I've got one in the ground. I don't know if I can save it if it gets too cold but I'm certainly going to try. I can cover it with a tarp and put a heat lamp on it. It was just looking pretty bad on the seed tray so I moved it out.

The drought, starting too early, and insects cause nearly all of my problems in gardening. The drought I have no control over, the insects I dont have a lot of control over, but starting too early is all my fault, but yet, I have done it too many times. Is that because I am a slow learner?

You guys are in a bigger hurry than I am, but it did seem odd when I stood in the garden with the nice warm temps today and looked around my garden to only see brown. When it gets this warm it seems like something should be growing. So far I have planted part of my onions, and tossed a few spinach seeds into a raised bed. It's almost time though.

Slow down folks, it isn't even officially SPRING yet. I have tators and strawberries, and parsley seeds out.

All the rest has to wait till the next low is past us. Way easier than covering stuff up.

:)

Moni

I really need my pup tent greenhouse. It gave me a place to place my plants while the weather was getting ready for planting. Maybe I can repair it enough to get another year out of it, after 4 years the plastic started getting holes in it.

Larry

Thanks for the heads up. I also saw this relative graph from a meteorological site on my facebook feed. I'm okay with it. I seem to be getting a late start anyways.

bon

I got my first sunburn of the year today! Ouch. I did get some plants in the ground and I've been watering this week. I'm a little ready for another chilly spell. I'm not quite ready to jump into summer yet!

Lisa

Lee,

Thanks for the heads up. I'd been hoping winter has already had its last hurrah here. Ha!

I don't have warm season stuff in the ground yet, and if it seems likely to get cold enough to hurt cool-season plants (not as likely here in southcentral OK as in other parts of the state), I have floating row cover to cover up the plants. I don't usually cover up cool season plants unless we're headed to the lower 20s, and we are not, at the present time, expecting that, but I'll be watching the weather closely.

Lisa, I have 4 days worth of sunburn, but I sure got a lot of work done outside on those lovely days.

I think our woodland acres really are starting to show a lot of the stress of the last few years of drought. There's just tons and tons of deadfall to clean up this year and even though I work hard it, I feel like I am barely making a dent in it. Still, even a little dent is better than no dent at all.

I enjoyed those days we were in the upper 70s and low 80s, but didn't expect them to last....and am glad they didn't. I wasn't ready for it to be that hot every day just yet.

Dawn

Does anybody know if peas need to be covered with leaves or something? Looks like it's going to be mid 20's next couple of nights. I've never grown them or many other cool crops. I watered them and threw a few leaves on top for tonight.

Poky,

Peas can suffer damage or can be killed by very cold temperatures, generally in the low 20s but maybe as high as the mid 20s. It depends on how much cold weather they'd been exposed to in the past and how hardened they are to cold weather.

If you're able to do so, cover them up with some sort of fabric but not with plastic. If you cover them with plastic because it is all you have, use stakes or something to keep the plastic from actually touching the plants. Anywhere the plants touch the plastic, freeze damage including plant death can occur.

I don't usually worry about peas with low temperatures around 25 degrees, but have seen serious damage and death at 20-22 degrees if the plants have been growing in fairly warm temperatures and aren't used to the cold. If they've already withstood quite a lot of cold, sometimes temperatures in the mid-20s or slightly lower often won't harm them.

Sometimes they will suffer enough to die back at the tips, or temps in the low 20s can knock their blossoms off if they already were large enough to be blooming.

The leaves on top might be enough, but throwing an old bedsheet over the top of the leaves would be even better.

Dawn

One forecast for us is 21 tonight and 25 for the next two nights. Half my potatoes are in the ground but not up yet and the spinach and lettuce has just broken through the surface. My onions seem to have only had rain, snow, and cold weather since they went in the ground so they may make a run for south Texas at anytime.

One bed of onions has been under row cover since they were planted. The largest bed is in the ground and has sheets over it tonight. The others are on their on.

I think I have damaged everything I planted this year by planting too early. My peas still look ok, but have not grown any. My onions are looking better. I Have had heavy damage to cabbage and broccoli, which was magnified by not hardening off properly.

I have not covered anything up yet. I will check the plants and maybe cover them up because I think it is suposed to colder tomorrow night.

Wow, you weren't kidding. It was down right COLD today. Our church auditorium heater was on the fritz and apparently the a/c was working full time. Our preacher told us to close our eyes and pretend it was July and it was 110 degrees outside...and how wonderful this would feel. Ha!

Brrrrrr. That is all I have to say. I have no clue what to expect this year, except to expect the unexpected,which is typical Oklahoma. Last year was fairly easy to anticipate, but it was also an anomaly. This year is more like an average year...full of surprises!

Susan

Our forecast wasn't even close. The thermometer on the porch showed 25 but the one out near the driveway showed 21. Our forecast low had been 27 and then they raised it to 29. Of course, not trusting the forecast of 29 or 27, I had covered up everything and only the asparagus spears that were 3-4' tall and already branching out froze. The more recently emerged spears that were low to the ground didn't look frozen when I checked them early this morning.

Our forecast for tonight is 24 degrees, so I am expecting 20-22, and the upper teens wouldn't shock me much more than the 21 degree reading this morning did.

Even with floating row cover, some cool-season plants could freeze tonight if we go significantly lower than forecast like we did Sun night/ Mon morning.

As hard as this cold has been on plants (no tree fruit will be harvested at our house this year, obviously,) I like the fact that this spring's weather is cooler than last spring. It could be a sign that maybe at least we won't be having summer weather in April.

Larry, You sure are having a hard spring there. I hope your weather improves soon.

Lisa, That is too funny. Chris' fire station is hot, hot, hot all winter and then it is freezing cold all summer, which isn't fun for them.

Carol, If your onions escape and are headed back to south Texas, I'll round up a Fugitive Onion Task Force/Posse and we 'll try to apprehend them before they can leave the state.

Susan, This year the weather sure is more of a roller coaster than it was last year. I kind of expected it, though. After two consecutive springs with abnormally hot weather, we were due for a change of some sort.

I hope that after this week we are through with the freezing temperatures. Statistically speaking , though, I doubt that we are.

Dawn

Dawn, LOL LOL You have been hanging around too many cops. I did a 'Knock and Talk', and think I may be able to keep them in the county. Actually I covered them with sheets and didn't even take them off today. We have two more nights of cold weather, so they may be light deprived or they may freeze, but this is about all I can do.

Dawn, I went out to check my plants just before 10 AM, I walked all the way across both gardens without making a track. The ground was still frozen. It sure gets cold in this valley.

Larry

Carol, Yes, well, it is hard not to hang out with cops since I'm married to one. (Grinning)

You know, living here along the Red River, I am shocked by how many fugitives from Texas make a run for the river just trying to get to Oklahoma. I wonder if they think that law and order stops at the Texas bank of the Red River? Our local law enforcement officers do a great job of setting up and stopping those fugitives when they cross over into OK. I don't know if I could get them to help me lasso some onions though.

I just wanted you to know that if your onions escaped and went on the lam, we'd be ready and waiting for them. I'm glad you have them firmly under control.

They raised our forecast low from 24 to 26, but I covered up everything anyway. I expect we'll be colder than 26 so I just thought it was better safe than sorry.

Last night we were below freezing for 9 hours, so if I had any glimmer of hope that some of those baby plums would survive, that's all over now.

Larry, I can relate. Our entire property is a creek hollow in a low-lying river valley. After we'd lived here about a decade, I actually found our creek and creek hollow on a map and learned it is called Dry Hollow Creek. I guess that is where our low-lying area differs from yours....you stay wet and we stay ridiculously dry. I just wish we valley dwellers were cooler in summer since we have to put up with being colder in fall through spring, but it just doesn't work out that way, does it?

We have friends who live up on a high ridge near us, and all of them have white limestone rocks, so I guess I'm probably better off in a creek hollow, where my worst enemy is dense, red clay. I think it is easier to amend clay than to dig out a million rocks.

We have a lawn overseeded with winter rye and if you walk on it while it is frozen, you damage the grass and it turns black. Today we have black footprints all over the place because we were out early while the temperatures still were below freezing.

This morning we went to the Lowe's in Ardmore and, well, let's just say that either someone didn't cover up the tomato transplants well enough, or it got so cold there that the row cover (which I could see piled up in a big pile near the cashier's station in the outdoor garden center) didn't protect the tomato plants from freezing. The ones on the top row, which were the ones in big 5" peat pots, were badly frozen and the ones on lower shelves were in various stages of suffering and dying. If they don't do a better job of covering up plants tonight, they won't have many tomato plants to sell tomorrow.

Let's hope everyone's plants make it through tonight and tomorrow night. At our house, tomorrow night looks pretty good---I think they're saying 37 degrees. That doesn't mean I'll be out putting tomatoes in the ground tomorrow, but now I can start watching the calendar, checking the soil temps and plotting and planning for "the day". I have a feeling the weather is going to make tomato-planting more challenging this year than last.

Dawn