I see 2 38 degree nights in the extended Tulsa forecast. That is the 24th & 25th. I need my new beds finished. I need dirt. I need straw bales moved. We worked so hard Sunday that my daughter and I were pretty much crippled yeaterday. My herb bed is planted, BTW.

Your herb bed turned out beautiful !

Thanks. It now has a fence around it since I went out this morning and found doggie footprints from one side to the other! Grrr. I love my dogs, but my beds are not short cuts!

I'm digging up and moving plants right now too while the ground is still wet and easy to work. At our new house the soil is pretty good, but I'm so used to the old place where the clay would turn to concrete once the summer heat set in. I'm trying to keep on top of the weeds, too, because once it gets hot they seem to get away from me.

I'm digging up and moving plants too, and potting up volunteers from the front garden that will go into the back garden once I begin planting back there.

Bon, This is the perfect time to put plants in the ground, assuming they are hardened off to wind and sunlight, because the cooler, calmer weather with nice humidity is very gentle on them. You don't have to wait for a sunny day if your plants are already hardened off. I wish I'd had weather like this when I was transplanting all the tomato plants into the garden (well, all the ones that are there, as I'm not finished yet). If they are only partially hardened off, you still can transplant them into the ground, and then do the rest of the hardening off carefully, by letting them have sun exposure for however many hours they need on the hardening-off schedule and then shading them once they have that many hours. Remember, though, that hardening off includes not only sunlight exposure but also exposure to outdoor temperatures and wind, so you might have to put up a temporary wind block to shield them from strong wind if it arrives before they are fully hardened off.

I weed every day, although as the season goes on, there's less weeding to do because I catch everything as soon as I can after it sprouts, and weeds never get big enough to flower and set seed. Also, later on, there's more mulch and it is harder for weed seeds to sprout and work their way up through the mulch. If I can get control of the weeding early on, and stay on top of the mulching, my garden stays under control later into summer. I reach a point every summer where all the harvesting and canning, dehydrating and freezing of the harvest surplus takes over my life, and weeding falls not even to the bottom of the priority list---it falls off the list completely. I used to care that it fell off the list, but now I just shrug and say oh well and get on with the work that needs to be done. There's only so many hours in a day and I'd rather spend hot, summer days in the kitchen processing the harvest than spend it outside pulling weeds in the heat. In the fall, when the weather is more pleasant then I can remove weeds.

Amy, I felt the same way yesterday after working so hard over the weekend to get all the yard and garden chores done before the rain arrived. I was exhausted and worn out. I wasn't worth much yesterday, in terms of achieving anything, but we went to the store and ran errands and stocked up on gardening supplies. I was out of stakes for the tomato cages so bought 100 of them. It is ridiculously silly how happy that made me. Then, in the afternoon I took a nap and still went to bed early. I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and energetic but it was misty outside---not really heavy enough to be drizzle, but a touch too cool and misty to be pleasant working conditions outside.

I plan to be back outdoors tomorrow as early as the weather allows and to spend as much time as possible out there working my way through my To Do list. I've never once reached the end of my To Do list, but I labor on each year hoping to at least almost get it all done and all caught up.

Thanks for sharing, everyone. I really was ??? I'm with Amy with the projected forecast of lows coming. The other night it got ten degrees cooler than that which was projected. I'll just weed and work on hardening off the seedlings. I don't really have anything established except the onions hiding in grass ha

Bon I had my seedlings all hardened off and we got a threat of rain so I have been carrying them back and forth every day and night. Hardening is my least favorite part.

Looks like we might get sun Thursday! I spent the afternoon in the green house potting "up" tomatoes. Figured I would get rained on on the patio and all that dirt I spilled didn't end up on the kitchen floor! It was rather pleasant.

Y'all must have some cold nights coming. My coldest night in the 7-day forecast is only 49, which doesn't cause me any concern at this point.

We are supposed to have sunshine tomorrow and then again on Monday. Y'all know how it goes----sometimes we get the weather we're expecting and sometimes we don't, but I don't see much of anything in my forecast that worries me.

I hope the milder weather lasts a while. We had some days that were far too hot in March and in early April and it has been so pleasant the last few days to have April weather that feels like April weather should. The plants in my garden are incredibly happy and are growing like mad even though the weather now is cooler than it was when most of them were transplanted or when the seed was sown. Even melons and squash are sprouting now. The peas, broccoli and lettuce weren't happy with the hot spell but seem happier now. It is too late to stop the broccoli and lettuce from bolting, but the peas have perked up a lot. Since the weather cooled back down I haven't had any snake encounters either. Yay!

While the cool nights can be worrisome, I'd still rather be slightly too cool in April than to be too hot. Slightly cool weather won't hurt plants as long as it stays above freezing and there's no frost. Hot weather too early in the season hurts a lot more.

I have potting up on my To Do list for tomorrow. We got caught up on mowing and edging on Sunday afternoon and it is going to be too wet to mow for the rest of the week, so I'll just focus on doing the things that I can do, and it is an endless list.

Kim, I dare say I want to quit when it comes to seedlings and this year we there are too many. My kids are bigger than last year and better able to carry without dropping too many.

Amy, i was really glad to see the sun peek out late afternoon yesterday. And I know the experience of getting dirt in the kitchen!

Dawn, they keep flipping those lows... from 49 and now they are at 53 and they do it overnight. They just don't know. And that's Perkins! I don't have a reliable outdoor thermom., but I'm betting we are a tad cooler at times. I suspect security will set in with more experience and that could take years.

Ya'll know that phrase "April showers bring May flowers."? Well, it's been an awfully long time since it was true for us.

Aside from weeding, tomorrow I will spot the location for the sunflower hut. Going to try that one again. Bill's bringing in the hay bale tomorrow so I can trap all that moisture below. I'm loving that part. Works good. Looking forward to see the retention come hot summer.

Bon, When they keep flipping the lows I think that is happening either because the weather models themselves keep changing or the models are not lining up in very good agreement so the forecasters have to decide which models they believe are handling the current inputs the best. This has been the best spring in a long time as far as nighttime lows go. I haven't had to worry about them much at all since putting warm-season plants in the ground because our nights have been so warm. It has been the easiest spring we've had since 2012 in terms of nighttime lows and I've been a lot more relaxed because I haven't had to worry and fret about the temperatures getting too cold.

I think maybe y'all will have some good flowers this spring. Our wildflowers have been really slow to pop up this year but we went to CostCo down in Texas yesterday, to a new one in north Fort Worth we hadn't been to before, and their roadside wildflowers are really putting on a good show now once you get south of Denton so I expect in another week or two we'll be seeing a lot more here as well.

My dutch Irises down near the driveway gate are blooming now, along with the Texas bluebonnets, so at least we have that. The Indian Paintbrush has begun blooming in the last few days, but there's not a whole lot of them in bloom yet. I imagine by next week there will be a lot more, especially if we get some decent sunshine today. The two late snowstorms seemed to set back all the flowers a lot. In the garden, I have a reseeding annual bed at the SE corner of the front garden and it has tons of poppies and larkspur in it but most of them are not yet blooming. Some snapdragons there are in bloom now and the first poppy bloomed a couple of days ago so it seems everything in that bed is about to finally bloom. In other spots here and there in the garden, dianthus, malva sylvestris, sweet alyssum, viola, chamomile, comfrey and penstemmon are blooming, and the honeysuckle vines that grow on the entrance arbor have been blooming since about 2 days after the snow melted, but just scattered blooms here and there, not tons of them like there will be in another few weeks. I still have a ton of cool-season flowers that haven't bloomed yet, including bachelor buttons, godetia, linaria, and heartleaf speedwell but it looks like they're getting closer to blooming every day. Some of the tomato plants are blooming and setting fruit but others aren't. I think all they need is a little sunshine and warmth today to encourage them. The cool, cloudy, misty weather we have had lately has made me happy but I wish more flowers would wake up and realize it is spring.

I have done the whole started-too-many-seedlings-in-flats thing pretty much every year since we moved here. It is my own fault. Once I transplant a flat of home-grown seedlings into the garden, I tend to say "Oh good, an empty flat, let's start some more seeds." It never ends. Sometimes it is a bad thing as I find myself wondering where I'm going to put all those plants, but somehow I always find space for everything. Sometimes I do pot up seedlings indoors, usually at the breakfast room table. It does mean I make a mess and have to clean up after myself but I don't mind doing that.

Most of the plants and trees we have here in Norman have started to wake up a bit and put out leaves. The only ones left are a few of my crape myrtles. I figured all the crapes would wake up at the same time, but apparently not? A few of the small ones must have died back to the ground this past winter because they're only sending up new growth from the base. I'm still waiting on two very well established, huge ones. They seem to still think we're in the dead of winter. Crapes do tend to be slow to green up, though, I guess.

I carried all my trays in for a few days because I don't have anyplace to hide from wind and rain and the forecast was so bad but they are out now and they better get tough cause they are not coming back in. Next year I will have a makeshift greenhouse. With my son working late and littleman gone its too much for me.

I never expect so many to survive. Even with the applejuice and over fertilizing deaths I have so many left. Just potted up peppers most of them and ran out of cups again. Next year I am buying a case of cups from work!

I am so with you on that lol They're out and they're staying. I packed up the lights and started cleaning up the room. I, too, refuse to believe so many are doing so well.

I think I'm ready to move from New Portland, Arkansas (as evidenced by all the rain and clouds) and move somewhere dry like Oregon and Washington (joke...though aunt in N Washington said they are in severe drought)

It has been cloudy here also but the plants seem to be loving it. I planted some beans that are not up, and I may have to do them again. Guess we will see when it gets warmer. The only plant that doesn't seem to be liking it is a Lavender and when I bought it was sopping wet in a peat pot. I think it stayed too wet for too long. Of course, we have had lots of rain since I dried it out.

I had my peppers outdoors for days when the weather was a little warmer, but they weren't growing. I potted them up and they had really good root systems, but little top growth. I decided to put them back inside until we had warm sunny days again. Everything else has been outside for a couple of weeks.

I caged some of the tomatoes today, but I still need to get a lot more in the ground.

I now have all but 5 tomatoes that are planted in the ground caged and will do those 5 today. Then, I'm going to plant another dozen or so tomato plants and get them caged. I'm trying hard to stay caught up on garden chores because it is far too easy to get behind when it is raining a lot, and the weeds don't wait---they grow and grow and grow in the moist, mild conditions.

I got all the large tomatoes potted up into larger containers yesterday in preparation for the Spring Fling, and today and tomorrow I hope to get the smaller tomatoes and peppers potted up. They've actually decreased our chance of rain today slightly so I might get to work outdoors longer than anticipated. I intend to work out in the garden as long as possible and save the potting-up chores for indoors after the rain starts falling.

I put the first three pepper plants in the ground yesterday---all 3 of them are Mucho Nacho jalapenos. I have a lot more to go and have reserved a section in the front garden for them, but these three went into a raised bed with five tomato plants and a lot of herbs and flowers. They were my largest pepper plants and have been ready to go into the ground for a couple of weeks but I was waiting to make sure the soil temperatures were stabilized. Once volunteer ornamental pepper plants start popping up in the garden, as they did last week, I figure that the soil temps are warm enough for my transplants to go into the ground.

Yesterday I moved all the plants I have left in flats to the front garden to stay. I carried a table down there and set it up in the area where the rest of the peppers eventually will be planted. I had been putting them back inside the greenhouse if hail was in the forecast, but I'm through hauling flats in and out. It doesn't take long to move them from the greenhouse to the outdoors and back again at night or if threatening weather is headed our way, but I'd rather spend my gardening time actually gardening, and not hauling plants around. I can't leave them on a table in the yard because deer, possums, coons, etc. prowl around too much at night and will eat plants if they find them. And, speaking of deer, while working in the front garden yesterday afternoon I kept hearing an odd sound. It is hard to describe. It had a sort of familiar sound, but not a totally familiar one. It wasn't really the sound a deer makes when it is blowing air through its nostrils, and what it most reminded me of was the sound a llama makes sometimes. I was fairly sure there was not a llama hanging out on the next door neighbor's land, and I couldn't see anything because they have a lot of cedar trees on their property. After a couple of hours of that periodic sound (maybe once every 10 minutes or so), a deer emerged from the trees and stood and stared at me in the garden a long time. I told it to go away because I wasn't going to let it come into the garden with me. I really think that noise it was making was intended to intimidate me into leaving the garden. It didn't work.

I am very territorial and that behavior would totally hack me off. I cannot image losing it all as a buffet to the wild. I'm sure I'll have problems, eventually, with critters - especially crows - but I cannot imagine what it's like to wake up and find the entire garden mowed down by a herd of deer. And a deer acting like that is too much. You're so patient it thinks it owns the joint.

Kim? The sun popped out this morning. I woke late and found all my seedlings burning up in direct sun. I ran outside and covered them with brown sheets and told them to toughen up. They're not coming back in! (They'll be in shade after the sun moves.)

Hmmm....I think this thread answers my questions about why I have trouble keeping seedlings alive. They are really high maintenence little things, aren't they!

Bon, We have a deer herd that visits regularly and 3 or 4 of them are not as afraid of me as they once were (although the rest still scatter when they see me), but they still don't try to assert any dominance. This one was not one of those. Clearly it was a deer that figured out the stuff growing inside the fence probably is tastier than the stuff growing outside the fence, but I don't aim to ever let it have a chance to verify that for sure. We have an 8' high deer fence around both the front garden and back garden and they seldom breach the fence....and, when they do, it is because somebody left the gate open.

The regular deer herd comes at night and checks the back compost pile for goodies. Sometimes on canning days, I know they are in the woods watching and waiting because I'll throw a bunch of stuff on the compost pile and go back indoors in the middle of the day. When I go out to the compost pile again late in the day, the stuff I carried out earlier already has been gobbled up. I wonder if they watch every day or if somehow they know when I am canning. It is a wonder I get any compost at all.

If the deer start getting too needy I take a dog or two out with me. That puts an end to the deer problems for a while. Being chased through the woods and pastures by a highly energetic dog will make the deer lie low for a while. The two young dogs we took in around Thanksgiving are kinda on the small side of being medium-sized dogs and they love to run and bark and chase. They'll likely be a good deer deterrent for years to come.

I think I hardened off all my plants 2 or 3 times. We'd patiently work our way through the daily process of increasing exposure an hour each day, and a big cold front or snow storm or prolonged rainy spell would come along and the plants would be inside for a few days. We'd start over again with the 1 hour on the first day, 2 hours on the second, etc., and finally be back about to the same degree of hardening off that we'd had the first time, and along would come another long weather disruption. I've never had to start over with hardening off plants as many times as I did this year, but we're finally at the point where everything is fully hardened off. It feels like it took me 6 weeks to get it done, and it may have.

Krista, Seedlings aren't all that hard to raise once you understand what they need and you get it down to a routine. The problem is that when you transition them outdoors, they need to start with a low amount of exposure (I often put them in dappled shade for the first few days, and then give then 1 hour of sunlight the first day, two the second, etc.) and work their way up incrementally. IF we had weather that was half-way cooperative, you could harden off plants to outdoor temperatures, sunlight and wind in a week or two. But, with weather as erratic as ours is at this time of the year, it always seems to be a one step forward, two steps back kind of process. This year it has been more challenging because of the roller coaster weather. Some years it is a piece of cake.

A lot of people pamper their seedlings too much indoors, giving them excessive heat, moisture and fertilization which produces big lush plants that have a much harder time harding off. I do the opposite. I close the HVAC vent in my plant-starting room to keep the room from being too warm and cushy, preferring to raise them slightly cooler than our indoor air temperature. I run a fan 24/7 so they get used to wind exposure. I water only enough to keep them growing, and to keep the soil moist, and never water so heavily that the soil is soggy. I don't feedseedlings at all until the plants are old enough that they clearly need to be fed. What I get is tough plants who haven't lived a real cushy life and are eager to escape from the house to the outdoors. I generally don't have much trouble getting them hardened off, but I am home all day and can watch them carefully and move them from full sun to dappled shade if the weather is too hot and too windy for the condition they are in at that time. This year it has been mostly the opposite problem----just finding them enough actual sunlight that they can harden off has been a challenge.

The sign of success with hardening-off your seedlings? When you put them in the ground and that don't suffer transplant shock, don't look unhappy and don't struggle. That's when you know you had them in the right shape to go into the ground at the right time. I define the right time as the point when both air temperatures and soil temperatures are right for that specific type of plant. While hardening off this year has been much more difficult than usual, the plants did great when I put them in the ground so all the struggle to get them hardened off was worth it.

yeah. Seedlings can be a pain. I downright abuse those puppies! I find dappled shade is preferable. It gives them a chance to be exposed to direct sunlight for a few seconds or a few minutes at a time depending on where they are sitting and how the wind blows the tree limbs. That way they seem to get enough sunlight to encourage growth, but not kill em. We've been sunny all day, so far. I might switch them to dapple shade this afternoon and graduate from there depending on the skies.

I need to pot up a few really bad ... like the better boy. Not sure I like its excessive growth. I won't if the tomatoes taste boring.

Mine have actually been easier this year, but I think it is because I got a late start. Of course, peppers are a bit of a Diva and I still take them in on cool nights hoping they will grow a little faster, but a lot of our nights have been high 50's and 60's so the tomatoes appear to love that. None of mine have struggled when I have put them in the ground, but my ground is wet and cool.

Looks you western folks better be prepared for some weather tonight. Ugh.

Yes. Heads up to everyone in the West. Check in, if you can.

Carol, I had a flat that I left outside on the porch. Gets exposed to the cold at night and bright sun in the mornings. I guess I just didn't care. I was thinking of the basil that's in it. Welp, I noticed that it has a couple of pepper plants. They're fine. SHEESH Never know. *sigh

Bon, I love dappled shade too. It sort of eases them into sunlight gently, but then they still have to face the real sunlight at some point. This year, lately, it has been challenging to get them enough sunlight instead of the usual challenge of keeping them from getting too much too soon.

Better Boy isn't bad. Big Boy has better flavor, at least to my taste buds, but it is a lower producer. At least Better Boy isn't bad for a red, hybrid tomato. And, I think there is no such thing as a bad or boring home-grown tomato. Even if it doesn't dazzle you, it still will taste better than anything you could buy at any grocery store.

The vigorous growth exhibited by Better Boy is one of the things they are breeding for in commercial tomato-breeding programs and it is a characteristic known as hybrid vigor. While hybrid vigor might not matter much to the average home gardener, it is important to commercial growers who need the plants to produce a certain harvest for a certain period of time in order for the growers to be able to make a profit. Hybrid vigor also would matter to some home gardeners who deal with challenging conditions, particular in parts of the country where late blight is a persistent problem. There are very few tomatoes with tolerance of late blight bred into them but the now-retired tomato genius from NCSU, Dr. Randy Gardner, has bred some tomatoes with some tolerance of late blight. Some describe it a resistance to late blight, but for legal reasons, it is smarter to refer to it as a tolerance of late blight. We probably don't appreciate that here as much as we should since late blight is very rarely an issue here, but in parts of the US where late blight can wipe out entire gardens of tomatoes in days, not weeks, the hybrids with some tolerance of late blight may stay alive long enough to produce some usable tomatoes. I'm grateful late blight is not much of a problem for us, but we don't get off scott-free either because early blight exists everywhere.

Carol, When I saw the first tornado warnings in TX pop up on the radar, I stopped gardening for the day, put away everything and came inside to watch the weather. I hope the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes stay out in the less-populated areas where there's, statistically speaking, less stuff to damage and less people in harm's way.

Everything so far has stayed west of us or gone to our east, but I'm not complaining. I'd rather not have any hail, and we have had plenty of rain for this week. I doubt the storms will miss us all weekend long. We just don't have that kind of luck this year.

Dawn

We are good here. It was a weird weather day since I ran a hundred miles I covered a lot of variables. Tiny hail was the only threat I was aware of until I got home.

bon these seedlings are giving me fits too. Just when I want to lay down I hear them you forgot to water me. Arrgghhh

haha, exactly.