Lee, Thanks for the heads up on the weather.

I was expecting the temperature swings to continue (once the roller coaster of temperature swings is in motion, it seems like it just won't quit) so when I uncovered plants Monday morning, I didn't even drag the row covers back to the barn for storage. I just left each one lying in the pathway beside the row it covers and put boards or bricks on top so the row covers wouldn't blow away in the wind. I was worried about being clumsy or klutzy and tripping over the boards and bricks that are holding the row covers in place in the pathways, but then I realized that with windy likely to be gusting into the 40s down here over the next couple of days, I likely wouldn't be out in the garden working anyhow since it seems like we are more likely than not to have some fires today.

This is the weather I'm used to having so I can deal with it. However, it sure was nice last year when our last freeze and frost were early and I didn't have to cover up anything after that. A year like that is pretty rare though. I'd rather be dealing with cool to cold nights and wind than with flooding, since it is impossible to remove excess water from the soil and I had enough excess water last year to last me for a while.

Dawn

Looks like this might be the year to invest in row cover.

I love, love, love my row cover. I have it in four different weights for different situations, and I just bought relatively small pieces of Micromesh and Proteknet Biothrips netting so I can test them alongside Agribon to see which one keeps pests off certain crops (like broccoli and cabbage) the best while impeding growth and gardening the least. We recently went through a string of years where our last frost was the first week in May (our average last freeze date is in late March) and the row covers allowed me to protect plants on the occasional late cold nights (about once a week in April through the first week in May), which helped me keep my sanity. Oddly (well, maybe all gardening is odd here in years like that), I was able to harvest the first tomatoes from my earliest plants before I could put the row cover away for the season. Without row covers, a first tomato harvest in April just wouldn't be possible.

The cabbage white butterflies have been here for about a week to ten days already, though I have not yet found any of their larvae on my brassicas. Now that my micromesh and Proteknet netting have arrived, as soon as the wind stops blowing I'll go put them over the rows of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and collard greens and we'll see how they perform. I can tell just from looking at them and handling them that they are likely to hold up better than the summerweight Agribon.

cabbage white butterflies ............. so that's what those are :) , I plant brassica as a winter cover and in the fall it will be covered by those white butterflies.

Mutter, mutter, cabbage white butterflies. I bought a badmitten racquet type bug zapper to use on them, but I'm not fast enough. My daughter can't bring herself to kill butterflies. Last year I covered brassica babies with tulle, but the butterflies had already layed their eggs. Almost lost them before I figured it out. I have ONE overwintered cabbage plant covered in aphids today. I have seen lady bugs, so, for today I left it alone.

Thanks for the update!

bwahahahah!, Kim!!!

Polar Vortex the first week of April ?

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/polar-vortex-to-plunge-cold-into-midwest-east-us-early-april/56265180

Boo!

We might get lucky and miss the brunt of this. The core of the cold air will have real winter temps, but it looks like it may head more to the southeast and east. We may just get a glancing shot of the cooler air. We can hope. The weather models will come into better focus this week.

I'm really tempted to plant my tomatoes tomorrow. I watch Jed Castle's News9's nine day forecast

and William Cole's 10 day

.... and it looks like my chances are good. My soil temps are mid 60's.

I would be prepared to cover them, just in case! I planted a few today.

I started hardening off my tomatoes today. I'm aiming for next weekend to plant. My forecasted 37 for Friday night is what kept me from doing it sooner.

I do have some tomatoes planted in wall o waters and some of them are coming out the top. Last week I had a forecast of 37. It end up going down to 30-31 and the tops got frost bit. Needless to say, I learned my lesson and covered them last night. So I won't trust anything under 40.

Cynthia

It's tempting for me to plant mine but I'm holding to April 15th. A couple more weeks in the greenhouse won't hurt them.

I'm in no hurry to put my home-grown tomato plants in the ground either. Life in the greenhouse keeps them warmer at night than they'd be in the ground so I'll be waiting a while longer as well. Of course, this sort of patience is made possible by having a handful of early store-bought tomato plants that have been in the ground for several weeks now. I don't have an emotional investment in the store-bought plants since I didn't raise them from seed and nurture them all along the way, so if the weather gets colder than I can protect them from with floating row covers and they die, it won't bother me like it would if I lost this year's bunch of home-grown plants.

At this time last year, in my location we were more than two weeks past our last freezing temperatures, which I think happened on March 10th. This year? We hit 33 degrees and had pretty heavy frost yesterday morning at our house, and it hit 30 degrees at our mesonet station. The soil temperature still is flucuating more than I like, so the tomato babies will grow on in the greenhouse for a while longer.

Since I am not yet planting the main crop of tomato plants, I planted 4 varieties of bush beans yesterday, and today I'm going to plant my Texas Honey June corn. I really want to plant cucumbers, but will wait until after this week's cold blast of air passes on through and will then check the 10-day forecast and decide if it is cucumber time. At the rate I'm going, the entire front garden will be planted by April 1st, except for the area reserved for tomatoes and peppers. The more I plant, the more I have to cover up on the once or twice a week cold nights, so I am trying hard not to plant more than I'm prepared to cover.

Be sure y'all don't plant more than you can protect on cold nights. It feels like the cold weather is not in any hurry to depart this year, and I remember some years with sleet or snow in April.

I planted one tomato plant today and may do a couple more, but I have plenty to spare. I don't normally plant this early anyway, but the only 6 pack of plants I bought this year are starting to bloom. I have lots of other plants started from seed and a couple more weeks of growth before going into the ground will be good for them.

Well, what's the story on Days to Maturity ? Is that from the time the seed is planted or from the time the plant goes in the ground ?

If I gamble and plant early, doesn't that mean I get fruit set earlier ?

Days to Maturity is from the time the transplant goes into the ground. I think they assume a tomato plant will be a strong 6-8 week old plant at that time. If you gamble and win, then you should get fruit set earlier. Hopefully a lot of fruit set before it gets really hot. But if you gamble and it gets frozen or frosted, then you lose.

I don't normally plant too early because it is just too much trouble to protect them, but I did put one in today knowing that I might be sacrificing it. It seems that I have to cover enough times because of hail threats although we rarely get hail. It is spending tonight under a 5 gallon water bottle with the bottom cut out. Our night isn't going to be cold, but we have a chance of thunderstorms tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night. Hopefully no hail.

Some time ago, I grabbed a 6 pack of plants thinking that if I got a warm week with no low temps, I would plant them. Well, that didn't happen and they are starting to bloom. I don't usually plant many hybrids, but these were Better Boy. When I started potting up my tomatoes planted from seed, I discovered that I had planted Better Boy this year, so I have MORE than I need. My neighbors adopted a young boy from Honduras this year and his Dad told me today that he was going to built him a raised bed because he wanted to plant a few things. I assured him that I could supply the tomato plants.....guess which ones he will get? LOL

lcdollar, If you gamble and plant tomato plants earlier you may or may not get fruitset earlier. Normally you will as long as the conditions are warm enough for the plants. However, it can backfire on you if the plants stay too cool or are growing in soil that is too cold and their growth can become stunted or can stall.

As long as your soil temperature is at least 55 degrees and as long as you can protect the plants from March's strong winds, frost, nights that drop below freezing, and hail, there's no reason not to plant now if you feel the risk is worth it.

Because we have such a short window of opportunity most years for fruit to set before the heat sets in, I happen to think early planting is worth it most of the time. In a good year when the cold nights are not too cold in March and April, I will put tomato plants in the ground early and generally my overall harvest not only is earlier but usually as twice as big as it is when I wait and plant at the OSU-recommended times. However, I have row cover that gives 10 degrees of freeze protection, and I cover up my plants once or twice a week when cold threatens. If covering up plants at night and uncovering them in the morning on those 'late' cold nights does not appeal to you, you might not want to plant early. We have such odd weather here that often the ground is plenty warm enough for tomato plants and most days and nights are warm enough, but then we get that occasional cold night once or twice a week, often through late April of early May.

I only put tomato plants in the ground early if I feel like I can risk losing them if the weather gets significantly colder than forecast. Otherwise, I wait for warmer conditions.

I likely will be putting some home-grown tomato plants in the ground sometime next week if the weather forecast looks good. Otherwise, I'll just wait. Our temperatures are still very erratic and haven't calmed down as much as I like for them to do before I put the main crop in the ground. I always have a backup plant in the greenhouse to replace every plant I put in the ground. That allows me to take a certain degree of risk. Normally, I don't use my backup plants and just give them away to friends and to folks at the Spring Fling. I am very, very far south and we have been pretty warm for a long time now, but still with those occasional freezing cold nights, so I risk it.

How warm is my soil? Zinnias, squash and southern pea volunteers are popping up out of the ground, so it is pretty warm---somewhere in the 60s except when it drops significantly on cold nights.

Dawn