Thanks so much for the great responses. I only wish I could get leaves easily--we are in a rural farming area and not many people bag leaves around here. I never see any, actually. One of the local master gardeners goes to her daughter's neighborhood two counties closer to the city and collects leaf bags there every fall. I could rake some leaves but what is the best way to chop them up? I don't have a push mower but my son does have a ride-on mower. Won't they blow all over if he runs over them for me? I have planted cover crops in the past but the only thing that I know of (i'm sure there's more I just have little experience) that I can plant this late is winter rye, which was really hard to till under last spring! Any other ideas? Re: harvesting through winter--I usually do have a little lettuce, spinach and kale that overwinter. I don't harvest them because they are just tiny until the early spring when they explode. In my area I think I would need to protect to get any real crop during winter months. Every fall I promise myself I am going to figure out how to make PVC hoops and cover a bed or two for winter greens but autumn gets so busy and I don't do it. Does anyone have a good link that shows easy and inexpensive ways to make hoophouses or cold frames? thanks so much!

Leave it up to Kentucky meteorologists to exaggerate calling last night and tonight a 'cold snap'. We had been in the 70s with lows in the 40s and suddenly the 'becoming annual' artic air rushes down in early spring and tries to devastate. The radio news this morning said farmer's should be very concerned. I think you are right.. it's a little 'cry wolf' with the exaggeration we get about our weather, but it's still disconcerting. The reason I went through the extremes in protection is that 2 years ago my Japanese maples were in the same condition (full leafed-out) and we got hit with a similar cold. Unfortunately I lost that Bloodgood. Out of the 4 varieties of Japanese maples the Sango Kaku worry me the most because they are fully leafed-out already. I have an extra warm micro-climate in my back yard due to the topography and light-colored house reflecting sun back south. Here's what my Sango Kaku's looked like 2 days ago: From 1 He's snug as a bug now. We just need to get through tonight. We're exactly 7 days earlier than last year's 'cold snap'.

Hi Steffie! Your experience with bermuda grass reminds me why I HATE bermuda grass. :) My brother put down black plastic (plain old black plastic like trash bags are made of, not the fabric mulch type) on a newly tilled flower bed and planted perennials right through it. When he removed that plastic FIVE YEARS LATER, there were still those long bermuda runners everywhere. I never try to make a new lasagna bed without removing the sod first, having learned the hard way. I found it interesting that your grandmother raised her crops in stages. I do the same thing, and have never met anyone here who does it in the precise, regimented way that I do. I'll use tomatoes as an example since they are the crop I grow the most of. I start my earliest seedlings, about 70% of my main season tomato crop, on Super Bowl weekend. Then, six weeks later I start the other 30%. I plant out in cycles, beginning in mid to late March most years, and get the late ones from the second planting into the ground by late April. Then, in mid to late-May I start seeds for fall tomatoes, or take and root cuttings in mid-June. I get the fall tomatoes in the ground in late June to early July. In late August I start seeds for a few winter tomatoes in containers, generally small-sized ones like Window Box Roma, Red Robin, Yellow Canary, etc. These tomatoes in pots can go into the garage or house during cold spells and extend the fresh tomato season quite a bit. I do similar succession plantings of most veggies, including beans (every three weeks), corn (every 5 weeks), melons (generally an early planting in mid-April and a late planting in late May), summer and winter squash, peppers, okra and black-eyed peas. I do the same thing with flowers. Take sunflowers. I plant different ones for each season. So, my spring sunflowers which will begin blooming in May most years, are some of the ones lightest in color like Italian White and Moonshadow and any of the ones with the lemon-yellow petals. The summer-blooming ones, which usually begin blooming in July, are the really golden-colored ones, of which there are many varieties. The late-summer to fall blooming ones are those in tawny fall-type colors like Autumn Beauty, Earthwalker, and any of the red-flowered ones like Chianti or Prado Red. So, I always have flats of replacement plants started and it is easy to put them in the ground and plug them into holes in my garden at any time. It can get rather complicated to keep track of what needs to go where and at what time, but by staggering plantings, I have found I can have a wonderful garden each and every week of the summer. Right now, I am starting flower seeds in small paper cups. These plants will go into the ground in mid-May. The first week in May, I start flower seeds that will go into the ground in June for blooms beginning in July. And so it goes, on and on and on. With all the stages of planting, I always have something new coming along and that pleases me. Dawn

The trick to protecting plants from cold is not just to cover them, but cover them *including* something that holds a lot of heat. For example, cover them, and the ground under them. The ground holds a lot of heat, and will slowly release that heat during the time when the air is coldest, into the air trapped inside. If you have a tall potted plant, include the pot in the wrap. Same thing. Seal the edges. Don't invite the cold air to get in. If the edges of the tarp are on the ground, throw some 2x4s on the edges to hold them down. What is funny (and sad) is where I see people wrapping a *plant*. Just the plant. Like a tree in a pot with a tarp just around the tree. That's a sure way to kill the plant. What you've wrapped up has no source of stored heat, and the temperature inside will pretty quickly drop to the air temperature outside. A blanket around a person is warm because a person makes heat. A plant does not. Obviously, in doing this, insulation helps. For a really hard freeze, layer multiple tarps. I throw a sleeping bag over plastic tarps. For the worst freezes, and a few square yards of bed, put a 100W light bulb inside on the ground under the tarp, on an extension cord. I've kept some peppers alive this winter, and we've seen multiple hard freezes, with temps going down to the low 20s. Well, it looks like my three year old bananas bit the dust, but my TAMU Jalapenos will survive.