Poster could be this zone 8, Spring has been strange. Novicegardener, are you close? I drove 2 hours to, 2 hours back in a blinding rain and hail storm Thursday to take my mother to lunch for her birthday - and got snowed on briefly on my way home. We've had overnight frost showing every morning for a week. Be patient, a more typical warm up is supposed to begin today and continue through next week so maybe this out-of-the-ordinary cold will be gone for the year. I hope so, I'd like for my PUD bill to go down before my water bill goes up :) If you bring pots in to germinate, you'll have to slowly acclimate them to outdoors again, harden them off if they've germinated. And Karen makes a good point, you haven't used sterile methods for your winter sown seeds that would usually be used inside to prevent damp off.

Yes 200 containers was a lot to start (addicting) with but I might top that this year lol I still have some trading left in me to do and then I go outside...."well i might as well try some native flowers there to add some color" or "well there's a space to put something else". I also told myself "no more weeding hills" but here I was weeding the one hill to try and stick some Oxeye daisies and Joe Pye Weed on. Last year was planning to take over the hills/gardens from the weeds and revitalize them with new seedlings and plants. This year it is about filling in, rearranging, making a few veggie raised beds, and..just more flowers. Plus theirs friends and family to give too! Many seedlings are spread throughout the hills and gardens(I can't wait to see the potential of them next year) but I also did lose some of them because I wasn't quite sure of growing conditions or I was hopeful that delphiniums would survive on hills with weeds...but lesson learned in a big way!!! sandyslopes, I have not attempted foxglove because I've been afraid honestly. I read an article once floating on the internet with several accounts from "real" people about allergic reactions and bad experiences. have you experienced anything harmful about the plant while you've worked with it? I love the blooms....especially Alba ~Michael P.S. I would also love to know the name of that yarrow in the pic!!! (?) I also WSed white yarrow which I cant wait to see bloom! It is one of my favorites!

OKLibrarian, I know that you are going to plant your broccoli early so you can try to get a crop before the warm season crops have to replace it in the same bed, but it seems to me like you might be planning on planting it a little too early. I am as far south as you can go in Oklahoma and still actually be in Oklahoma and not in Texas, and I don't even put my broccoli in the ground until the first or second week of March, depending on where the low temperatures are at that point in time. If you plant your broccoli too early, it will not necessarily die....the plant itself can handle cold weather without freezing. However, as Dorothy has already mentioned, broccoli that is exposed to cold temperatures at a certain point in its growth cycle will button, which means it will give you "heads" the size of a quarter, more or less....and sometimes even less than that. The key fact to understand is that broccoli cannot be exposed to temperatures 40 degrees or below for two weeks while the plant is approximatey 4" to 6" tall. If your plants receive that kind of prolonged exposure at that stage of growth, they are forced into dormancy, When the temperatures warm up and they resume active growth, they often produce small heads prematurely and flower prematurely. So, the earliest you can safely plant your broccoli is about 2 weeks before your last freeze date and, even that is not a guaranteed "safe" date--because 50% of the time your last freeze date will occur "after" the average last freeze date. Last year, my last freeze occurred 5 or 6 weeks after my average last freeze date, so you can use average freeze dates as a guide but you have to remember that the weather does what it will do with no regard for "averages" and "calendars". My average last freeze date here in southern OK is in late March, and I feel fairly safe planting broccoli in early (but not earliest!) March to mid-March but, if I were in the Tulsa area, for example, I wouldn't plant broccoli until latest March or early to mid-April. It is your garden and you can plant whenever you want to, but planting too early can cause your crops to give you little to no yield, and it can be discouraging to spend a couple of months growing broccoli and then have almost nothing to show for it. I like to plant early and push the limits, and I do it all the time, but you have to know which plants can tolerate early planting (with protection) and which ones can't. You can plant early successfully with some crops if you protect them from late freezes.....but with other crops, planting early backfires....broccoli is one of those crops, and so are peppers, okra, black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes, cucumbers and melons. In the case of those crops, early planting and exposure to more cold than they can handle greatly reduces yield even though the plants may not show any outward sign of being "bothered" by the cold weather. The local stores here in zone 7B have had broccoli transplants in stock for about 3 weeks now, which means that people with severe gardening fever (and this is most common with newer gardeners who have not yet experienced the frustration of buttoned broccoli) could have purchased and planted broccoli plants in late January, a full 6 to 7 weeks before our average last freeze date. If they had done that (and some probably did), there is no way they will get a good crop from those plants. We've had a lot of temps in the 20s since then, and we've had hail and, as recently as yesterday, sleet. So, just because you "can" plant early doesn't mean that you "should". Just some food for thought. And, on the attached link, you can click on the menu at the left and see all kinds of freeze data. And, sometimes, freeze data doesn't mean much. We have been here in OK ten years now, and we have had a freeze or frost later than our "average last freeze date" in 9 of those 10 years. That sounds wrong, because statistically we ought to have had our last freeze before that average date half the time and after that date half the time, but we live in the real world and the real world does not operate according to statistics, so the freeze has been after that date 90% of the time. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: OCS Average Last Freeze Dates

My best suggestion is to ignore a lot of the hype as you make your plans. Putting money into the high priority it-has-to-last-for-years things is essential, but not particularly glamorous. Don't stint on plumbers, electricians, structural advisors, and financial advisors. Be sure that your carpenters, installers, etc. actually know their stuff. It's so easy to get caught up in the fun parts. Some months ago I was feeling that we needed a little sobering up on the GW and I posted a "don't stint on infrastructure" thread that was apparently a downer for some readers. But I also got some private mail from people who said "thanks thanks thanks." Safety, heat retention, efficiency, financial solvency, reliability, and durability are truly glamorous when compared to folly and catastrophe. Anybody with money in their pocket can gussy up a kitchen, but doing the really useful stuff requires deep thinking and if money is tight, requires recognizing alternative options when they're available. Serendipity sometimes does come into play--Craig's List or reuse centers or closeouts or such--but you can't plan around them. Since "chance favors the prepared mind" you need to know brand names, products, colors, options so that you can recognize a good deal when it appears. Give yourself permission to pay full price for something, though. You can't live on wishes and get this kitchen done. There is a lot of distraction, esp fashion and advertising and peer pressure. You will do well to make lists of things that are Wants and Needs and Don't Needs. On the GW, I believe some of the most useful helps are the discussions of what is good or bad in a floor plan. It's also very helpful to analyze the finished kitchens so that you see what they're trying to illustrate. There are indeed smaller kitchens here--modest, attractive, functional ones. Using your Wants and Needs list, go find examples of them. It's also important to try to fast-forward your family configuration so that the kitchen is designed for all of you as you grow older. Your kids become adults and you become old. This is inevitable so plan ahead. Also plan that as soon as your kitchen is done, fashion and product lines will change so you need to tell yourself that you actually are satisfied and not chase the rainbow. You need to think about the importance of visual things vs functional vs personal and decide who gets to make the initial decisions and who gets to edit or veto. If necessary, create a straw person or two to include in the conversation. In my case, there was a fictitious old lady who would need things that might not be required right now. But don't let things paralyze you--the quest of the perfect gets in the way of the quest for real life solutions. You've all waited long enough--get on with it!