sometimes we guess wrong. About the only thing certain about our weather is that whatever weather temperatures we are enjoying on a given day in February, March or April likely will change in a day or two. Once May arrives, more consistency sets in. Then, you know, summer arrives and it stays consistently hot and miserable for the next 3 months.

Dorothy, Your poor babies. Ten degrees would be such a disaster for them. I'm beginning to wonder exactly when we will be able to transplant all our little snap pea babies into the ground. It was crazy cold here last night. The forecast said 24 so I expected at least 20 and covered up the onions, and ultimately we dropped to 14. Our forecast for Sunday is slightly worse than last night's, so I'll cover up the onions long before sunset Sunday. Beginning tomorrow we'll have a couple of decent days with highs in the 60s/70s here and then the real cold returns. I'm glad I do not have peas in the ground yet. One advantage of having the greenhouse is that I can hold something like peas out there in it a bit longer. Even though we went to 14 degrees this morning, the greenhouse only dropped to 29. I'm starting to wonder if I should just plant the peas in some of the large containers in the greenhouse instead of putting them in the ground.

Dawn

That's what I'm doing of course, holding my peas. I hate to do it because they are almost ready to go into the ground. I am keeping them on the bench at night and bringing them out on top of it to get full sun--brighter than the lights in the bench--during the day and hoping that will be enough to prevent them from getting too leggy. Peas are the fastest transplant I start. It really does only take 2 &1/2 weeks for them to be ready to go into the ground. This year like last it will be 3 &1/2 weeks before I dare put them out.

The peppers and tomatoes are still in the house in a west facing window. They could have used more sun today, but I was too lazy to carry them out only to have to carry them back in tonight. And the plant bench got down to 38 last night which is cooler than I want them to be. It was 26 in the greenhouse itself and 19 outside. Not enough sun yesterday for it to warm up and stay warmer overnight.

Yeah I totally understand about not following the calendar dates, but I was gambling that we were done with sub 20's here in central OK up on top of my hill. Clearly, I lost that bet, ha!

On the other hand, it sounds like you have all started your tomatoes already and I wasn't planning on that until this weekend. Peppers probably a week after that.

Wrong thread.

This post was edited by Dulahey on Sat, Mar 1, 14 at 11:42

Dulahey, I normally start tomato and pepper seeds on Super Bowl Sunday because my average last frost date is March 28th. This year I started them a couple of week later than usual because I wasn't liking the way the spring weather was looking. I think I could have waited another week or two and been perfectly happy.

However, to keep me happy about the prospects of having ripe tomatoes in April, I always buy a handful of tomato seedlings the first time I see them in the stores here. I pot those up to larger containers and keep them outside as much as possible, sort of in a location sheltered from the wind but with full sun, and carry them inside when cold temperatures threaten. Today, along with silly plum tree, two of those early tomato plants are blooming and two others likely will bloom around Monday. I looked at those blooms this morning, thumped them, and told Tim "those flowers are our first tomatoes of April". It seems crazy, but as long as I have a handful of tomato plants in pots, I don't feel like I have to rush my own tomato seedlings outdoors and into the ground too early. It helps me to be patient.

Some years, I just move the container tomatoes up to bigger pots and grow them on in the pots all year. Other years, I put them in the ground when the weather stabilizes.

Before I started growing a few early ones in pots, I always was pushing, pushing, pushing to rush the tomatoes into the ground as early as I could get away with it.

Long, long ago I learned that if I put peas in the ground too early, they'll usually survive and then, just about the time they start to bloom, a crazy cold front will freeze them back hard, often killing the ends of the limbs and knocking the flowers off the plants. So, I have tried to use more restraint and start peas a little later, but it is hard. If we wait too late to get them started, and the heat arrives early, then there won't be a good pea harvest. Some years I can comfortably put peas in the ground in mid-February and feel confident they'll survive and some years I can wait until it is almost April and still have to worry about late cold spells getting them.

Dawn