With Easter so early this year, I am afraid this won't be our last frost. Usually with early Easter we can get cold into the second week of April. With this early warm weather however we could just roll on into the eighties in April, who knows????

I guess I am getting lazy because I just left everything uncovered last night. We will see what happens after tonight's cold snap.

I imagine it is not our last frost and likely not our last freeze. We'll probably have one cold night next weekend to ruin Easter, or even the week after. Or maybe we'll have snow. I never feel totally safe from late cold weather until May arrives, and sometimes not even then.

It never fails that when we are this warm this early, we "pay" for the warmth by having some late cold nights in the midst of all the warm days. It is like the price we pay for 80+ degree days in February or March is 30 degree nights in late March or April or occasionally early May.

When we first moved here in 1999, one of the "old ranchers" (he came here as a very young child before statehood) told me never to trust the weather until May because the cold keeps coming back. I thought he was exaggerating. He really wasn't.

Kim, If the plants were only nipped back a bit, I expect they'll be fine. I've had tomato plants come back from the roots after being frozen down to the ground. Since I started using row cover, damage has been rare and usually because wind lifted a piece of row cover. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, stuff like that just happens.

I covered up some stuff last night when our forecast was for 38 and patchy frost. We went down to 35 and I didn't see any frost. Tonight I covered up more plants. We're forecast to go down to 30 and to stay there a while and to have more widespread frost and, of course, we have a freeze warning. Because it was a beautiful sunny day, I came home at mid-morning to uncover the plants so they could enjoy the sunlight and warmth and then, when the countywide fire training class at our station was over, I came home and covered up everything. It was sort of annoying to have to spend time covering and uncovering, but it was worth it for the plants to get that sunlight.

Except for one freezing night in early March, we haven't had many nights when we have gotten down into the 30s, so my plants likely do not have good cold-conditioning. I have all sorts of warm-season perennials up, and some are in bloom. They didn't get the memo that the cold weather wasn't done with us yet.

Lost 3.

I forgot to take buckets off of.

My weather app said we got down to 27 last night--but the chickens' and dogs' waters were not even slightly frosty. And the 15 or so volunteer pumpkins seemed fine. Nothing else has come up and the only things above ground are the herbs, strawberries, onions and garlic.

I should get a thermometer or two. I have none. Funny thing is, we were supposed to be ABOVE freezing this morning (according to the weather app) and my chickens' water was a bit frosty. haha. And the grass was a bit frosty. BUT the pumpkins looked okay still--but I only had time to glance at them.

I love my chickens and wanted to get a few more this year, but I'll probably need to wait until next year. Mine are only (almost) a year old. They do help in/with the garden for all the reasons you mentioned...but also can be destructive. Mine were out a couple of days ago and started scratching in the onions--so I get looking crazy in the garden by hollering and waving hats, tools and all. Unfortunately my garden isn't fenced yet, so the girls will need to stay in their pen mostly. Speaking of cats, can a cat hurt a hen? Mine will stalk the chickens and once or twice has acted like she was going to pounce on them. I didn't even think about her being a danger to them. Maybe she's just entertaining herself. Stella ( a little blonde hen) is especially vocal, quick, and skittish--and it was quite funny watching Charlotte (cat) do whatever she did to make Stella upset. Anyway....I would be very upset if she hurt her though.

And brrrr! It's cold out this morning. I must plant the pea seedlings and nasturtiums this afternoon! They are way too big for their pots. I hope they will survive! Maybe I can fix up some sort of frost cloth protection for them. I'm new to that as well.

We are supposed to be getting chickens soon but my son's work has already picked up. He has to fix coop and fence first then we can order them.

Hazel, I feel like my weather never behaves itself and does what is expected either. I've never gotten completely used to how different the weather can be from the forecast, but I've learned to deal with it. Frost can be tricky to predict. Sometimes I don't get it when it is forecast and get it when it is not forecast. Forecasts cover a broad-scale area and are more general than we like, while each of us lives in a specific microclimate that may give us temperatures or moisture that differ quite a bit from the forecast. That's what has made me a weather-watcher....just observing what I see, comparing it to what was forecast, and trying to understand what I should expect at different times.

I've never had a cat hurt a full-grown hen, but our cats will sometimes stalk them. I think they do it for fun and don't really intend to pounce on the chicken. If the rooster notices a cat is too close to a hen and he perceives a threat, he runs head-on at the cat, flapping his wings furiously and squawking, and I guarantee the cat goes away and stops stalking. If you don't have a rooster, you can keep a water gun handy and squirt a cat that's getting too close to the chickens and the cat will learn its lesson. Even when baby chicks have gotten out of the coop or chicken run, the cats (surprisingly) haven't pounced on them. They sure have watched them closely though. We usually don't let banty chickens out to free-range until they are their full adult size since they are so small, but we will let standard sized chickens out to free-range once they are about half-grown. The cats watch them but don't bother them. Sometimes all it takes is having the turkeys lurking near the cats. The cats are intimidated by the turkeys, so if the turkeys are hanging out near the chickens, the cats don't even think about hanging around with them.

Poultry can be very destructive to gardens, especially in spring when seedlings are sprouting. My chickens are allowed in the garden in winter to dig and scratch to their heart's content, but are not allowed in there in spring. Sometimes in summer I"ll let them into the garden to eat insects, but not if there's low hanging tomatoes or melons for them to peck, and only if I am right there in the garden with them to keep an eye on what they are doing. I do grow tons and tons of extra lettuce for the chickens, but I cut it and take it to them. They aren't allowed to go into the garden in spring and help themselves to the lettuce (or anything else I've planted). Since we often are drought-plagued here and the chickens can suffer in excessive heat, I also grow tons of Armenian cucumbers and extra regular cucumbers and extra melons for them. On a hot day, I'll cut open whichever of the above are mature enough to harvest, and put it on the ground in the chicken yard. It gives them a lot of moisture and also is just an interesting diversion from the usual things they eat while free-ranging. They feast on that stuf like crazy, which is exactly why they have to stay out of the garden. All it takes is me walking from the garden with a big Armenian cuke in my hands......and I quickly have a parade of chickens following me because they know I'm going to cut it open and bring it back out for them. They also are especially fond of young Seminole pumpkins that are only 1 to 4 days old. At that stage, Seminole can be picked and used like a summer squash, so I often will harvest them young for the chickens if there's not an Armenian cucumber available for them that day. My garden could be smaller if I wasn't using it to feed the chickens all summer, but I like having fresh produce for them too.

Kim, I love my chickens almost as much as I love my garden. Often, when I am in the garden working (with the gate closed to keep the poultry out), they are right outside the garden digging and scratching along the fenceline and keeping a close eye on what I'm doing. They know that sometimes I'll bring them a cutworm or something else tasty that I've found. Well, tasty for them.....it isn't something I'd eat.

We had guineas for a very long time, but lost them in the summer of the cougar problems. I don't know if the cougars got them or if bobcats and coyotes were getting them, but nothing much had bothered them until that summer. After living the rest of that summer, fall and winter without them, I got used to the peace and quiet so we haven't had any since then. At times I think I'd like to have guineas again, but I don't know if we ever will. They are so very loud and they like to roam so I often had to chase them out of the roadway and herd them back home, which provided tons of amusement for people driving by since guineas do not especially like to be herded back home when they have gone off the property on a walkabout. Once when I was inside, they took off and made it about 1/3 of a mile up the road before I came back out and realized they were gone. It was a hot day. I was wearing overalls and a straw garden hat and took off after them with a rake in my hand. As I was herding them back home, the neighbors were coming up the road, having picked up the kids from school. I looked like a scarecrow chasing guineas up the road. People were pointing, laughing and waving, enjoying the show. It was hard to live that down.

Our worst chicken predators are not hawks, coyotes or even bobcats, though all of them will get a chicken if they can. Our worst chicken predators are stray dogs and raccoons, neither of which is welcome to hang out around our yard.

We have chickens that lay eggs in a variety of colors---white, light brown, dark brown, very dark brown, medium brown with dark brown speckles, and pastel shades of olive green and light blue. I love chicken diversity just as much as I love growing vegetables in all sorts of colors. Chickens are my main form of grasshopper control.

Dawn

Aww Man! That's kinda what some of mine looked like the morning after a freeze we had last week but were not supposed to have. But the peppers are recovering. They are budding back out. Or trying to anyway. I KNEW it was to early but planted a few in the garden anyway. Of the tomatoes, the Cherokee Purple and, Super Sweet 100, and Early Girl received NO damage that night. Food for thought for early planting.

That's good to know. These are in makeshift tunnel I was trying harden them off by removing layer of row cover every day. But when that wind hit the other day while I was at work all I could do was pray I don't lose them all. The row cover just beat the first row senseless and a few in the corner. I have not done an inventory to see what I have left but I put 134 in there. Will see who comes out alive. I am going to trim and keep watering some may come back from the roots. Most these were my heirlooms from seed, Cherokee purple and black krim. It's is good experiment to know what not to do.

Kim, I was concerned about what the wind was doing out there where you live. I'm sorry those poor plants took such a beating. Hopefully they will put out new growth and make a good comeback.

Scott, I'm never going to stop early planting, having found it is just too delightful to harvest tomatoes in April. However, I am really cautious and use row cover whenever I think there is any chance of frost or freezing temperatures. I never trust that the forecast is accurate because we often trend lower, even though I use the point forecast specifically for my neighborhood. Last night? Forecast low of 38. I covered up the beds that had any warm season veggies (tomatoes, peppers), herbs or flowers. Our actual low so far this morning? 32 degrees with frost, and we often drop another degree right at sunrise at this time of year.

The way that early planting works for me is that putting just a handful of early tomato plants, and for the last 2 years, some early pepper plants, in the ground helps me be patient and wait longer to put the main crop in the ground. If I didn't have that handful of early plants growing in the garden, I'll be wanting to transplant the main crop into the ground every single day. I wouldn't even be able to think about anything else. One of my early plants has 16 tomatoes on in, ranging in size from marble size to about the size of a tennis ball (though more oblate in shape, so maybe the size of 2/3s of a tennis ball, or a squashed tennis ball). The other one has 18 fruit on it, in the same size range. I look at those fruit every day and dream of the day the first one is ripe enough to pick and eat. If I hadn't planted early into pots, we wouldn't have a tomato feast approaching sometime in April. To me, the time I spend throwing row covers over the plants and fixing them in place so they don't blow away is well worth it.

Someday, the worst possible thing will happen. We'll get colder than they said when I'm not home to cover plants or we'll get so cold that the row covers cannot protect the plants well enough, or strong wind will rip the row covers off the plants, etc. and we'll lose the early plants or lose part of them or lose their crop. I know that. I still think early planting is well worth the risk. I think I've done the early plants in pots since at least 2008, maybe longer, and we haven't lost the plants yet. That probably means the odds are higher every year that we will lose them.

I likely wouldn't take the risk if I didn't grow my own seedlings. Even after my entire tomato garden is planted, I still have one back-up plant in the greenhouse for every tomato plant that is in the ground. The hardest day of the year for me? The day after I give away all the back-up plants because then my safety net is gone. I give them away happily and cheerfully, but it is a different feeling to not have the back-ups.

Dawn

I hate to see that happen, when we work as hard as we do!

Every time I find myself thinking about how painful this spring has been with the ups and downs of weather, I just remind myself, this is just spring in Oklahoma!

Most of my hardening off efforts have had to take place inside my small greenhouse since the wind has been too fierce to set anything outside! Direct sun, fluctuating temps and and a fan on them for around 8 hrs a day, should have them in good shape?

When I had mine inside I kept the fan going 24 hours a day. I would have it going direct sometimes oscillating and would move it every day. That way I felt it mimicked our wind .....different every day.

Kim, That's how we learn, isn't it? I think we learn lessons more quickly (hopefully and unless we are really hard-headed) from our failures than from our successes. I think any successful gardener will tell you that their current level of success in the garden is a direct result of a lot of garden failures from which they learned important lessons. My own gardening processes are built upon a big pile of garden failures that have occurred previously. Bit by bit we learn from all those "uh oh" moments until we gradually notice we are having less and less of those, and more "woo hoo!" moments.

Bruce, I think so. The direct sun indoors should be about as strong as direct sun outdoors,shouldn't it? I am assuming your greenhouse has a clear covering, and not a tinted one that might exclude some UV rays. Since my greenhouse has 50% shade cloth on it, I still have to gradually expose greenhouse plants to 100% outdoor sunlight to harden them off a bit more, but I don't start at one hour a day since they've had 50% sunlight. I usually start at 4 hours a day, and they harden off in just a few days. I only used my greenhouse one spring without a shadecloth, and I don't remember hardening off anything. I believe I took the plants straight from the greenhouse to the garden.

March Madness refers, of course, to the NCAA basketball tournament, but I can't help thinking that all of us (and not just in OK and adjacent states but across the USA) have seen all kinds of March Madness in the weather.....just this week.....high wind, hot temperatures, raging wildfires, heavy rain, thunder, crazy amounts of lightning, all kinds of hail, some tornadoes, some flash flooding or regular flooding, the re-emergence of drought and pre-drought conditions in NW OK, frosts, freezing weather, and now more fire danger and wind today, and rain and possibly a little snow (NW OK) over the weekend. That seems like a year's worth of weather in one week. No wonder we gardeners have to watch our gardens like hawks and take protective measures. March weather is so erratic. I hope the April weather is a bit calmer (but know from experience that it might not be).

Dawn

I have a large shade cloth that I've though about cutting and putting over mine. But, since I'm wanting to build a larger greenhouse, I really don't want to do that.

One of the members on our Frugal Gardening group on FB has kindly offered the use of the bender/form they used to build their newest hoop house, so I may be a little closer to making that happen!

The current framed greenhouse will likely be converted into a chicken house. I'm tired of not having a steady source of fresh eggs and store bought just don't cut it! And with the location, it would be fairly easy to set up a series of wire tunnels in the garden to help with pest control.

I wouldn't cut it either if you're close to making the bigger greenhouse a reality.

I love having fresh eggs. I love watching the chickens roam around all day, digging, pecking, scratching, etc. as they search for tasty morsels. II enjoy listening to them talk to one another. I don't even really mind the roosters crowing in the very early morning hours.

Once the garden is at a certain stage of growth, they're even welcome in the garden, and of course they can go into it all they want in the dead of winter. Getting the coop cleanings for the compost pile is nice too.

We just moved 61 chicks from the brooder house today to the "young chicken coop" where they can grow to a larger size before we set them free to mingle with the larger chickens in the big coop/chicken run. There's another 10 or 20 rare heritage chickens in another brooder. They mostly hatched out in the incubator last week or the week before, and our son has them for breeding and for eggs. In another small coop, the Black Australorps have been growing and getting bigger and soon will be set free to free-range. They are our first batch of 2016 chickens. After this, I hope we are out of the chick hatching cycle for a while. To our flock of about 15 or 20 aged chickens, we're adding roughly 90 more. That's more than I wanted, but our son has about 50 of those that he's called "slaughterhouse chickens" so I am guessing his will be harvested and processed once they reach the right age. I don't raise chickens for meat, just for the pleasure of their company and for eggs, so they are more like egg-laying pets. I don't name them though, except for a couple of especially rowdy roosters, and generally they keep me so aggravated by their aggressiveness that their names are unprintable.

Something is prowling around the coop at night, but can't get into it. I'm betting on a bobcat or coon, but haven't been able to get a good look at it yet and haven't found tracks due to the leaf litter on the ground.

There is now a farm near Tulsa that will rent you chickens and a chicken house for 3 months. Oklahoma Rent A Chicken

All I have to say is Midwest City better get on board with the Chicken thing. I would love to have some. Not only for the eggs, but for the poo for fertilizing the garden. But here you have to have 1 acre of land or it is not legal. *sigh* I have considered keeping them in my garage... LOL...

I saw that Rent A Chicken thing on TV the other day. If I was going to spend that kind of money to rent chickens, I wouldn't rent them. I'd build a coop and buy them. To me, other than renting a piece of equipment you only use once a year or something, renting seems like throwing money away because paying rental fees never ends. A coop doesn't have to be really pricey if you are good at building things yourselves. TSC has some cute coop kits, though I wouldn't buy one. I think it would be cheaper to buy the materials and make one from scratch unless you don't have the tools to cut the lumber. I also would rather choose specific chicken breeds than be given the breeds of someone else's choice because who knows what you'd end up with? Some chicken breeds' hens can leach ay 250-300 or more eggs per year while others might only lay 100 eggs a year. I'd rather choose a chicken breed that I know is a good layer. I bet the Rent A Chicken business will be successful, though, because people think they are too busy to build a little chicken coop. We're do-it-yourself type folks here, and I realize that not everyone enjoys the process of building.

One of the worst problems with urban chickens is having neighborhood dogs get into your yard and kill them. You've got to be sure you have either a very secure chicken house/chicken run or a very secure perimeter fence. Your own dogs can be taught to leave the chickens alone, but neighborhood dogs are a real danger to backyard chickens.

We grew up in a suburban neighborhood that never let go of its rural roots, so we had neighbors in the 1960s/1970s that had gardens, fruit trees, meat rabbits, chickens, goats and sheep. I don't mean just one neighbor who had all that, but multiple neighbors who had one or more of those animals. If you grow up hearing all that farm noise, the sounds a few animals make aren't going to bother you. I know most city folks don't like hearing roosters crow at 3 or 4 a.m. or all day long, but you'd think cities would otherwise allow hens for fresh eggs. Hens are not loud and if you keep your coop clean, it doesn't smell.

Ezi, You might get away with hiding chickens in a garage as long as you don't have a loud rooster. (and, as far as I know, there are no quiet roosters). I think the chickens, though, would miss being able to be out in the sunshine and fresh air. 'When we open up the coops and let the chickens and turkeys out every morning, they come busting out of the coops like they're escaping from prison. They're trained to put themselves up before dark, but on pretty days they push that to the max on warm, pretty, dry days and stay out until it is just at the verge of going from dusk to dark. On a cold, windy, rainy or snowy day, they do have the sense (sometimes) to put themselves up early. Or, they sit on our porch and watch it rain, which means I'm going to have to hose off the porch the next day to remove the mess they leave behind. Poultry's pretty smart. Ours follow us everywhere and are very curious about everything we're doing, especially if it even possibly involves something they might enjoy eating.

Dawn

Renting a couple of chickens to see if you really want to do it, is what I've been wondering about. We always get to the point of ducks or chickens. I want ducks, he wants chickens. And we want full grown ready to lay birds. And then the expense of the coop slows us down. We had a pair of geese 20 years ago. They hatched eggs and raised babies twice. Children and dogs are hazzards, but I believe urban hunters got the last goose. She just disappeared, no feathers left behind. A drainage ditch runs next to our yard. Most people have privacy fenses, but ours is chain link, so people can see what is there. Every time we get to the point of almost getting birds, I kind of shy away. The dogs live in the house now, I don't have to keep ice free water for them and in summer they are air conditioned most of the time. Birds would have to be tended every day. I'm kind of old for that. I suppose once I got in the habit again it would be ok.

Ezzirah, I was fully prepared to break the HOA and city rules about keeping chickens IF our house "in town" didn't sell. Our backyard there was really small, but I had a garden plan and chicken plan all prepared. My only issue was leaving enough room for the dog.

Actually, our next door neighbor had a couple of Easter chicks his son received. One was a rooster--Cupcake was his name. haha. The thing did crow, but honestly, it wasn't as annoying as a barking dog. To me. He had a small coop/pen for them and they got to "free range" when he was home. Eventually he took them to a farm. We heard he got rid of them because he thought we were mad at him for having them. Maybe he saw me peeking over the fence and mistook it for me being upset when I was really just interested. His yard didn't smell. Honestly, I don't find them difficult to keep. I clean their coop once a week or so. It takes 20 minutes to an hour depending on if I'm doing a deep clean or a quick clean.

Dawn - I wouldn't do that to a poor little chicken, just keep them in the garage. Just a pipe dream I was having. I tend to type as I think and don't realize not everyone can understand that on this medium. LOL....

Hazelinok - it is not an HOA, it is the city. And they have this guy that drives around and looks at your yard and will fine you if you don't keep it mowed like the city rules say. So I imagine if I get a couple of chicken, he would see them and I would get fined or something. *sigh*

I was hoping you were kidding about keeping chickens in the garage, but I wasn't sure. Desperation to have fresh eggs could make a person do crazy things.

He probably would see your chickens and report them, which is a shame. Fresh eggs are so much better than purchased eggs, and obviously part of it is that they are so much fresher.

Lots of cities are getting on board with the idea of backyard chickens (minus roosters), generally with the number of chickens allowed by ordinance being fairly small. I believe people should be able to do what they choose on their property (within reason) and that includes front yard veggie gardens and fruit trees, and keeping poultry. Many cities, though, don't see things that way at all. We moved to the country so we could do what we wanted and for the peace and quiet. It isn't really that is it so quiet out ther,e but the noises of chickens, ducks, guineas, livestock, wild birds and frogs are preferable to the sounds of sirens, traffic, neighbors blasting music so loud you can hear it even while wearing ear plugs, etc.