Update: The Frost Advisory has moved much further south and now includes quite a bit of eastern OK and even some counties in southeastern OK. I hope gardeners with plants still in production are keeping an eye on this weather.

Even here at our place in southcentral OK, our overnight/early morning low has been revised downward from the upper 40s to a mere 43 degrees. Tomorrow it really is going to feel like autumn, even way down here.

Yes, the tomatoes are in, all but one plant (Black abrown Boar) which has a lot on it but I can't decide just how green they are because of the striping. Maybe it won't frost and it will have another week. I don't have room to hang it in the garage. Good bye tomatoes :(

How cold a temp can okra take? It's so tall DH has to harvest, because I can't reach it. Okra and beans are probably done. Pac choy can take it, right? I wish my brassica were bigger. I could have used another week. But I got 9 days more than usual.

Okra will freeze at freezing temperatures but remember that you can get frost, under certain conditions, even when your official temperature remains above freezing. (Partly this occurs merely because official temperatures are recorded 5' above ground and the actual temperatures at and near ground level can be colder.)

Usually, once the nights are in the 40s-50s and days are in the 60s-70s, the okra stops producing much anyway. This is the latest in the year that I've seen okra produce in a long time, but now that the weather is substantially cooler than it was just a week or two ago, the okra's production was going to drop anyway, even if it escapes freeze or frost damage tonight.

Here's a linked page from TAMU where they list the cold-hardiness of many common veggies. Please note Dr. Parson's comment on the role of prior exposure to cold. Plants that have had gradually cooler weather will have toughened up a bit with that exposure and are better able to tolerate colder weather than plants that haven't had any cold weather and so haven't become hardened. Hardening in the fall is the opposite of hardening off seedlings in the spring---it is the cold tolerance that builds with increasing exposure to cold.

Cold Tolerance of Vegetables

I picked the okra I could reach. There is one big pod we missed. If the plants don't die, how long till it has viable seed? I need to go read an okra thread for that. We'll see what happens.

Whether the plants die or not, it could produce viable seed if the seed already was far along enough in maturing. To collect okra seeds, I wait until the pods turn brown and dry. Then, if you watch them daily, you'll see the pods starting to split open. That's usually when I cut the pods off, take them in to dry, and scrape out the seed. Sometimes I just cut off a pod that might or might not have seed in it that would be mature enough to save, and I drop it on the ground. With any luck at all, volunteer okra plants will pop up in the garden the following spring.

Did y'all get cold enough to have freeze or frost damage? We only dropped to 42, but we weren't expected to have either a freeze or frost. Still, it was an ugly, foggy chilly morning. Now it is sunny and bright and perfectly lovely.

My thermometer read a low of 43 last night, but is near the house, so may not be as acurate. None of my plants look damaged. kind of wish I had left more tomatoes. Oh, well.

Help.... my garlic is growing!!!

I didn't get it planted till the first of October...and now, it's been so warm, it's growing!! It's up 8-10". I've covered it three times with straw, didn't know what else to do. This is only my second year for garlic, and last years batch grew just like it was supposed to! Is it going to be okay... will I have garlic in January!! :( Has anyone else had this happen? Since I'm a garlic newbie I'm 'scared'!! I'm in Enid, and I don't see any freezing weather predicted. Help!! :{

Relax. The garlic should be fine. Even if it were to freeze, the part that would freeze would be the green shoots that are above ground. The cloves and roots underground most likely would be fine, and new green shoots would sprout whenever the temperatures were in the right range for them to do so.

Next year, if you want to avoid having the garlic sprout and grow too well in abnormally warm autumn weather (should we have weather next autumn like what we've had this autumn), just wait until after the first frost to plant the cloves in the ground. Because both the ground and air temperatures will be cooler by then, the garlic won't be sprouted and growing so vigorously and you won't have to worry about the first bit of cold weather freezing it back. I purposefully plant garlic late in hot autumns so that it isn't up and growing too much too soon, but it isn't necessary to do that. I've never had garlic be frozen/killed simply by cold weather, although if you grow garlic in poorly drained soil and you have a very wet and cikd winter, it can rot in the poorly drained soil.

Garlic is relatively tough. Oklahoma is USDA growing zones 6 and 7 and there are varieties of garlic that can grow even in the much colder zones 4 and 5. Throughout the winter, you may see garlic remain green, or you may see it freeze back and turn brown. Nothing to worry about. It will resprout and regrow. Garlic is tougher than most people think. I have a ring of garlic planted around a fig tree in the back garden. That garlic has been there for 5 years and I've never harvested it. I just leave it alone and let it multiply. This specific garlic's purpose is to keep voles from eating the fig tree's roots. The garlic has been through droughts, floods, heat, cold etc. and hasn't missed a beat. It just keeps on keeping on with no care and no attention and no protection from whatever weather gets thrown at it.

Dawn

We took a much needed weekend getaway. It's much colder in Beavers Bend than Norman. Brrr! Glad for a hot tub to soak in.

Yee ha! Thanks for all the great info about the garlic, Dawn. I had it in my 'brain' (?) that I had to get it planted between mid-September and mid-October... I never even thought about the soil temp! Duh! Just goes to show... you're never too old to learn new tricks!! :) Thanks again. I'll pay attention next year! :)

Hazel, Y'all have the worst luck. The weather in SE OK has been nice until this week. The cold temperatures over there arrived at the wrong time!

redcoffee307, You're welcome. The OSU-recommended dates are in mid-Sept thru mid-Oct, I believe, but that is based on average temperatures. When we have above-average temperatures, I just wait and wait and wait and then plant it after we finally cool down. You don't have to wait for cooler weather, but it does eliminate having to worry about the garlic growing too much and getting too big before cold weather arrives. Honestly, as long as I get garlic in the ground by early January, the yields seem just fine---about the same as when we cool off early and I plant it early or on time. Garlic is pretty resilient.

Dawn

It warmed up nicely today. Just in time for me to get a stomach bug. Ugh. really?

need to get my garliccplanted soon. Decided to do containers, although a few are coming up in various areas. Thought I harvested it all. Much of it was bad. Think some of the areas got too wet. That's some advice: don't plant in areas that get and especially stay too wet.

Sorry to hear about the stomach bug.

I usually only grow onions and garlic in raised beds in the front garden because that normally keeps them from suffering from too much damage even in a wet year. Well, the garlic planted in a ring around the fig tree is in the sandy soil in the back garden, and it even survives in very wet years, not that we have many exceptionally wet years down here. That sandy soil drains too well for most of the things I like to grow, but is great for garlic.

Of course, 2015 was an exception as even the onions and garlic in raised beds stayed too wet thanks to our record-setting 78+" of rainfall (two years of rainfall in one, including 24" in May 2015 alone). Normally, though, in typical Oklahoma weather, the garlic and onions in raised beds do very well. The soil in the raised beds has been amended every year since 1999 though, so it bears no relation to the red clay we started out with in the beginning.

I haven't grown garlic in pots very often, and when I have, it was just as a companion plant along with something else, probably because I had too many cloves to plant and had run out of space in the raised bed. I tend to forget to water all the containers as often as I should but the garlic did well in them despite that.

I haven't been in any hurry to plant garlic yet this year as we remain ridiculously warm.....headed for forecast high temperatures of 78 on next Tues and Wed. I think I'll plant mine right after Thanksgiving. Maybe it will be cool enough by then.

With La Nina being officially declared now, and with it tending to bring us warmer than average and drier than average weather, I'm getting kind of excited about winter time. Why? Because a warm and dry winter usually allows for earlier Spring planting. I'm toying with the idea of having Dixondale ship me my onions and leeks 3 or 4 weeks earlier than usual since it seems like the weather will be good for the early planting of those alliums. They're a little pickier about planting time than garlic is.

Expecting first frost Friday night. I am digging sweet potatoes and planting garlic in their spots. A friend insists I can leave sweet potatoes until a hard freeze

: 0 I am not trying that experiment. Also I will pick all my tomatoes, peppers and put up my plastic around my fall garden area. Any body else expecting freeze this week?

We are too. The last time I checked, they were saying 38 for Friday night and 36 for Saturday night. We usually get at least patchy frost at 38, and our low-lying microclimate tends to fall 3-4 degrees colder than forecast fairly often, so we might be in danger of freezing Saturday night. It's all good. It's time.

I've been staying busy preserving the stuff I'm harvesting now, and it is getting harder and harder to stay focused on the garden when I need to be focusing on other things also, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm about half-way ready for the garden to freeze and set me free from food preservation chores. Of course, the morning after it freezes, I'll bemoan the fact that the warm-season plants are all done and that it's over. Then, I'll move on and start working on my 2017 Grow Lists while my memory is fresh and I remember what did well or what underperformed in 2016.

That's funny I am just getting started on my food preservation since I was so busy with market I threw everything in the freezer.

There's nothing wrong with that. I do that sort of freezing for later a lot at peak tomato harvest, which for me is usually June-July and peak fruit harvest, which is about the same time frame. I often have a freeze full of stuff in fall that I do go back and can eventually, or I use it for cooking. This year I kept up on the fresh preserving fairly well though. And, so course, some things like cucumbers need to be canned immediately so I always do them first even if it means freezing fruit and tomatoes for later.

I did a huge amount of food preservation pretty much daily in June and July, mostly canning but also quite a bit of freezing and fermentation. When I stopped watering the garden and walked away from it in August or whenever it was, I didn't know if it would produce anything else. We were so hot and so dry, and at that point it doesn't matter how much it rained in May or June because that rain is long ago all used up And, I wasn't sure how the kitchen remodel would go and if I'd have a usable kitchen in time to do any fall food preservation either. Thankfully, the kitchen is almost done now, so I can use it for food preservation.

Surprisingly, the garden is still a huge jungle and has produced a lot since the weather cooled down some earlier in the fall and rain began falling again. The plants don't look great as it still is too dry and they remain wilted most of the time, but they are productive which is what matters. And it is weedy, but snakes hide in weeds, so once I lose control of the weeds, I cannot do major weeding to get rid of them until after we freeze. Of course, it still hasn't rained enough, and it has stayed hot too long but the heat has been good for the garden in the sense that it remains in production.

I harvested a ton of stuff about 2 weeks ago and have been preserving like crazy. I've also continued to harvest occasionally since then. The latest things I've made are pepper vinegar and a currently fermenting pepper mash that eventually will be made into hot sauce. I need to harvest again before the weekend frost/freeze, as there's still a lot of peppers I left in there to continue to grow and size up. When I walked through the garden earlier this morning, I made a list of things to harvest: watermelons, winter squash, birdhouse gourds, about 10 kinds of peppers, fennel, dill, lima beans and southern peas. There's green tomatoes that I may harvest on Friday, or I may just cover them up overnight. There's Laura Bush petunias that are newly sprouted volunteers about 4 weeks ago and about to bloom. Those usually can handle temperatures down to at least 20 degrees, so I'll work around them when cleaning up.

I'd like to start cleaning out beds, but every bed has blooming plants in it and the garden still is full of butterflies and bees. So, I'll be patient and wait for it all to freeze. I really don't want to deny the bees and butterflies any of the flowers that remain even if it messes up my own timetable for garden cleanup.

No matter what we do, I never have enough room to store everything when harvested, so it piles up in bowls and buckets all over the walk-in pantry, laundry room, kitchen and breakfast room. We have been working on fixing that. We put in a tall cabinet type pantry with pull-out drawers in the kitchen for normal pantry type food storage so I now can use the walk-in pantry only for produce and for home-preserved foods. I think that will help a lot. We need to reconfigure the interior of the walk-in pantry,move some shelves around, etc. (we moved the door to that pantry from the kitchen to the breakfast room), improve the lighting in it, etc. but that won't be hard or take long. Tim still has been working 6 days a week so we haven't worked on much of anything lately that requires power tools and his expertise.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be having to harvest produce and hang on to it for a couple of days before going to market. You're going to need a food storage facility bigger than your camper, Kim!

Hazel, Are you good about watering indoor plants? If so, almost anything would work in a hanging planter. If you aren't really good about watering, then you could put something like a succulent in the hanging planter. Succulents like to stay on the dry side and don't need a lot of water. Just be sure you hang it in a place that has enough natural light.

Dawn

I love hoyas for hanging plants. In the wild they grow in the debris that collects in the crotch of a tree, so they don't need much dirt or water and low light is okay. I had one for like 25 years, it even bloomed, which you don't often see. It got mealy bugs from a pepper plant a couple of years ago, so I disposed of it, pot and all. But first I took a cutting, so I still have a small one.

Or, if you want something holiday related, I saw small Thanksgiving or Christmas cacti at both Aldi and Wal-Mart this weekend, some in bud and others already blooming. They are low-water users and would be easy to have indoors. Sam's Club also had very big ones this past weekend. most already in bloom, so I guess the ones they have right now are more Thanksgiving cacti than Christmas cacti. Wal-,art also had various succulents indoors in the garden center and Sam's had anthuriums.

The Wal-Mart near us also has had bags of bulbs for weeks now---Dutch hyacinths, daffodils, various iris, paperwhite narcissus, etc. There's lots you can grow indoors in winter.

I do remember macrame' plant hangers (had one in high school with a jade plant in it) and the tables as well....and the macrame' chairs. I like them, but our house is more farmhouse looking than boho so I don't have any of them.

I'm going to have to go down to the garden and bring up some containerized plants to put in the mudroom this afternoon. There is a huge ladybug invasion there and they are going to need some plants to keep them busy until they hide and hibernate, which won't be any time soon because we are supposed to hit 80 degrees on Wed. I'm surprised they are coming indoors this far in advance of Friday's arrival of the real cold since the temperatures are currently very pleasant. When I walk in from the outdoors, the swarm of lady bugs hanging out by the back door come in with me....flying in, riding in on my hair, on my clothing, etc. Somehow they know the long, warm autumn weather is ending. I try to find all the ones that hitched a ride indoors with me and remove them before I leave the mudroom to come indoors. I'm thinking I can put about a dozen potted plants in there on a shelf in the corner if I space things right.

We usually have lady bugs hibernating in the sunroom, mudroom, garage and greenhouse, but so far the only ones I've really noticed are the ones in the mudroom. I guess these are the early birds. I think I first noticed a few on Saturday, but now there's swarms and swarms of them.