I am a ws weenie too...lol..it is my second year,but I still have my issues!:P We had snow on the ground the last two days and I did lose some volunteer CA poppies even though they are on a south facing hill,oh well,I am glad I plan to ws those particular ones any way. I am sure I lost other volunteers also,just didnt notice those ones from the window! About a month (or more)ago I lost Lupine sprouts in their containers due to below zero wind temps,I wish I would have covered them,but honestly thought they would make it. Since,I have sown new seeds, and they are on their way to be being plants.:) I covered all of my sprouts the last two days,I figure the extra warmth will keep them growing or sprouting and prevent any possible losses. I only have tough love for my volunteers in my beds ,many of the seeds in my containers are ones that took me awhile to accomplish or are ones I plan to sell at my very first plant sale. So I didnt want to take any chances. I am so glad to hear all your babies are making it,this wacky weather is enough to drive me nuts,I cant imagine how they feel. 70 degrees one day and snow the next and now I heard the FA is saying we are due for another crappy May! Oh why, oh why, is this happening now that I found out about ws'ing? This year I was smarter,I think,and put actual soil in the bottoms of my containers and topped it off with pro mix for the seeds,it is less expensive and I am hoping my plants will do better waiting in the containers. I will do my annual poppies,nasties,cosmos,and others that are tender or like to be planted out quickly, over the next few weeks. Again I am so glad to hear everyone is having a great season already,I have to mention ws plants are hardier in the long run....I started Agastache Apricot Sprite under lights and ws,they all seemed to be making it through the winter just fine,but sometime over the last 2 months,the ones started inside perished and the ws ones are still showing some green! :)

Wow, I figure if you're in SE CT you're in warmer zone than we are (we used to live in Salem/Niantic/Norwich 20yrs ago, didn't garden then). Sounds like we had about the same temps. Been dry here too - hope we get some rain today (well, I don't need it yet, but hope you get some). Hope your beets and turnips had minor damage to the leaves and recover. Lettuce is easy to replant. Our blueberries are budding like crazy, but looked OK (as far as I could tell) yesterday. Some of the stawberries don't look so good, but that's from all winter, not just this week. They're wild/alpine so we'll see how they fare. No flowers on those yet here thank goodness.

Well, I'm shocked. I thought if anyone was going to get frost out of this, it would be me, sitting up here almost in KS. Sunday night I covered all that I could and hosed down the trees. Thankfully on Monday morning the temperature gauge in my back yard said 40 and everything looked fine, even the things I didn't remember to cover. I have planted the last of the tomatoes I started from seed last January and a few of the plants I had set out 'way too early have just started to 'come out of it'. So if I lose these, I will have to start over with seed I have left. One of the Black Krims, that was reduced down to just its main stem -- no leaves -- had started making new leaves. I was so happy to see that since I had sold all the Black Krims I had left. My peach, plum and apple trees are full of baby fruit. I, too, am getting just plain annoyed at this stupid weather! I've got stuff to plant! I did notice one interesting thing, though, that I might pass on. I set my tomato plants out two different ways. One row I just dug the hole as deep as I could get it and popped my newspaper potted plant in, watered and covered. Another row I tried digging a trench, laying the plant down in the trench, watered, and covered all but about the top 6" of the plant with earth. It was this group that didn't make it past that first frost. Was it because the trench was not as deep as the hole that I dug for the ones that went in straight up? Was it because there was less of the main stem exposed afterwards to set more leaves? Or was it simply that they were planted in different raised beds, and the trench-planted tomatoes were planted the day after the standing tomatoes were? I'd be interested to know if anyone has tried the trench method and what they thought of it. I only tried it this year because my plants had gotten so big. Monday night was a little warmer than Sunday night had been so I didn't cover anything. I guess I lucked out on this one. I hope this is the end of the frosts, I don't get any fruit off my trees two years out of three and I've really got my heart set on doing some major canning this summer. Now that I've retired, we're living without the income I brought in, and so we've tightened our belts somewhat. Someone once said people would be surprised to know how little money they actually needed to live on, if they did it the right way. I'm having a little trouble with that, but it's coming along. Since I don't work, I hardly use my little Rendezvous and am thinking of selling it. That will reduce our insurance bill. We try to "batch" our trips in order to cut down on our gasoline consumption. And there are a lot of little ways we are trying to reduce our consumption of utilities. I am really counting on a good yield from my garden this year to help out with the grocery bills, and I'll be having another plant sale in a couple of weeks to help defray the cost of the seeds and garden stuff I bought this spring. Nobody has figured out a way to tax us for NOT spending money -- Uncle Sam and the state taxes us on money we earn, then our city and state taxes us on money we spend. But ol' Mother Nature can sure throw a monkey wrench in the best of plans, both with gardens and utility consumption -- oh, and damage costs when she throws her 'temper tantrums'.

This afternoon while I was out playing in the mud in my garden and covering up all my plants, the NWS issued a Frost Advisory for part of NE OK. If you are in NE OK, you can see it at the Tulsa NWS office's webpage, linked below. Heather, Thanks for the advective/radiational explanation. Radiational cooling always seems to give us either worse frost or at least more plant damage--and in the early years here, I wasn't good at figuring out it would happen. Now, I cover up stuff more often but the end result is less damage. I've discovered the floating row cover is my favorite garden helper. With your new plants, I'd go ahead and cover them up if you have something to cover them up with. It wouldn't hurt the plants and might prevent another setback. I love my wax myrtles but I might have chosen something else if I'd realized how often they'd have cold damage, which is about every other year here in southern OK. It was so cold out there in the garden with light rain falling on me and the wind blowing, no sunshine and I was ankle deep in wet clay that kept trying to suck my Crocs off my feet! It had better frost tonight or I'll be irritated that I spent all that time covering up plants for nothing. (Well, not really irritated because at least I can sleep well knowing the plants are covered.) Jay, They're saying 36 for us, so I do expect some frost. Last night we only went 1 degree colder than forecast so maybe tonight we'll be similarly close to our forecast low. Your place often goes warmer than expected, but mine tends to go lower than expected. At least we both know what to expect. I would like to resume planting by Wed., but we've had 2.7" of rain since the latest round began very early Sunday morning, so now I have water standing everywhere. I'm not complaining because we surely do need the moisture, but it does mean I won't be able to plant anything else for a while. We'll probably be 85 or 90 in 4 or 5 days and then the mosquitoes will start hatching out. One thing about our weather is that it changes so quickly you don't get bored with it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Tulsa Office of the NWS Webpage