If seeds, they'll be fine. If transplants, it depends on whether they had been properly hardened off. Normally, both spinach and lettuce can handle quite a lot of cold.

The return to winter-type weather is not unexpected since it is still winter. A few sunny days does not make it spring. In some years, our spring is warmer than average and you can plant pretty early and all is well. In other years, it stays colder later and that's the kind of year this one seems to be. All the cool-season crops can take a pretty good amount of cold weather.

You can cover up your spinach and lettuce with something lightweight like a sheet, but it normally would not be necessary.

Dawn

Oh, but Dawn, we have had enough winter now. Yesterday at exactly 2:50 our kids left the school, and my spring break began. I had even worn a short sleeved sweater to school to help bring in spring. It was 48 when I left. What a downer! We cannot see outside, and all day I thought we were going to have pretty weather.

Today is still cold, but I want spring.

Sorry, ezzirah, I didn't mean to hijack your post, but I want spring. I want to plant today, not just make more plans. My spinach awaits me.

Sammy

Sammy,

Hi! I hope your spring break is lovely, and I think the days will be but the nights are still pretty cold. I want spring weather just as much as the next person, but March and April are awfully tricky here, you know.

I have about half my cool-season crops in the ground, and hope to have all of them in the ground within in the next 7-10 days but so much depends on the weather, and especially the cold nights. About every third night we're going down to freezing here, so my tomato seedlings are on the patio or screened-in porch all day and then go back into the garage all night. Frost is in our forecast for tonight.

Some years I have planted tomato plants in the ground in early March, but this is not one of them. I wish it were!

I don't know how wet your ground is there, but mine is so wet here that I can only work in the upper half of my sloping garden. The lower half still has standing water and has had it most of the time since November. I want to do a lot more gardening than I am able to do because of the wet ground and cold nights. If it weren't for the beds raised above grade level, I wouldn't have anything in the ground at all.

I've spent the last 3 days outside in the yard and garden and have accomplished all I can and now have to wait for the soil to dry up more before I can do much of anything else. (sigh)

I hope that when spring weather arrives, it lasts a long, long time and we don't go instantly from winter to summer. At least Easter is early this year. Often, the last really cold weather hits us Easter week, so if that's true this year, we'll be in good shape in just a few short weeks.

Dawn

RATZ! I planted some spinach seeds yesterday and some mesclun green seeds. They are in raised beds so I guess I need to find some white plastic? Maybe? to cover them up..

No, go back to the first words in my original answer where I said "If seeds, they'll be fine." : )

If you had purchased transplants yesterday and planted them, and if they were very tender and very young and had been kept in a warm greenhouse or garden center at night and weren't used to very cold temperatures, that might be worrisome and you'd need to cover up the young plants.

Seeds can handle freezing. Freezing is how seeds are maintained by seed banks.

Even if your seeds have sprouted, the young plants shouldn't freeze since they're very low to the ground right as they sprout.

Unless there is something really ominous in your forecast, don't worry about it. Everything is OK.

Dawn

Zowie! Does this mean I shouldn't plant cold-weather transplants either? I just purchased a lovely flat of strawberries and another of brussels sprouts and was getting ready to put them in the ground this afternoon. Should I keep them unplanted for now?

tadasana,

It all depends on how much cold they've been exposed to previously. If they've been sitting outside or in an unheated garden center or unheated greenhouse, they've likely been exposed to cold temperatures for some time and are hardened off and would shrug off the cold night. But, if they've been raised and kept inside a heated greenhouse or indoor section of a store or garden center, they may not be properly hardened off.

When in doubt, don't plant them out. Or, if you planted them and you're worried about tonight's cold temps, throw a bedsheet or some other cloth over them....but not plastic. Everywhere the plastic touches foliage, it will transfer the cold to the foliage. So, if you have to use plastic to cover them up, use flower pots or something to suspend the plastic slightly above the plants.

I covered up my peas with a Reemay floating row cover tonight because our forecast is for 33 degrees, and down here by the river I figure we might see 25 to 30 degrees because we normally go slightly lower than the forecast low.

I didn't cover up my onions or cabbages--they should be fine.

Dawn

Thanks for the advice, Dawn!

I got both flats from Horn's nursery but the strawberries look so perfect that I suspect they might be newly delivered from a greenhouse. I think I'll give them a few nights in my garage/days in the yard before planting them. Then tons of mulch and some sort of gentle cover as you suggest.

I didn't know that about plastic. That's really great information!

After reading about brussels sprouts in the forums I'm thinking I might return them to the nursery. Sounds like fall is the smarter time to attempt growing those. I tried them last spring and something destroyed them before my first crop so I'd rather give them a better shot in the fall while I read up on pest prevention ;-)

Have a lovely rest of the weekend!

I had a lot of imported cabbageworms on my fall brussels sprouts last year. Bt took care of them mostly, but I also paid my son a quarter for every cabbageworm moth(?) he caught and killed. I hate those things. This year I planted out some brussels sprouts on about the 6th or 7th of this month and by my calculation that brings harvest around the first of June. I don't see that happening. The ones last year were tiny, tiny, tiny and not worth the space I gave them . I thought they would do really well considering the chilly fall we had, but that's probably my sandy soil's fault. It still needs amending quite a bit.
One lettuce I discovered that does well during frost is Brun d'Hiver, a french butterhead type that I had all through the Christmas season. I haven't grown it yet in spring, but I am this year. I think I'll stick mainly with leaf-types in spring and butterhead varieties in fall and winter.

"Sometimes it's easy being big. Sometimes it's easy being small. That's all"
Dale

Tadasana,

You're welcome. I agree with your decisions. The strawberries can only benefit from being allowed to harden off properly before going into the ground and the brussels sprouts are unlikely to produce well here in spring.

Dale,
The bad news is that I've already seen the imported cabbageworm moth out flying this week (on Friday afternoon), so I guess I'll spray my young cabbage plants with Bt this afternoon. I didn't have trouble with them until late May last year.

Leaf lettuces always give us the best crop, but I plant all kinds because some years the others do well too. I suppose it likely is weather-related.

After 11 years of soil amending here, the formerly red clay junk in my veggie beds is (finally!) dark brown and loamy/humusy and full of earthworms. In the narrow band of sandy soil, though, it really looks almost like I've never amended it at all, and it is frustrating. I'm tempted to go dig up some clay and add it to the vein of sand to improve its ability to hold moisture better. All that's preventing me from doing that is that wet clay is so hard to dig and so heavy to haul around in a wheelbarrow.

I only grow brussels sprouts as a fall crop, too, because the spring warms up too fast here. I could grow them in Texas as a spring crop and I think the reason was that they made better early growth there in slightly warmer Jan. and Feb. weather and could be harvested in April before the heat was too bad. Here, when I have tried them in spring, they haven't produced well since it always gets hot about the time they are beginning to produce usable sprouts.

By the way, y'all, it hit 33 degrees here overnight, which was exactly what our local TV met forecast, and is 6 or 7 degrees colder than the NWS forecast for us. At our end of the state, lows in the low 40s and upper 30s are forecast for the rest of the week.

Dawn

From what I'm seeing and feeling I still lean to a more normal spring than we've had in the last few years. We haven't had the real warm spell that we've seen the last few years. Nights have been cool enough to keep the trees from blooming and leafing out. From looking at the long range for the next 15 days fro what it is worth. As it is different this morning than it was last night. I see a few days dropping down into the mid to upper 40's and a few nights from the upper 20's to freezing. One is mid 20's. Still nothing to discourage planting. Radishes ect will be going into the ground soon. Here anything early I plant to protect some way if needed. Whether a row cover, plastic buckets with a top on them or mulch. It seems that many of you especially in central and southern OK are seeing more abnormal weather than we are. So far I'm pleased with what I'm seeing. Onions should be here this week. Will put them in the ground on arrival. And lightly mulch them. Hoping everyone has a great season. Jay

I do hope it stays cool for awhile longer as I just planted my snap pea seeds yesterday, so the longer it stays on the cool side, the better for the peas cuz I actually planted them later than I should have.

Am also going ahead with wintersowing some of the more tender annuals and my tomatoe seeds. They will do fine in cool temps since they will be in their little plastic domes. This has always worked in the past for me, so hope it does this time, too.

Susan

Jay,

Our winter weather has been abnormally cold and wet in Love County, and with very few 'abnormally warm' days, which is great because those very warm days wake up the trees and perennials too early. Jan. and Feb. both were below-average in temperature and above-average in rainfall.

Although March is not half-over yet, it is showing a trend, once again, for cooler than average but perhaps only average in rainfall.

Since the last few years have had too much warmth early on followed by later cold that hurts the young plants, I am enjoying the return to more normal weather. I hope it lasts.

Our long-term forecast, based on El Nino's slow 'death march' back to more normal Sea Surface Temperatures, still indicates a cooler and wetter than average spring, which I feel is preferable to a warmer and dryer spring. Unlike last spring, we are not out fighting mega-wildfires daily and I am actually able to get things done here at our place.

Our 15-day forecast looks exactly average for our county in terms of temperatures.

I hope to get the last of the cool-season crops into the ground this week. They're going in a little late because the ground has been too wet, but maybe going in a tad late will lessen the likelihood of freeze damage. After I am through with the cool-season crops, I will just watch the soil temps and air temps and plant warm season crops by them and not by the calendar. This may be the first year since 2007 that I will get my warm-season crops planted "on time".

Unfortunately, I'm already seeing the imported cabbage worm moths and it seems there's a lot of grub worms in the beds and paths....many more than usual, but we save them as we dig them up and then Maddie and I feed them to the chickens. Lady bugs, butterflies and some moths, bees and wasps are out and about and all the frogs are singing at night now--not just the spring peepers.

The wildflowers have been later this year, probably in response to the cold temps, but more and more are showing up daily. Our winter ducks have left us to head back north.

I'm liking this spring so far despite the still cold nights. Honestly, our weather swings back and forth so wildly that it is hard to define what a normal spring is, but I'm liking what I see of this spring so far.

Dawn