David, Fair enough. Yes, Ive seen the dustbowl, and know about "The Year Without a Summer", and I also know that the last time the earth was as warm as projected in 100 years, the forest prairie line was not near OKC down to Dallas, but much further west near Lubbock Texas. It is also thought that the over all winters were milder. Which actually gives me a big of hope so to speak. Though,hard data is lacking during that time. And FTR, I do think the current issues are partly caused by the natural cycles of NA climate. Specifically negative PDO, La Nina during a negative PDO, and unusually warm Atlantic (actually warmer than would be indicated by past climate) Have been saying that from the start. BUT hardly all of it. There was no May snow in Arkansas during the 30's. Nor did the Arctic ice melt as it is now. What's more, many of those records are now being broken. Lastly, those extremes tended to be one sided i.e. drought and heat, not lurching back and forth from one en to the other with basically no transition. I appreciate, you coming back to clarify, but I do disagree that we can't know for sure. inge, Do nothing is exactly what it sounds as though you are saying. It's thought that the Chinese lose more than 10% of their annual crop production due to reduction in sunlight intensity sunlight alone due to pollution, and that was in the 90's. Pollution has gotten far worse since then, so the number is certainly higher now. Where is there not pollution? Where do people not live and travel to and from? Some claim the atmosphere is too big to affect. If that were true why does it only weight on 14.7 pounds are sealevel? That is all the mass of the entire atmosphere above you at the very bottom of that atmosphere. Hardly an insurmountable amount The biological/climate system is only a thin skin around the earth, exactly where we live. To think that 7,000,000,000 people can't have an effect on climate contained in 14.7 pound columns of mass above them is simply ridiculous . Arktrees

I had 2 consecutive nights that the NWS reported to be 29F in Joiet about 20 miles north of me. I didn't have time to retrieve data from my own weather station I was given for Christmas, so I don't know how cold it actually got here in Wilmington. I walked, very carefully, my gardens today. All of my hostas appear to be in good shape EXCEPT: H.plantaginea. I have two 2011 young transplants. A couple of weeks ago I had a freeze when both had unfurled and were frozen back to the ground. In the freeze a couple of nights ago the newest growth was not fully unfurled but show signs of severe stress. So I wlll just have to wait and see. Another near 80F day is forcast in 2 days. My 2011 seedling that I call Theresa's Glory was found today under the soon to wilt foliage of daffodils. I saw only one eye, but it appears really strong so there is good reason to hope for the best. This year I will see if it retains it's Old Glory or Paul's Glory variegation that it showed last year. How many times can an individual hosta take a freeze hit and still recover? I would hate to lose these. Les

Hazel, You're welcome. You know, I thought I did pretty well only buying one of those big tomato plants. I see them every week and haven't bought any more because I have light shelves full of plants that are too big and eager to get into the ground as soon as possible. With the big plant I bought in January, it has been plagued with some foliar disease I've never seen on any of my plants before. I suspect the plant probably already was infected with the disease in January when I bought it, and it just wasn't visible yet. I think the disease probably will kill the plant within the next month because its growth has slowed and it just doesn't look happy any more no matter what I do. I'm just not sure what it is, as I've slowly ruled out one thing or another. If I keep working on it, maybe I'll come across some obscure disease that is the only thing I haven't ruled out, and maybe then I'll know what it is. . I should have tried harder to figure out what it is, but mostly I've just been trying to keep it from spreading to all the rest of the tomato plants growing under lights in the same roon. Regardless, we'll be harvesting the first two fruit from that plant around Wednesday or Thursday, and then there's 5 or 6 more fruit remaining on the plant. I don't know if those last 5 or 6 fruit will mature. It just seems like lately the plant is frozen in time....no new growth, no new fruit setting, and with the majority of the green fruit not seeming to be enlarging. I don't know if the plant is too busy trying to fight the disease or too busy trying to ripen the first two fruit or what. It is puzzling. So, the plant is both a success and a failure. We'll be eating the first ripe fruit by mid-March, which is astonishing, though I can hardly take any credit for it. The plant was already a pretty good size and in bloom when I bought it, so all I've tried to do is water it, feed it a little, get it as much sunlight as possible and keep it alive by plucking off all the diseased leaves as they appear. I sprayed it twice with a fungicide in case the disease is fungal, once with sulfur and then the second time with Daconil and I'm not sure it made any difference whatsoever. I think that if I buy an early plant next year I'll keep it separate from my own home-grown seedlings so that if it is diseased, it won't be able to infect anything else. See there, even after all these years of gardening, a plant still can surprise me by showing up with a disease I haven't seen before and don't seem able to combat. Robert, I worry about that possible late freeze too. The later it comes, the worse it is because once the whole garden is planted, there's really no easy way to cover up all the rows. I suppose if that situation presents itself, I'll cover up whatever I can and just not worry about the rest. This is such a bizarre weather year. I have no desire to plant too many plants too early and then to have to struggle to cover them up very often, so I'm trying really hard to bide my time and behave myself. I don't mind if I have to cover up plants once or twice after they're in the garden and growing well, but I don't want to have to cover them up once or twice a week for a prolonged period either. Being patient and waiting for the weather to stabilize is so very hard. Nancy, We certainly do gamble a lot here when it is planting time (more or less) and the weather is swinging wildly from one extreme to another with temperatures in the 20s to the 90s and then back to the 30s and then back to the 50s. We could use a little more consistency and stability for sure. We have a joke around our house that says "you don't have to be crazy to garden here, but it helps". That sort of sums up spring planting season. Dawn

Hi all, Checking in after the weekend. Wanted to give you a quick link to the FAQ for those who may have missed it. https://bit.ly/2S2Gxm8 Important to note that not all accounts have been sent an email, but there is certainly no harm in updating your password regardless. It's a good practice to change passwords regularly and to use different passwords for different sites. For a small number of people (as at least one person noted above) their password was reset proactively because our system was able to detect that it was a weaker password. It is a good idea to check in your account settings and make sure your email is still current. If at some point you do want to reset your password, you will need to have access to the email that is registered to the account to do that. (Also, unless you are registered as a pro, there is no phone number associated with your account, so there couldn't be any connection between this incident and spam phone calls.) Emily