UGH. I hope you don't get any frost!

Jo

Jay,

Oh no! I was afraid when I saw the title that you either had frost or a wildfire coming your way.

I'm sorry this is happening and hope the forecasters are wrong and that it doesn't drop that low tonight.

I'll tell you what what has changed my life with regards to early and late frosts and freezes......Agribon-type floating row cover. I have the heavy duty one that gives up to 8 degrees of frost/freeze protection, and the lighterweight one that gives 2 to 4 degree protection. You can leave them on all day if you need to. Having them allows me to transplant at the right time without having to worry excessively that a late cold spell will slaughter my poor plants. Tell Santa Claus that Jay needs frost blankets for Christmas!

Let us know tomorrow night what happened and how your plants handled it.

If I didn't have my floating row covers and I faced your situation tonight, I'd likely be outside right now putting buckets over all my plants and piling hay on/around the buckets for extra insulation.

I hope you have only good news to report tomorrow.

Dawn

Jay, Our forecast is 39 so I hope it doesn't dip anymore than that. It is too late for either of us to have this kind of weather. I came inside a few minutes ago and told Al that I apoligized to the peppers while I was outside. Freaky weather.

Jay,

Did you see how close the Frost Advisory is to you?

With your forecast, I'm sort of surprised your county doesn't have one too.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Frost Advisory for Much of Kansas

Dawn I hadn't looked but the NWS forecaster on the radio said we had a frost/freeze warning but that site doesn't show it. Maybe he was on a different shift. The other 2 sites I watch have low 40's. I knew I had light frost yesterday morning although our low showed around 35. I sprayed everything with water and thought I would be fine. Didn't look at the in ground plants again till today. One really got hit hard. May have to replace it. The others look fine. I have thought about the row covers. But not sure about how I would hold them down with the constant 20-40 mph winds we are having. I will update everyone tomorrow. I covered the cold frames and some flats will spend the night and tomorrow in the house. I left some out in my insulated trailer. Think they should be fine out there. After tonight they are saying upper 40's and 50's. Of course they did last week also. Jay

Here they are saying areas of frost for us. So guess they can't decide. Hoping I miss it. I will have to make some decisions around 5 in the morning. And it is supposed to be mid 70's tomorrow so hate to leave the frames covered and shut. Jay

Forgot to attach the link

Here is a link that might be useful: NWS frost

Oh my Jay, that doesn't look good. Did you have someone that could come open your cold frame for you?

Carol,
No. However I leave them will be how they are all day. I don't worry about over heating like so many do. I have never seen the high temps so many have claimed on my high/low thermometer as long as the daytime temp doesn't reach over 80. It is 41 here now at 4. Will watch it till around 4:45 and them set them for the day. The other 2 sources said around 40 for a low. Again we all know the low is apt to be just before to around sunrise. Not much more I can do. On May 16th even later than last year. Really making it hard to garden. The winds are supposed to hit 20-25 with higher gusts this afternoon so not sure I would be able to hold floating row covers. Will have to ask Dawn how they stay put. Again I'm in a wide open area so the wind has a straight shot for miles. Jay

Jay,

This morning's weather in your area is just so borderline....Wunderground.com was showing a low of 36 for your county, which certainly could mean frost, but maybe the area where they get the temperature got colder than your place and maybe your place stayed closer to 40?

There are several different ways to keep floating row covers in place. I use those metal U-shaped landscape pins that are used to hold fabric mulch cloth in place. So far they have held well for me here in my clay. They also make some biodegradeable ones (they look sort of like huge thumbtacks) but I haven't tried them. If the wind speed is over 30 mph, I just lay scrap pieces of 2 x 4 lumber on top of the floating row covers' edges. I leave them free-floating so the wind can move them around a bit, but they are so lightweight they don't hurt the plants.

The other 2 or 3 ways you can use floating row covers are:

1) By building low tunnels sort of Eliot Colelman style over the garden rows and attaching the row covers to the frame of the low tunnels with clips. You can buy the clips at various greenhouse supply companies and at Johnny's Selected Seeds. The framing of the low tunnels suspends the row cover up off the plants, which might work better for you due to your tremendous winds there. I think you still would have to use something to anchor the fabric to the ground, whether it was landscape pins, bags of sand, lumber, bricks, etc.

2) By wrapping your tomato cages with frost blanket type floating row covers and leaving the cages wrapped until all threat of frost was past. I have done that with 6 mm plastic some springs and it worked pretty well but I haven't tried it with row cover material. I just wrap the plastic around the cage and secure it with duct tape. If you use the white duct tape, it doesn't look nearly as redneck as it does if you use the silver duct tape. I always left the plastic-wrapped cages uncovered on top to facilitate some air flow, and just covered them up if frost or a freeze threatened by throwing blankets over the top. That was back before I had the heavy-duty row cover frost blankets. Nowadays, I think I'd just put frost blanket weight (that's the 8 degree one) row cover over the row of cages. I am toying with the idea of wrapping individual cages with row cover next year and planting in March.

The downside is that the row cover would reduce wind motion so the plants might not get the big, fat, sturdy main stems that wind movement helps them develop, or at least not until after the cages were unwrapped.

3) Sandbags. If you look at the low tunnels in the Johnny's Select Seeds catalogs, they use sand bags to hold down the edges of the coverings used for the low tunnels. I think that would work well although I haven't tried it.

For what it is worth, on May 3rd when it got so very cold and frosty here, I covered up everything....corn, potatoes, onions, beans, tomatoes,etc. Everything survived with zero frost damage, although some flowers that weren't covered and some tender tree foliage showed minor frost/freeze damage.

My plants were so far along that I didn't want to take a chance on having anything frozen and set back. I really didn't want to spend all that time covering up every bed, but I was worried that if the temps went significantly lower than forecast, I'd have a garden disaster on my hands. My potatoes had already rebounded from a prior 26-degree hard freeze that did a lot of damage to them when I didn't cover them up, so I didn't want another setback for them and, of course, corn and beans won't tolerate frost. Covering the corn was kind of hard because it was about a foot tall and I was worryied the row cover would be moved around enough by the wind to damage the growing tips of the plants, but it didn't. I left it loose enough it could move a little but not a lot. Those corn plants grew about 6" during the two nights and one day they were covered, leading me to think I should cover up the whole corn bed next year with a frost blanket suspended over a low tunnel to ensure I'm harvesting the early corn by Memorial Day. Apparently the row cover held just enough heat to really please the corn plants. I think our high on the day I left the plants covered all day was in the upper 50s or low 60s and our low temperature dropped to 32 degrees around 6 am after hovering in the mid-30s for several hours. It has been two weeks and those same corn plants are now about 2' tall and the beans are about to blossom.

My early corn won't be ready by Memorial Day this year though. I planted it about 2 weeks later than usual because of the persistent cold nights.

On that night, I covered up both caged and uncaged toamtoes. With the caged plants, I used the pins to secure the row cover to the ground and clothespins to attach it to the tops of the cages. I covered those up on the afternoon of the threatened cold night, which I think was a Monday night, and left it covered until Wednesday morning. Early on Tuesday morning we had a pretty hard frost (some tree foliage had damage), but on Tuesday night I think we only dropped to about 40 and were frost free. My garden plants suffered no damage.

I had five very large tomato plants in containers that were too large to easily move inside, and one couldn't be moved at all because it was a 4' diamter galvanized metal stock tanke. All the tomato plants were caged, so for those plants I just wrapped the cages with floating row cover secured to the tops and the bottoms of the cages with clothespins. Then, near sunset I threw a blanket over the top of each one and used a couple of shorter pieces of 2 x 4 lumber placed over the top of each cage to hold the blankets in place so they wouldn't blow off the plants. I was really nervouse about those plants because a lot of them had fruit between baseball and softball size (but more oblate than round) and I didn't want to lose those fruits. Everything came through the frost and freezing temps just fine, and now I am harvesting tons of big, fat, delicious tomatoes from those big tomato plants, which are my early ones from pots that I eventually transplanted into bigger pots once planting time rolled around.

The hard part with covering every bed with floating row cover on the afternoon before the cold night was that it was raining, was very muddy and pretty windy. I would unroll row cover from the bolt and cut it to fit a bed and it would be trying to blow away before I could secure it to the ground. Also, working in the rain wasn't pleasant and we'd recently had 2.3" of rain in the last couple of days, so I was sinking into the mud up to my ankles. It had rained for 2 or 3 days and I had put off covering the rows of plants as long as possible because of the rain. If I had it to do all over again, I would have put out the row covers before the rain started and let the plants stay covered for 5 or 6 days through the whole cold/rain/frost event. I covered seven raised beds and two large unraised planting areas and used probably 2,000 to 3,000 square feet of floating row cover. That sounds like a lot, but since some of the tomato cages were 7' tall, I had to essentially build an unframed high tunnel of row cover over that bed which used a lot of row cover fabric.

In general, my garden is well-sheltered from wind, with heavy woods to its immediate north and then a bit further away (maybe 25 yards) to its south. The east side is totally exposed but we don't have a lot of wind out of the east here, and the west has some trees for some wind protection but not heavy woodland. My row covers have stayed in place with winds in the 30s and even gusts into the 40s. Since your wind can be a lot stronger, I don't know how much harder it would be to keep row covers in place there. When the wind gusted into the 40s here, I used bags of cow manure and also metal fence posts to help secure the edges of the row cover.

Hope the row cover info helps.

Dawn

Jay,

At7:06 a.m.,Wunderground.com was showing 33.7 degrees for Ft. Wiegers. Ouch! That's too close to freezing for comfort.

Dawn

Whatever happened to global warming? I can't remember weather like this. I too, along with Soonergrandma, have had to apoligize to my peppers and tell them.....who knew!

Jay, Have you considered a 'change of venue'? Your weather out there is just too vicious. You need a hoop house as big as all outdoors and then row covers inside that. Or maybe a pit greenhouse under a hoophouse is best for you.

I have mixed feelings about row covers. I think the layer of fabric is a good idea, but I see problems with them as well. If you use the thinner ones it offers a little protection from temps and you can leave them in place with only a small lose in sunlight. However, 'floating' which was the original idea does not seem to be the cure and it seems to work best if the cover is suspended in some way above the plants. The ground heats during the day and it decreases the amount of heat loss near the ground if the row cover is in place at night so you would only have to move those to harvest, I guess.

Unless you are available and 'on call' to your garden's constant needs, I don't see much benefit to the heavier ones. I would not be comfortable leaving the heavy ones on during the day, but if you are willing to put them on just to protect for a short cold spell then they might help....but I still wouldn't want them touching the plants.

As a protection from insects I think the light one is very worthwhile, IF you can keep it in place. My problem wasn't wind, but was some animal that seemed to think they needed to pounce on that thing that was billowing in the wind. A hole in the middle of a long piece pretty well renders it useless as protection. I think mine was torn up by cats, but I also know that I had a possum around for awhile.

It is very hard to out guess the weather, but even harder to protect the plants when you plant too early. Dawn has worked out a system of buying transplants south of her and satisfying her 'tomato taste buds' while still being able to put off her main crop planting. Even that isn't going to work for you.

I have this as a future plan for my garden. I want to make several raised beds, all exactly the same, maybe 4x4, and quite tall. Then I want a cold frame with a very tall back and a shorter front that will fit on top of the bed and lock on somehow. I could keep winter greens going with a covered one almost all winter, then move it to the next and start spinach, then greens again in the next one, then later, another move, a couple of tomato plants and maybe a few peppers. All beds would benefit from the early protection provided by the same cold frame, but would have room for growing when the job of the cold frame was no longer needed. A tight cold frame with a real blanket thrown over it could offer a lot of protection. Although it might only be a couple of tomatoes, I think it would be worth the effort.

Our temps didn't go as low as they said and they have now raised 39 to 41 for tonight, so I guess I will be OK. I sure hope your plants made it through this. It takes guts to garden in your area. LOL

Telow,

I think that what we are seeing is the result of global warming. Supposedly, global warming will give us more extremes---extreme high temps, extreme low temps, extreme drought, extreme flooding, and will include wild swings from one extreme to the other, etc. Whether the 'global warming' we're seeing is a result of mankind's activity or just a normal long-term, natural pattern change is open to debate, but I don't think we can deny that we're seeing very different weather the last 5 or 6 years from what we had before.

I used to plant tomatoes and peppers in March, sometimes in early March, and rarely lost them to 'late' freezes. Now I have to cover them up in May to prevent late freezes. It is so bizarre!

Carol,

The early tomato plants have been my salvation. Before I started growing them, I tried to plant as early as possible in March as I could, and sometimes I got away with it! Once year not long after we moved here I started putting transplants into the ground on March 7th or 8th and didn't lose them to frost or a late freeze. I cannot imagine even thinking of doing that nowadays.

I've had such great production from Big Boy, Better Boy and Big Beefsteak in containers this winter/spring that I think I'm going to start seeds of Brandywine in November and try to raise my own to set out in the pots in February. Maybe getting an extra-early start on Brandywine would get me more fruit per plant and would get them to produce early enough to beat the heat. The one year since we moved here that we had enough Brandywines to give away to friends (that also seems laughable because it hasn't happened since) was the year I planted in early March.

What you're describing as a season-extension device sounds doable. A couple of weeks ago I saw a GrowCamp type set-up in a store that is similar to what Gardener's Supply sells and it looks even more impressive in person than in the catalog. I've linked the one from Gardener's Supply below. I think we mere mortal humans could build something similar that wouldn't cost as much.

My dream "winter garden" would be something like the grow camp built on a small 6 or 8 foot long flatbed trailer. Then, if incredibly cold weather threatened, I could hook up the trailer to the pickup truck and back the trailer into the well-insulated garage to protect my plants. We probably shouldn't hold our breath waiting for Tim and I to get around to building something like that. We're now in the midst of mow, mow, mow, edge, edge, edge, mow, mow, mow. I don't understand how the grass can grow as much as it is with such limited rainfall, but I do know that once the mowing season starts, it sucks up every spare minute we have.

We went lower than forecast, but only to 44 early this a.m. so everything was fine, but it was really chilly out there early in the day.

After I linked the Ft. Wiegers temperature of 33.7, I went to the NWS page for Elkhart and it was showing 38 degrees, so let's hope Jay's house was in the 38-degree area and not the 33-degree area.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Grow Camp

Dawn, I saw that ad the other day. Now that is really something but 4x4 is not very big.

I even have the trailer that you want, and could convert it, but I don't have the insulated garage to move it into. Between the two of us we could make things happen.

It just amazes me that Jay can have the kind of garden he has when he gardens in such a brutal climate.

Jay - I hope that tonite you're able to report that most everything made it thru! I'm like Carol - I'm amazed at what you can grow with the weather you experience. (And that's saying something since I live in Oklahoma!)

Paula

Jay,
Not to make fun of your dilemma at all, (while I haven't had to worry about frost and freezes, I have covered my peppers the last three nights to protect them from temps in the 40's.) This quote from Dawn is priceless...

I just wrap the plastic around the cage and secure it with duct tape. If you use the white duct tape, it doesn't look nearly as redneck as it does if you use the silver duct tape.

Keith

Keith & All,
I've done the same the last four nights on my small pepper plants for reasons discussed here on the forum concerning the 40's temp nights. I always start pepper plants later than tomatoes, and therefore the size. They are about 6 inches high now. I have them in one gallon cans and I just lay a folded burlap bag over the can and call that covered. You know I could have said tow sack, toe sack, tote sack, etc and still had it covered.
Best of Luck to all and especially Jay,
Bill

Just a quick note. Everything made it through fine. I left the one frame covered all day. With it covered and no sun entering it don't get as hot. It also has tinted glass which helps. Supposed to be upper 40's the next 2 nights and then into the 50's for lows. I had covered the inground tomatoes. I put another five gallon bucket in the one that was around each plant and filled them with straw. When I checked this morning at 5 there was light frost forming on the blanket. It was showing 38 here at 5. And I'm sure dropped a few more degrees. I usually plant on the east end of the garden early as it is the highest and warmest. For some reason this year I started on the west end. I know many think there can't be much if any difference in temps in 90-100 ft. Like in the fall of 09 that end was killed and the east end was fine and lived another 9 days. So it could of been a little cooler. Actually 38 was the lowest temp I saw here Sat. morning but it sure got one plant and nipped a couple of others. Thanks for everyone's thoughts. Jay

Oh good Jay. It was a good thread anyway, Billy learned to say burlap bag instead of tow sack, and Keith also turned away from his 'redneck' ways by following Dawn's suggestion to use white tape instead of the purty silver stuff. At our house we call that silver stuff the Alaskan toolbox, because it holds a lot of stuff together until it gets warm enough to fix it.

Dawn, I know you use plastic paint on those buckets, now I guess you are going to tell us you paint those 2x4s before you lay them on the row cover, right?

This was a serious thread that went astray....again.

Jay, they have changed tonight back to 39 for me again.

Jay,

I'm glad your plants are alright. Maybe that was the last cold night "scare" you'll have.

The NWS scared me yesterday. I had the fire radio in the garden with me last evening and switched over to the NOAA weather channel to listen to the 7-day forecast and they had what I am SURE was an error on the Ardmore NOAA station. They said that for next Monday we'll have a high in the 80s before dropping into the 20s. I am sure it was an error. I made Tim listen to it so I'd know I wasn't hearing things. I bet they meant to say it would drop into the 50s or 60s or something, but usually they don't make mistakes like that.

Keith,

I confess to sometimes having a redneck garden. I always have used duct tape when I wrap cages and also to attach my plant labels (made from mini blind slats) to my garden stakes. I used to just always buy the 4-packs of silver duct tape at Sam's or CostCo and use that but I wasn't crazy about the shiney silvery stuff in my garden. My garden is visible from the roadway so I don't want for it to look too tacky. One day I saw the white and colored duct tapes at Wal-Mart, so of course I had to have the white!

This year, while taping labels to stakes, I have used both green and pink. Normally I use the pink for tool handles so I can find the tools I drop here and there in the garden, and use the green for the stakes, but if I run out of green while making labeled stakes, I use the pink. I think both look better in the garden than the silver stuff.

Carol,

I really don't mind planting in Tidy Cat litter buckets that are unpainted, but they aren't terribly attractive, so that's why I started painting them with Fusion paint for plastic. Sometimes it is pretty waterproof for me but other years it isn't, so I don't think it is the solution I had hoped it would be. (sigh) However, if you plant in unpainted Tidy Cat Buckets AND your plants have plastic-wrapped cages with silver duct tape, you might find yourself in the running for some sort of "White Trash Gardening" or "Redneck Gardening" award, and that's an award I don't want to win!

I did not paint the 2 x 4's because Tim actually intends to use them for something, but wouldn't they blend in better if they were green instead of a natural wood color?

I did buy cans of green spray paint to paint my wooden garden stakes so they'd blend in better, but never got around to painting them before using them, and there those cans of paint sit right in my garden shed still in the Wal-Mart bag. Maybe I'll paint the stakes in the winter months when not much else is going on.

When the Gardener's Supply catalog that featured the plastic raised beds in that lovely cornflower blue arrived this spring, that did give me ideas (I loved the patio furniture in the same shade), but I decided that painting all the wood-framed beds wasn't a good idea because there might be chemicals in the paint that I wouldn't want leaching into the soil. It might be something fun to do with a fenced cutting garden with raised beds because it wouldn't matter if you were raising non-edibles.

Our threads always go astray and meander off topic, but that's what makes it fun.

Dawn

Same boat here. Dropped down to 32 here last night and the night before. I've been confined to bed the past few days with a (garden-related, of course) back injury so hubby & the kids had to carry all of my plants inside, several dozen flats. Of course, there was an accident and some peppers died a violent death but at least I didn't lose everything.

That had better be the last of the freezing temps!

Back to bed with me now but had to do a quick check in to make sure the gardening world is still out there.

Diane

Diane,

So sorry to hear about your back. It must be serious if YOU are on bed rest because I've never known you to take it easy unless forced!

I hope the kids gave the peppers a nice burial in the compost pile.

I hope your freezing temps have ended too. It is May and time to plant! We can't be havin' no stinkin' cold nights any more!

Dawn

Dawn, Wood grain would be lovely! You're too funny.

Diane, I had wondered about you and had checked your blog everyday and there was nothing there either, so I was afraid you were sick. I had to take a couple days off myself (from the garden, not the computer). Hope you are better soon.

I have one tomato plant with some leaf damage. I didn't notice it until today but it could have been there yesterday. It is at the very end of the row and has less protection from the wind than most of the plants have, plus it is also an Opalka and they have wimpy foliage anyway. It is only two branches so I don't think it is a big deal. I have another to replace it if it begins to look worse. Our temps haven't been low enough to damage it, so I don't know what the deal is. It's not like it is the ONLY tomato plant in my garden. HeeHee