I didn't cover anything except tomato plants. The Mesonet for my county says we went to 38, but when I checked late last night and at 6 AM it was 41 at my house. I think we stay a few degrees warmer sometimes because of the lake.

it went to 36 in my yard and I covered tomatoes and peppers.

8 quilts and laundry all day.

Jo

I have 3 tomatoes in the ground, had planned on planting more today but didn't. I did plant some Tender Treat corn.

My garden has never been as sloppy as it is this year. I don't know what, when or where anything is. When I planted the corn this evening I just drug the hoe across the garden 4 times and dropped in seed and knocked dirt on top of them with a rake.

We have not had frost for a couple of weeks but have had enough wind to last for a long while,more foul weather expected for Tue.

I have too many things going on to do a good job on anything.

Larry

One of my Rose of Sharons had some frost damage but all my sensitive plants came inside last night. I need to get them out again...

Our forecast low of 33 did not materialize. It went to 40 at our mesonet station and 43 at our house. I had covered up everything in the ground that I thought needed it, and carried flats of peppers inside. All, apparently, for nothing....but if I hadn't done that, I likely would have tossed and turned all night long worrying that my plants were freezing to death outside. Like Dorothy said, better safe than sorry.

I do have an incredible amount of wind damage from yesterday's high winds. All my tomato plants have wind-burn and some of the potatoes do as well, the corn merely looks tired and the onions all are leaning sideways, which looks kind of comical. The yard is full of downed limbs, some broken limbs are hanging from trees, the peach and plum trees were stripped of a lot of leaves, twigs and fruit, etc. My mulch that was on the raised beds in the veggie garden is down in the pathways....or gone with the wind.

On the bright side, thanks to the higher-than-average-temperatures, we already have ripe strawberries and the first of the sugar snap peas are just 2 or 3 days away from being the right size to pick and eat.

I'm not complaining about our weather though. In light of all the tornado damage suffered across the country the last 3 days and all the fire damage in Texas and in some parts of Oklahoma, I feel fortunate that all we've had here at our house was wind.

Dawn

I didn't have peppers to cover since they had been inside for 24 hours hiding from the wind, so all I had to do to them was switch off the light. I need to spend a half day potting them up because I will probably not put them in the ground for a couple more weeks and they have outgrown their location. They have been outside most days and inside at night except during the high winds. My son and DIL came today and took seeds, and pepper and tomato plants home with them to plant a small garden. This is her first garden so she is starting small.

I have five Bush Goliath plants in the south side of my garden and they look great, but some of the others don't look so good yet. They have been too wet almost since they went into the garden. They are growing but I always watch for that burst of greener color that starts in the center of the tomoto at the top and they spreads to the other foliage and I'm not seeing that yet. They didn't get established very well before the rains and winds started. They don't look sick, just not like I want them to look.

My nine day forecast:
Cloudy/Wind
M Cloudy/Wind
Iso T-Storms
P-Cloudy
Iso T-Storms
Sct T-Storms
Few Showers
Showers
Showers

My sugar snaps are about a foot tall, brocolli looks strong, onions look great. I have walking onions, bulbing onions, and green onions. I have a rosemary plant, 3 rhubard plants, 3 horseradish plants, Jeruselam artichokes, lettuce, spinach, chard and misc salad greens, and radishes that all look good. I have a new asparagus bed that is ferning up and a so-so strawberry bed that a neighborhood cat disturbed in its early days.

My blueberries came back OK this year, but I'm not to sure about some of the other new berries yet. I planted some bean seeds a little early and they will likely rot because the ground is going to stay too wet. I think I have planted 27 tomato plants but I have to wait until I make sure I have room for the peppers before I take up much more space. I will plant more beans, squash, and cucumbers and squeeze in a few herbs, then everything else has to wait until the spring things have been harvested, because I will be out of room.

Oh, and Dawn....This is just for you. I actually have some carrots coming up. Maybe 3 or 4, and I planted 60 probably. I still CANNOT grow carrots. I am surprised that any came up. Everyone tells me they are easy, but for me they are impossible. LOL

I have a few problems but overall I think things are looking pretty good. They are a bit too wet, but that too will pass. It seems to be benefitting everything except the new tomato plants.

Oh yes, I have a tub of potatoes. I never did get the Yukons planted that I bought to plant, but I did plant the few potatoes that I had left from last years crop and they look really good Its just one big tree pot with potatoes so it won't be a big harvest, but they do look healthy at this point.

As you can see from the above forecast, I will not be spending much time in the garden. LOL It is like this every spring and I have to plant when I can plant. If I get a few dry days, I put in seeds and hope I am not too early. I probably goofed with the beans...but if I did..I still have a bag full I can plant.

Susan, I have used up all of my trellis space so I am glad you sent me those Spacemaster cukes. That will probably be the only early ones I can squeeze in until the pea vines come down.

Happy gardening everyone.

I can't believe that I am reading that someone's ground is too wet! SC Okla. is like a mini-dustbowl. I kid you not. I think the last moisture I saw was snow.
Thankfully, however, the only real weather damage, so far, is wind. Blew so hard Friday that it blew whole flowers and buds off roses and peonies. I don't grow veggies, so flowers are my only concern. Due to the fact that I live alone and have soil from hell, I don't even attempt vegetable gardening. Enjoy reading about everyone else's gardens, though.

Jeanie

Talk about a dust bowl! That is sooooo right. In the morning, I get out and spritz off the plants just to get the dust off of them some days.

Glad you were able to use the cukes, Carol. I didn't cover anything. I got so behind on everything, that I haven't planted anything but tomatoes. So sorry, everyone (that I got seeds from). Garden cleanup has really taken its toll on my old body this year, and while I've done a really good job of doing it, it has taken me such a long time. I am almost through, which is the good news. I've prepared 2 new beds, using just my scuffle hoe to rid scalp the grass from the top part, and loosened the soil with my garden fork. Then I sit down and sift thru the soil as much as I can to remove bermuda roots, etc. Then I fork in chicken manure, seed or plant, and now I just need to get some mulch. What a job without the big tools. But, it is so satisfying when it is done. We've (my neighbors) and I have been removing trees from the East side, and limbing up the Austrian pine so I have more sun reaching the plants around the tree.

Someone asked about how much acid pine needles add to the soil. Well, not much I can tell you. I tested the soil and it was about 6.0, and tons of needles and pine debris have collected underneath for about 10 years now. The soil is good, though, on the other hand. I just mixed in compost and improve it some. Everything I grew there last year did exceedingly well. The new bed there is for my milkweeds.

The other new area is for a big patch of red Zinnias for the butterflies to nectar on.

The wind did do a little damage to things, but not anything significant. I thought it would by the sound of it out the windows. Geez.

I purchased a couple of pepper plants and put them inside a big plastic 20 gal. container on the porch - just set them inside of it, and tucked some other things around them, and so far so good. I pulled them out yesterday afternoon when it was warmer, and I hope they will do well. Sometimes you can't tell until a few days or weeks afterward.

Been planting seeds of ornamental vines and plants like crazy. I planted some Antigonon leptopus this year, a very pretty vine along with the red MGs, Japanese MGs, Heavenly Blue, Cardinal Vine, and Asarina scandens.

I think I have developed permanent soreness of the legs, back, arms, knees, and feet. LOL!

Glad to hear everyone else escaped the brunt. I know some of our citizens in Atoka, did not. Hate to hear about that.

Keep up the good gardening!

Susan

Oh I wish I had soil that was 6.0!! I could grow blueberries and azaleas and hydrangeas and so many wonderful things!!!

I've also been spending a lot of time stooped over and rooting around for bermuda stolons. It is very satisfying to pull them out! But my back is not happy with me.

Carol,

None of my plants have the right color either, and usually they do by now, but they are taking such a beating from the wind day after day after day that I'm just glad they're surviving. They did perk up and have that good green color right after it rained here but they wind has sucked that pretty spring green right out of them. Without getting too specific, my forecast for the next three days is mostly heat, wind, fire, heat, wind, fire, heat, wind, fire and a very slight chance of rain on Tuesday.

With my tomatoes in pots, they still have the healthy green color because I was able to drag all but the two heaviest ones into the garage and out of the wind, but those two lost branches that had huge green beefsteak tomatoes that were right about at the breaker stage. The tomatoes were caged too, but still were no much for wind gusts in the 50s. I am sure as soon as the weather calms down, the plants will color up properly. Even though the color of the newly transplanted tomatoes isn't as good as I'd like, they're blooming and setting fruit which is what really matters.

Jeanie, When I first joined Garden Web and began posting at this forum, we'd had two very dry years here in Love County....under 19" in 2003 and under 24" in 2005, which is the year I began posting here. One day we were talking about rainfall and Dorothy and Diane, who both lived in eastern OK were talking about annual rainfall in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. I was shocked to learn that there were places in Oklahoma that could receive between 40 and 60" inches of rainfall because in Love County we're usually thrilled if we can manage to get 34 or 36".

So far this year, Marietta has had 3.58" of rain, and normally by now we would have had 10.5".

Susan, I can relate to the permanent soreness.

Tigerdawn, My unimproved soil tests out at 8.1 and 8.2 in various parts of the yard. I cannot imagine a soil pH of 6.0. I have had to do monumental amounts of soil improvement to get my veggie garden soil down into the low to mid 7 range. I gave up on improving the flower bed soil that much and just plant flowers and shrubs that tolerate alkaline conditions. I'd love to have azaleas and blueberries and such, but even if I planted them in containers, I'd be fighting the alkaline water that tests out at about 8.2 to 8.3 here. So, I admire azaleas in photos and blueberries in stores, and don't attempt either here. Or, for that matter, I don't attempt to grow hydrangeas either.

Dawn

I feel you, Dawn. Our water is well above 8.0 and I've actually been playing around with vinegar to lower the pH for my houseplants.

Perhaps someday I'll have enough money and energy to build a bed with enough ammendments to grow acidic plants.

However, rainwater typically has a low pH- usually 4.0-5.0 in America. Yet another reason to get rain barrels!

Yeah, if it ever rains again.......

Susan

Alright, that does it. I'm going out to the garden after lunch to pack up all of the puddles & pools that are my garden paths. I'll ship them out to you guys first thing tomorrow morning.

Boy, I wish we could really share. We've put in drainage trenches around the raised beds to help drain away the excess water but there's nowhere for it to go at the moment so there is sits...

I can relate to some of the wind at least. Our winds are usually in the steady 20s and 30s several days each week since we moved here, plus the frequent higher gusts and many, many days of steady higher winds. Everything gets whipped to within an inch of its life and I just have to accept that that's how it's going to be. It's not as big of an ordeal once the plants are bigger and accustomed to it but there's not much chance of easing them into it gently. That's one reason I've just left all of the seedlings other than peppers outside 24/7 since they sprouted. They're born into it.

Diane

Speaking of winds, and not to poke fun at a bad situation, they were showing a map of the high winds in North Carolina on the Weather Channel today, and they pointed out that they had winds ranging from 12 to 25 mph. Hmmmmmmm. Wonder if they've ever been to Oklahoma.

Susan

Yeh Susan, a winter in OKC can make you wonder why they call Chicago 'the windy city'. They were so-o-o bad at Tinker.