Depends on what you have covered.... is it "delicate"? What did you use to cover it?

Reed,

Probably. You just never know. Too many variables are involved for any of us to know for sure what to expect.

The most important variable is how long the temperatures stay below freezing if they drop below freezing at all.An hour or two is not as damaging as 8 or 9 hours.

Frost also is a concern. I'd cover the last couple of plants with something---anything--that could at least keep frost off of them. I've used cardboard boxes sometimes, and also have used bedsheets and 5-gallon buckets. For plants that were very tall, I used the tall kitchen trash can. Any protection at all is better than no protection. I've piled hay and leaves on top of the plants, I've wrapped cages with plastic (even very quickly with trash bags), and it works even better if you put a container of water to serve as a heat sink/solar collector inside the plastic that is wrapped around the tomato cage. With tall plants that weren't caged, I have put a lawn chair over the plant and thrown an old sleeping bag or quilt over the lawn chair.

Maybe you'll get lucky and your temperatures will stay just above freezing, but the plants still could get frosted.

I'm worried about tonight, but spent the morning covering up everything with floating row cover. Most of the warm-season plants have brand new row cover I bought last week that offers 10 degrees of protection. The cool-season plants mostly have two layers of older row cover that offers from between 2-4 and 4-8 degrees of protection. Some of the row cover is getting old and holey, but I patch the holes with duct tape or pull them together and fasten them closed with clothespins. I've done all I can do. If our forecast low is significantly lower than they say it will be (forecast to be 32), then some plants might be damaged. With the row cover, I wouldn't expect anything will die.

Our weather here, though, is notorious for going significantly lower than forecast so I pretty much always expect the worst.

Other ways to protect your plants: put water-filled jugs or buckets beside them. As the water cools off, it releases heat that may be able to keep the adjacent plant just above freezing. Or, put a fan where it will blow on the plants all night. Air movement sometimes can keep frost from settling on plant foliage.

It will help if Mother Nature cooperates a little and the skies stay cloudy and the wind blows.

April is the cruelest month this year....and I am tired of it! I have been working like crazy to finish planting, so had six more raised beds to cover this week than I had last week and it took everything we had in order to cover up all the plants. As they get taller and taller it gets harder and harder.

At our house, we usually have recurring cold nights once or twice a week until the first week in May, so I expect at least a couple more cold fronts between now and then....based on past history. Of course, if this is the last cold front that makes frost/freeze damage a issue for our plants, I'll be happy. It just doesn't feel to me like it is the last time.

Dawn

I guess I should explain my set up. Everything is planted in rows and then I used trellis netting to train them up, clipping them up the netting with trellis clips. This is the most cost effective way for me to train 45 plants.

One long row is against a wooden privacy fence and there is about 1-1.5 feet between the plants and the fence. The other is the same distance from a brick wall. I've covered the front, exposed side with quilts, sheets, sleeping bags and blankets and only the back side is exposed.

I'm worried about the damage to the plants since there is the small gap behind them. I'm a realist. I'm not expecting to escape with zero damage. I'm just hoping to minimize it.

Our forecast calls for it to be right at 32 degrees from 6:00-8:00 am in the morning with a low of 31.

Basically, I have a question. I know the sub-freezing temperatures can be damaging for short times, but it's the frost that's the killer, correct?

I think I'm going to go to Lowe's and get some painter's plastic to throw over the back just in case. 9ft x 400 ft for only $20. Pretty sure that I'll be investing in some floating row cover next season.

FYI, Reed, I saw the Lowes on Memorial had Frost Blanket row cover in the garden section a few weeks ago. Not sure which degrees of protection it had, but I thought about getting some!

The current forecast is for it to clear around 3 or 4am. If that happens, the temps will drop to very near freezing. And conditions would be pretty good for frost development. They will only be near freezing for a couple of hours.

Tomorrow night will be ideal for frost formation, even though the minimum temperatures may be 2-4 degrees warmer.

Lee

I guess I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to lose my entire tomato crop. Frustrating. Add onto that the terrible year I had last year with russet mites and I'm contemplating throwing in the towel. I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens tonight.

If you have covered everthing tonight, do you uncover tomorrow and re- cover tomorrow night, or just leave them alone until Thurs?
Sammy

Lee, I hope this is the last time this spring we even have to think about this topic! I will say that even though we have had to cover up plants a lot this year, the cool season stuff like sugar snap peas, potatoes and onions are loving this weather and are growing like crazy.

Reed, Not necessarily. Your plants could be affected in a myriad of ways and you will not necessarily see each plant affected the same way. You might lose them all, you might not lose a single one, you might see that all survive but with damage, or you might have hit-and-miss damage or plant death.

Freezing temperatures as low as 28-30 degrees, if not accompanied by frost, often won't kill plants though you may lose some fruit, flowers or foliage. I've had it happen at times where one plant was totally killed back to the ground (and then regrew and produced just fine, maybe 2 weeks later than usual) while a plant right next to it showed little damage. I believe some varieties are more resilient and bounce back and others are kinda weak wimps. When you have a diverse selection of plants, the odds are some will survive if you barely dip below 32 degrees. I leave the damaged foliage on for a couple of days in case the weather on the second night is going to be colder than the first night---even damaged foliage may protect the still undamaged foliage beneath it. The damage will show up as blackened foliage. If the damage is slight, it looks more like a greenish black and isn't necessarily going to die. If the foliage is very black, it is going to wither and die, but the healthy foliage on the plant (if any is undamaged) will be fine).

If you have frost and freezing temperatures together, the plants suffer a lot more damage and likely will die. Sometimes they come back from the roots and sometimes they don't. If the root system is large and robust, they usually come back. Frost is highly variable--sometimes it is light and patchy and sometimes it looks as heavy and thick as a dusting of snow. Time will tell...we'll all know tomorrow morning, and then we'll have to worry our way through tomorrow night too.

I've had patchy frost damage some years that just takes out a few leaves here or there but doesn't really do much harm overall. It is just a temporary setback.

So, if your weather drops as cold as forecast or even colder than that, you still might have some plants survive. You just have to wait and see. My actual temperatures rarely exactly match our forecast...I've seen it stay 9 degrees warmer sometimes or drop as much as 18 degrees colder, though the more typical variation is maybe 2 or 3 degrees higher or lower than forecast.

I think it will help that some of the plants have a wall behind them. Those walls and fences soak up heat all day and release it at night and that could help your plants even if there is an air space between the plants and the walls or fences.

I fought the cold nights here using standard plant cover-ups of buckets, clay pots, blankets, sheets, boxes, etc. for about 5 years before I decided to buy floating row cover, and then I wondered why I hadn't bought it years earlier. It is such a game changer, and the new one that I just bought that gives 10 degrees of protection is just awesome. It is some tough stuff. I had to sharpen the scissors to get them to cut it. I'll never buy the more lightweight stuff again. I'll still use the lightweight stuff I have but the most important plants will get the heavier stuff.The only advantage of the lightweight stuff is you can leave it on the plants endlessly because it allows better light transmission.

Were you living here in OK when you had russet mites or down in Texas? I have red spider mites every year but never have had russet mites.

Don't throw in the towel just yet. Spring is just a crazy roller coaster ride here every spring and we have to hang on and try to get through it, as do our plants.

You still have your backup plants, don't you?

FYI--in the absence of row cover, you can use sheer curtain panels....the kind often used as a sort of undercurtain with heavier drapes. The sheer curtain panels offer protection similar to what you get from floating row cover.

Sammy, It depends on what is used to cover up the plants. If I have used something like a breathable textile, I leave it on as long as record high temps are not expected.My garden is so big it takes hours to cover up everything, so I don't remove it for a single day in between two cold nights. If I have used plastic buckets or something that would allow heat to build up, I remove it if I can. When I lived in Fort Worth and worked full-time, I sometimes would rush home at lunch time to uncover stuff because it was still below freezing when I left for work early in the day.

Once or twice I forgot to go home and uncover them and they survived being underneath 5-gallon buckets on a pretty warm day, but were kind of droopy looking for a couple of days.

Dawn

Dawn, no backup plants. I am limited in space, etc. so what I have is what II have. Should I lose plants, the nursery down the road sells tomato plants for 1.49 a piece, which is pretty cheap. Sure, they're all commercial hybrids but that is better than nothing.

Reed, If your plants don't make it, let me know. I have a lot of great backups and I am not expecting to lose my in-ground plants unless our forecast is really wrong and we drop down into the low 20s or something. If your plants don't make it, you can have my backups. Maybe on Sunday afternoon Tim and I could drive and meet you halfway between Marietta and Edmond to give you the plants...that would be our first available day to do something like that and maybe by then the weather will have stabilized.

Let's think positive and believe that you won't need them, but if you do, they're yours.

Dawn

Some people use Christmas lights Reed. I am not sure how they do it but I have read posts that said that. Your neighbors would think you are nuts. Christmas lights are designed to be out in wet weather. Even the little ones would give off some heat. I am thinking rope lights were used in the post I read.

I have used rope lights, but not for in ground plants. I use them like a heat cable under trays, and also used clamp on work lights. This set-up was in a little pup tent greenhouse.
The rope lights I have are 18' long and pull a little over 50 watts, the clamp on work lights heat depends on the size bulb you put in them. I doubt that LED rope lights work for heat. I also have some small regular Christmas tree light strings that only put out around 10 or 20 watts. It might look a little strange, but any form of heat is better than none.

Well, I POSSIBLY got worried for nothing. I may have lost a few plants not not more than 5-6 if I did and I can easily replace those from the nursery down the road. I'll probably just plant something reliable like Celebrities or Lemon Boys in those spots.

That aside, now that we're hopefully out of the freeze dangers, I'm going try and think of ways to contain my one row which contains Sun Gold, Black Cherry, Super Sweet 100 and Porter-Charles Herring Strain. Those plants are gonna get huge.

Glad the damage seems minimal.

For containing large plants I use home-made round tomato cages made from woven wire fencing. They are similar to the CRW cages my dad used, but I chose the wire fencing because it came in different gauges of wire and I chose one that was easier for me to cut when I made the cages. I make them in slightly different sizes so the smaller ones can nest inside the larger ones when they are being stored in the off-season. I have a lot of these cages in various sizes, but also have ample space to store them. When storage space is limited, storing cages can become a problem.

You could use the Florida Weave but if you do, I'd use 8' posts with those varieties instead of 6' tall posts because those cherry varieties are monster plants.

Some people make triangular shaped cages from pieces of hog wire panels, using zip ties or other easily-removed connectors to assemble the triangles. At the end of the season you can remove the connectors and store the panels flat.

You also could use cattle panels attached to poles as trellises.

Dawn

Dawn, right now I have a five-foot trellis on the plants with room to go up to ten feet tall. I like the trellis netting because it's cheap and I can just use the trellis clips or tie the plants to it. I run a wire across the tops to hold it up and then, just to be more secure, staple it under the eaves of the house. Thoughts?

Reed, stapling under the eaves may be tricky. Some of that material is a little thin. I like to drive a screw through the lighter wood into a support 2x under the trim wood. I make hooks out of heavy wire, make an eye on one end and a hook on the other, much like you were going to support a hanging basket. A trellis full of tomatoes may get heavy.

Slowpoke,

There are already several hooks from where the previous tenant had hooked nets for cucumber vines. I don't know why I just didn't think about that. I can just run a wire across them and then tie the net up.

Reed

Dawn,

What varieties of backup plants do you have? I may lose around ten plants or so after looking at them today. I'd certainly be willing to meet you if you happened to feel generous :).

Reed

We are still at risk tonight here in SW MO. Is the danger over there? Last night I had misty rain and the moisture helps because of the heat capacity of water. Tonight will be clear.

After tonight our predicted low will be 46 between tomorrow and 5-3-13. I will start planting tomorrow, weather permitting. I hope I dont wind up with a bunch of sunburned plants.

It felt so cold yesterday that I brought my plants inside, they are still in the living room floor.

Reed,

I will have to look at the flats of plants in the greenhouse tomorrow to verify what I have left because I have planted a lot and given away some here and there and haven't kept track of what's left. I'll make a list and post it here tomorrow. You're welcome to as many of them as you want. I think I likely have at least one of each of the 28 varieties on my 2013 Grow List and in some cases many more than one. Gardening here has taught me that you need back-up plants and then you need back-ups for the back-ups, so I grow a lot of plants. I'll link the 2013 Tomato Grow List below so you can see what I planted.

I didn't want to put an excessive number of plants in the ground this year because I overdid it last year and then spent my whole summer in the kitchen canning, dehydrating and freezing tomatoes so I really cut back to the bare bones. In a more normal year I grow 75-125 varieties.

Trellises with tomatoes can be a big problem in thunderstorms here. It is hard to find something strong enough to connect the trellises to buildings or walls. I like Larry's suggestion of the hooks. The sturdier you can make your system the better. When you have wind gusts in the 50s or 60s or microbursts with even stronger winds, you have to be prepared in advance with sturdy support systems because you cannot run out in the middle of a storm to shore up your trellis system. Our weather here is C R A Z Y.

The first time a derecho wind hit our house, it woke us from a sound sleep and we thought a tractor-trailer truck or an airplane or something had hit the house. I've seen more wild and wacky weather here than I even knew existed before we moved here, and pretty much all the wild and wacky weather can do tremendous garden damage.

Helen, Much of Oklahoma has a Frost Advisory for tonight, though temperatures in many areas will stay above freezing. I've seen frost fairly often when our low temp was only 37 or 38, and a couple of times at 39 degrees.

Larry, Yay! Glad you'll finally get to plant. It is about time. We have rain in our Friday forecast so I intend to be in the garden tomorrow getting as much work done as possible while it isn't muddy. Of course, even though we need the rain, I'd be okay if it misses us. I'm still trying to catch up on everything I've fallen behind on and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think by the end of May, I won't feel so far behind any more. For that to happen, I need to have some long days outside in the garden to weed, mulch, and plant. Oh, and to harvest. The cool-season crops are loving this weather and are growing well and producing well. I kind of hate to see it warm up too much because the potatoes are the happiest they've been in 3 or 4 years.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: 2013 Tomato Grow List Thread

Dawn,

I only need about 7-8 plants but the ones I need I need to replace plants of mine that succumbed to the cold.

What I lost:

Big Ben (Replace with Stump of the World?)
Sun Gold (One of my two)
Indigo Apple and Blue Beauty (Indigo Rose?)
Cherokee Purple (Replace with Spudatula or Pruden's Purple?)
Gary'O Sena
Black and Brown Boar
Mule Team
Harvard Square
Porter - Charles Herring Strain (one of the three)
Jaune Flamme
True Black Brandywine

So, that's 11-12 plants lost.

I currently have:

Park's Whopper
Sweet 100
Celebrity
Early Girl
Siberian Tiger (a sickly plant)

Basically, what I would wish to be able to take, if you had them available would be:

Jaune Flamme x1
Stump of the World x1
Gary'O Sena x1
Spudatula x1
Indigo Rose x1
Sun Gold x1
Pruden's Purple x1
Riesentraube x1

I figured that, if we met, that Pauls Valley is about halfway. I will certainly make it worth your time, as I've prepared an extensive seed selection to hand over to ya at the exchange.

Let me know if this works and we can coordinate details via email or cell phone.

Reed