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

It seems they have changed the forecast during the day. Last time I looked, it said a low of 41 tonight and 31 tomorrow night. Now it shows 39 tonight and 29 tomorrow night.

Hi River, You know, I cannot make that decision for you, but if it were me, I am inclined to say that--based on the forecast for Helena (assuming you still live there)--I'd go ahead and pick everything....and here's why. The NWS is forecasting 34 degrees for the Helena area tonight. If the sky is clear (temps often drop lower than forecast on clear nights and frost forms more easily) and there is no wind (wind can protect plants from frost), then anyone can have frost at 38 degrees, which has happened a lot at my house in recent years. So, knowing frost can form at temps as high as 38 and knowing they are saying 34, I wouldn't take that chance. Also, if you look at the blue area on the county map (bottom of page) on the NWS page linked below, you'll see they are forecasting very cold weather (RECORD LOW TEMPS) for NW OK tonight/tomorrow morning just a couple of counties west of you, and often that forecast will change during the day to include other nearby counties if they see things changing. Having a Freeze Watch that close to you, and a Freeze Warning just west of it is pretty serious for early October. So, I guess my answer is that I'd pick the peppers and tomatoes unless I was absolutely, positively sure I could cover them up well enough to protect them from a freeze and a frost. If you want to leave them alone (and, believe me, I have done this plenty of times....played the odds that I could successfully protect them by covering them), then consider doing the following. As soon as you get home from work and can get out to the garden, fill up buckets or jugs or whatever you have (I usually use 5-gallon buckets or cat litter buckets) with the warmest water you can manage. Set the buckets of warm water as close to your plants as possible and cover all of it with the visqueen. Keep in mind, though, that any part of the plant that touches the visqueen is going to freeze, although most of the plant may survive. So, if you have peppers or tomatoes on the upper or outer edges of the plants, pick those before you put the visqueen over them. You also can use a string of Christmas lights to provide a little heat under the visqueen. I generally pick all my peppers and tomatoes when our forecast says it will go below 40 degrees because in my low-lying area, we almost always go colder than they say....once we went 18 degrees colder....they said 50 and we went to 32 and I lost everything.....so I actually am 'pushing it' when I leave plants in at 40 or higher. Most years, we get a good month of "Indian Summer" after that first cold night, but it only helps us if we can get our plants through that first cold night and I am really concerned about tonight's cold temps. To see the term "Record Cold" on a NWS forecast for this early in October is a very bad sign and I think all we gardeners need to be concerned about tonight's cold. Are you going to dig up any pepper plants and overwinter them inside? If so, this evening is the time to dig! My uncle pulls up his pepper plants and hangs them upside down in an insulated barn and picks good peppers for weeks after. I've done the same with tomatoes and some peppers, using my tornado shelter instead of our barn. You're one zone colder than me though, and two zones colder than my uncle, so even an insulated barn or garage might not stay warm enough at night for the pepper plants. Check out your county's forecast on the link below, and keep an eye on the warning for the counties west of you to see if it gets extended to y'all sometime today. Good luck....I hope you'll let us know what you decide and if it worked. By the way, it is colder here right now at our house near Marietta than they said it would be...and that is making me nervous about my uncovered plants. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Enchanced Page

Shelley, The official temperatures are measured at 5' above the ground, so the temperature at whatever height your tomatoes are growing could be different from the temperature that was officially recorded. It sounds like you and your plants got lucky. Sometimes at 32 degrees, you don't get frost settling on the plants if the wind is blowing at a certain level all night. Sometimes I've had plants with no damage at 30 or 31 degrees and I've had them totally frozen at 32 degrees. There are lots of variables involved including how long you stay at or below freezing, the dewpoint, the RH, the wind speed, etc. How long your temperature stays at or below freezing also matters. A few minutes at 32 degrees might not harm a plant, especially if no frost forms, but a couple of hours might. If your temperature drops to 28 degrees, that is considered a hard freeze and generally tomato plants are very severely damaged or dead from a hard freeze. With a light freeze or a light frost, you might have plant damage but not plant death. If your ground was fairly warm, then maybe between it and the fence, there was enough absorbed heat to radiate back at the plants and keep them warm enough to avoid damage. Having sloping property, there have been times when the plants at the lower portion of the garden either froze or had some frost damage while the plants at the higher elevation in the garden had no damage. I've also seen hit and miss freeze and frost damage where some tomato plants are dead, some are damaged and some are pretty much untouched. I always plant a couple of rows of tomato plants at the highest part of the sloping garden plot so that I know at least some of the tomato plants have a good chance of surviving. Carol, Man, that was too cold. I thought it felt really chilly when I stepped outdoors and it was 44 degrees. Of course, a couple of mornings ago, when I stepped outside first thing around sunrise it was 63 degrees, so naturally 44 would feel cold by comparison.u,. I was surprised when I woke up early this morning and saw they had added a lot more counties to the Freeze Warning and Frost Advisory categories. I'd be mad if I went to sleep expecting the plants to be fine in the morning, and woke up and found them frosted or frozen. Sometimes it happens though, as the weather doesn't always behave as expected. I hope this was the last cold night of the spring. We don't want the Easter Bunny freezing his little cotton tail while he's out hiding the Easter eggs. Dawn