I have some hot peppers sprouting now....
But they're for someone else, who can't wait and insists they're going to grow them inside ;)

Incidently, I heard a robin yesterday. Been hearing them all winter. So I guess all that really tells me is that the ground is soft and they can still forage.

George

George,

I can't believe you have plants growing already. Now I'm really behind and I'd better hurry up and get with it. : )

Some years we have large flocks of robins all winter, but I haven't noticed them so much this year. Maybe they haven't bothered coming this far south since the weather is still fairly nice up there in NE OK. If that's the case, I'll be expecting a sudden influx of robins any day now as the cold front pushes down.

We have had tons of other birds though...including lots of cardinals, the ever-present redwing blackbirds, cowbirds and crows, and smaller birds like sparrows, chickadees and tufted titmice.

There seem to be more hungry hawks than usual, and they're bold enough that they've been sitting in the pecan tree....and the chicken coop with its fenced/roofed chicken run sits under that tree. I think they'd sit right on top of the chicken coop if they could get away with it.

I put out food for the birds when it gets cold, and the colder it gets, the more birds we have. The bird population has matched the weather this year....light visitation at the bird feeders on most days, and then a lot more visitors after a very cold night. Last year it was so chilly and snowy that we had tons and tons of birds every day, but this year there's not nearly as many.

I probably need to buy a big bag of wild bird seed mix before the arctic cold front gets here.

Dawn

I was searching yesterday to try to find a thread where someone said they started peppers in Dec. I wanted to find where they were located and how they kept their plants healthy. I was thinking it was on this forum, but I had no luck finding the thread.

I have not started a lot of seeds inside. The earliest date I have started was Jan. 25. I felt that was too early but I had a small homemade greenhouse attached to the home and the plants were started inside and moved to the greenhouse when they were quite large. ( nearly all were tomato plants).

Larry

No need to twist my arm any further. I'll confess I wanted to sow kohl crops on New Years Day. Lucky for me I'm not ready yet, and by default stopped myself. I hope next week Arctic air will keep me inside long enough to do all the rearraning I need to do in order to get the light setup moved to the basement. It's so fast to talk about it, and so slow to actually do it.

From The Seventh Street Cottage blog:

10 Seed-Starting Tips...

Keith

Tom (known as token) is an architect by training and certainly seems to have an eye for beauty as well as using practical building skills. When I first started reading his remarks on-line, he was building small models of huge buildings and developments and they were great. He decided to pursue another career and became the live plant manager at Lowes. He grows a lot of different things and has taken a yard that was a blank space and made it beautiful. I have encouraged him to write a book, or at least create a CD with all of the gardening aids he has come up with.

I won't be starting any seeds until mid Feb. For me it's still bird watching time. This year I've had several robins coming to the waterer out front--well, five or six at a time. It's unusual for us. I usually don't see robins until Feb and then they are working the lawn in large flocks. Also saw a bluebird at the waterer this morn. At the suet feeder have redbellied woodpeckers, downies and yellow-bellied sapsuckers. No Hairy or Redheaded this year. The purple finchs showed up a month ago at the feeder for about a week and then they disappeared. Have several cardinals, titmice, blackcaps, juncos, nuthatches at the seed feeder.

It is frustrating isn't it Dawn, to hear what you know is confusing or misleading information. No wonder people get discouraged and give up.

Dorothy,

I agree. I was listening to the brief description of "how to start your seeds now" and wincing. I hope anyone who saw that and who is intent on starting their seeds now will do all their research first.

A similar problem is when new gardeners (or folks who are new to vegetable gardening but not new to gardening in general) see plants in six-packs in garden centers or nurseries and assume that if the plants are in the store now, then now must be the time to plant them in the ground. That can be faulty logic. Last year I saw corn seedlings (corn!) in sixpacks in late February or early March which is much too early. Then, later on in the spring, the same store had Sugar Snap Pea seedlings in late May or early June, which is much too late. I pity the inexperienced gardeners who purchased them only to be disappointed by a poor plant performance.

Even when I buy my very early tomato plants in February to plant in containers, it seems like I always get a cashier who brightly observes "Oh, so it's time to plant those tomatoes now!" to which I carefully reply "No. Only if you have a greenhouse or if you're going to grow them in containers that you carry inside at night." Then, they look at me like I'm crazy for buying them. (sigh) I try really hard not to roll my eyes in the garden centers in spring, but sometimes it is hard. Hard, hard, hard.

As for everyone else here who now feels like they have to "go ahead" to plant seeds too early, remember that I said in the first line of the OP that you are not to blame me and it is not my fault... if you all go off half-cocked and start seedlings too early. I hope I didn't create any Frankensteins here by "encouraging" any of you to plant early. That was not my intent.

I haven't started any seeds yet and don't intend to. I know how hard it is to maintain rapidly-enlarging plants indoors when the cold temperatures are hanging on and hanging on. After all, last year I had to cover up my sugar snap peas to protect them when the temperature plunged and snow fell on the first day of spring when the plants were already 6-8" tall. With weather like ours, doing anything "on time" is inherently risky, and pushing the limits and doing things early is even more so. Even when you follow all "the rules", the weather still can wreak havoc.

Start early at your own risk. : )

Let the fun and games begin.
Dawn

Dawn, I will see if any of my neighbors have a cross between a Water Buffalo and a Musk Ox they will loan me next week to work my garden. I dont think anything else will survive the conditions I have.

Larry

Dawn, how do you know Bonham Tx?

My wife has family there.

Hey Boomer, Where ya been? I only "know" Bonham in 2 simple ways: (1) we drive through it sometimes when en route to visit family way down in far southeastern Texas; and (2) our local CBS affiliate, KXII-TV Channel 12, which is mostly based in Sherman, TX, but also has a smaller studio in Ardmore, OK, covers a huge are that includes the Bonham, Paris, Sherman, Denison, Gainesville and Muenster, TX area (and all smaller points in between) and, on our side of the river, Durant, Madill, Ada, Ardmore, Marietta, Ringling, OK, etc. Even with that large geographic area to cover, we still do not necessarily have a lot of local news, but they manage to mention the more newsworthy items like high school sports scores and crime stories.

Dawn

Larry,

I forgot to ask this question: do you need a Water Buffalo/Musk Ox (we could cross them and create you a hybrid called a Water Ox) because the ground is muddy and swampy or because it is frozen? Our ground is wet, thanks to last week's rain, but not frozen. Today's our last good day (and the busy firefighters don't think it is all that good either) and then the slow descent into the arctic blast begins.

I'll spend the next week inside avoiding the cold weather and drooling over the luscious photos in seed catalogs and working on my warm season grow list. It is going to be too cold to do anything outside once the cold weather arrives, and we're not going to be all that cold here compared to most of the areas north of us.
Every day I tell myself, "I am not going to start seeds today" but that doesn't mean I don't want to start them.

Dawn

Larry, you supply the Musk Ox and you're there. Our best friends down there live near Monroe and have water buffalo. :-D

Diane

Here is a link that might be useful: Water Buffalo

Diane, Cute picture of Duke. My DH walked around to my monitor to look at Duke's picture. First thing he said was, "Wow, he looks like Diane", then after I read the caption, he said, "Too much mother blood". I could get in the middle of a fight here. LOL

Carol, he looks the spitting image of one of my brothers when he was that age (and every other age before it). I need to borrow some childhood pics from my mom one of these days and post them side by side so Duke will believe me.

Too much mother blood? There's inbred and then there's INBRED. LOL

Diane

Diane, Anytime he tries to do something hap-hazardly our boys make him stop and do it right. Then we hear him mumble under to breath, "Too much mother blood." I can assure you that I have heard that many times. LOL

Diane, ALL those critters are cute, even Duke with the little horn sprout on one side.

Thanks for the link.

Larry

P.S. If all mothers are like mine you cant have too much mother blood.

Dawn, I would like to take a picture of why I need a Water Ox. I tilled a 2 or 3 foot strip along my oldest garden (4 years old). I am trying to gain back the 2 feet I lost by pushing the soil from the outsides of my garden toward the center to raise the soil surface. The strip I tilled was like Quicksand after the rain, now it is cracking. The amended soil is beautiful, I could walk on it after the rain and I can walk on it now. It would make a good before and after picture to show the new members how you can take impossible soil and turn it into a nice garden with only organic matter. My unamended soil will go from soup to sidewalk in 2 to 3 weeks without rain.

The Water Ox would be able to handle rice paddy part of my garden along with the cold weather we will have next week.

Larry

Larry,

Your soil sounds so much like mine that it is spooky. I agree that organic matter works miracles, and the more organic matter, the better.

I am dreading the cold weather. My local forecast keeps getting a little worse every day. Today we were about 15 degrees above average and it was heavenly, but that's over now.

That reminds me....there's new graphics on the NWS page. I think I'll go link the update on a new Arctic Blast thread....as if there is anyone left in this part of the country who doesn't know cold weather is coming our way.

Dawn

I'll echo what Dawn has said, it is NOT time to start seedlings, of any kind that I know of; at least not for my area. I only started these peppers because I was commissioned to. But I'm sure the plants would have been better off started in early March.

Our main garden is setting on a pile of rocks. Some of the garden IS a pile of rocks. In fact, one part is actually an old gray stone driveway packed down and overtaken by Bermuda grass. Drainage is great. A day after most any downpour I can work the soil. Adding lots of organic material to this clay/rock soil is helping to loosen it up.

George

George, I know that if you were starting plants for yourself, you wouldn't be starting them now....just like y'all know me well enough to know I generally don't start seeds until February.

It did take me a few years here to learn the best time to start seeds because at first I started them in late January like I did when we lived in Texas, and that's too early for our area even though we warm up fairly early some years. I'd have tomato and peppers plant that were 18" tall before it was warm enough to get them into the ground. Even in those years when we warm up early, only the days tend to be warm or even hot and the nights still tend to go below freezing. If I plant too early, I pay for it by having to cover up plants on freezing nights for weeks, and that gets old.

Ironically, the county in northeastern Texas where the master gardener who was on TV this week is from is under a Winter Weather Advisory and very well may have some sort of wintery mix including snow, sleet or freezing rain as early as Saturday or Sunday. I hope his little seedlings (they looked like pepper seedlings too) get to come inside from the greenhouse to stay warm....or he might run up a big bill heating a greenhouse in those conditions.

Apparently my garden's problem is that it does not sit on a pile of rocks, and now I'm wishing it did. Maybe I could fix the drainage issue by excavating soil and putting rocks beneath my garden! Really, the problem is that the neighbors property is a lot higher and their runoff drains onto our property, so I can't fix that. Since their property sits so high above ours, even my raised beds can stay too wet because their water runs off/seeps underground for weeks in heavy rainfall years and then wicks up into my raised beds from the grade level soil.

I am glad we're about to get cold. We have had some very, very warm days here scattered throughout December and January and my fruit trees are budding and trying to bloom too early....same story as every other winter here, so I'm hoping a good, cold arctic blast will tell them to 'chill out' and slow down a bit.

Dawn