Thanks, Lee! I would love cooler than average weather for as long as it wants to stay around, as long as it doesn't eventually interfere in the flavoring up of watermelons in July and August. I planted about 4 times as many cool-season crops as usual because it seemed, back when I was sowing seed indoors, like it was going to be a good year for cool-season plants (only a gut feeling or intution, I had no science backing me up in January when I sowed brassica seeds). The longer the cool-season plants stay cool, they better they'll produce.

As for tomatoes, you know that I am a tomato freak and my plants are in the ground. SunGold produced 2 ripe tomatoes last week and 4 more today. Cherokee Purple and Early Girl are not far behind. I planted on time (well, at my usual time, which is early for anyone further north) and just covered up on the cold nights....and we weren't cold here as often as y'all were up there. Today I'm planting peppers and zinnias, and they'll enjoy the warm days and shiver through any late cold nights we get.

This year's recurring cool nights are reminding me of 2002 and also of 1997. We still lived in Texas in 1997, though, but mesonet data shows that the cooler nights here in Love County were similar to what I had in Texas that year). Neither year seems as rainy as those two analog years yet, but the recurring cool nights feel very similar in the most wonderful sort of way. I might not especially love cool nights in April but I appreciate them a lot more in May or even into June if they last that long.

Good to know! I know the long range forecasts are not all that accurate this early on, but I cant help but notice that ours don't even show hitting much above 80 until the end of June, which is a tiny bit cooler than normal. Normally we seem to hover around 80 and it slowly rises until we see 90's at the end of June in our area.