This thread has been replaced by a more recent spread about the Frost Advisory and Freeze Watch for Monday Night/Tuesday morning.

Dorothy, That's one reason I don't try really hard with off-season container tomatoes or with tomatoes grown indoors--the decline in the flavor is awful, and after October has ended, they grow and ripen at a snail's pace. Some years I've kept them alive by dragging them into the garage on cold nights, and leaving them in there on cold days. They do flower and set fruit, but the tomatoes that set in November-January took twice as long as usual to ripen and their flavor still was lacking and their size was as much as 1/4 the usual size. I think that if I used a heater to keep the greenhouse at daytime and nighttime temperatures like we typically have in May or early June, the winter tomatoes would taste better and maybe grow faster and size up better, but it isn't worth what it would cost to keep the greenhouse that warm. When I was removing row covers this morning, I noticed that some of the row covers a very thick and heavy layer of frost on them and others had a lighter patchier frost. Regardless, everything that was covered survived unscathed, except for three leaves on the Seminole squash. They were blackened and withered. They had been covered, but I suspect there was a rip in the row cover over them and the frost came in through that tear in the cover. As for the plants I left uncovered, most of them were fine overall but the upper foliage was damaged while the lower foliage and, in the case of the peppers, the fruit beneath the upper foliage, were not damaged. The plant that looks the worst? The big pecan tree. Its upper foliage is definitely frost-bitten or frozen. Everything underneath the upper foliage is fine. The four o'clocks were fine, but most of them get some protection from surrounding trees. All the container plants that we dragged into the garage on Friday are fine, and definitely were happy to be back outside in natural light this morning instead of indoors under fluorescent lighting. The last time I looked, they had raised our forecast low for tonight to 50 so I feel a little bit better about that than the 46 degrees forecast earlier. However, for those of you who are new to the forum and haven't heard me say this 500 times in the last 5 years, in one spring we had a forecast high of 50 and I didn't cover up my plants (it was early May) and the temperature dropped to 32 and almost everything froze back to the ground. So, even at 50 I feel a little nervous about the temperatures, and likely always will, but not nervous enough that I'll cover up everything again tonight. It is sunny, clear and perfectly gorgeous outside right now with a current temperature of 62 degrees. I hope the rest of this month is like today, but not like last night. Larry, I only found lady bugs and green lacewings on the plants underneath the floating row covers as I uncovered them this morning, but I had grasshoppers sitting on top of the row covers. I assume they were trying to find a way to get to the plants or they were just sunning themselves and waiting for me to uncover the plants. I went to the garden shed and got my spray bottle of Take-Down spray and hit each grasshopper with several squirts from that bottle. I doubt those hoppers are still alive or will give me any more trouble. Dawn

We have a butterfly conservatory just outside of the city, and it's fascinating to go. It's like a large rainforest, and there are dishes of fruit placed everywhere for them to eat. I knew that most of them only lived for a few days, but I sure didn't know that some of them don't have mouths!! That is a cruel punishment.

Woodyoak, forgot to answer your question. I don’t remember ever having to think about covering my plants in the 6 years I’ve been gardening, so maybe this is my first late frost that I’m experiencing. Or maybe we did in the years before but plants may still have been dormant, I feel like many perennials are popping up earlier than usual this year. Interestingly though, when frosts occur in fall(sometimes under 25) none of my plants were damaged.. not sure if there is a difference in fall and spring frosts on how they affect plants. My rock garden perennials shrug off teen temps in the fall, but maybe because it is right against my foundation that’s southern facing. I bought 20 something buckets from work, yes it won’t hurt. But turns out I have way more plants popping up than I thought so definitely don’t have enough buckets for all. So, I am going to leave some bare and see what happens. Will update