It's no where near those temps down in southern ok, but it feels cold. Bet this will slow the progress of the veg garden down.

I have too much to cover. Will try to protect my 1st batch of broccoli, as they are big and beautiful plants and several have pretty good sized heads. The rest will do okay in the veggie garden as it is all early spring plants anyway.

I set out 8 Romas this past week. They are in a kind of protected area on the south side of the greenhouse - hope they do okay. I didn't plant the Brandywine tomatoes. Put them in gallon-sized containers a few minutes ago and put them in a sheltered area to set out at a later time.

My Brugmansia plants are just beginning to recover from the last cold snap. They will be the most likely to take the hit if anything does and all the Irises in bloom and/or budded. Darn it!

I live on a south-facing ridge in NW Lincoln county, so am hoping that will make the difference.

We all do what we can do and the rest is up to providence.
Que sera, sera!

~ sweetannie4u

Rebel One,

The last time I looked, Channel 12 has us going to 45, but weather underground has us going to 41. Since frost can form at 38, I'm a bit nervous, but there is no way I can cover up everything, so I'll just have to hope for the best. My potatoes and tomatoes have finally regrown enough to overcome the damage from two weeks ago.....and here we go again. (sigh)

I have noticed that my little green tomatoes aren't growing very quickly and, of course, I blame the cooler weather, especially the persistent cool nights. Last year I had the first ripe tomato on April 25th, but NOT this year. Maybe by May 25th.

Annie,

I hope your plants come through this cold spell OK. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the last one of the spring.

Dawn

Had a blast this weekend with my wife's family in from across the country. I grilled teriyaki chicken and steaks for 18 people and was quite the hero. Thankfully they have all gone home so the big head syndrome was quickly remedied and life went back to normal.

Went out at 4:30 this morning and it was 34 degrees with no wind at all. Figured it would bottom out at 29-30 at daylight.

Went back out at 5:00 and a very light southwest wind had kicked up and the temp had jumped up to 37. Won't be a freeze here, just a very hard frost.

I left 5-6 big plants on the back porch group together under a tripod with 2 sheets thrown over them and a small heater there to keep them cozy.

Everything else pot wise went to the garage. Stuck five 3' x 8' benches back to back on top of 2" x 12' and 12 blocks to get them off the floor. Old backs don't need to be bending over too much. :-) Have another bench in there that I work on that was also covered with a few thousand seedlings in communal pots. Took me 3 hours to do the dirty deed. Will be quicker going back out.

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I hope I'm the only one that had to deal with the cold. I didn't do anything this year garden wise because of the ice storm cleanup still going on, so the hard frost isn't going to hurt me much at all.

randy

Randy,

Sounds like y'all had a terrific weekend with the family. How does it feel to be "King of the Grill"?

I hate the weather this year. It is 33 degrees at our mesonet station as of 5:30 a.m. and is 37.4 degrees on our front porch. (sigh) Clear, no clouds, no wind here near the river, although some higher elevations have winds out of the SW at 3 to 5 m.p.h. There is a very heavy frost on everything...car windshields, grass, tomato plants, petunias, hollyhocks, roses, etc. I know it probably isn't frosty enough to kill many plants, but I am so tired of walking out the door and having that "Oh, no, it's frosty" panic.

I only covered up 2 plants last night.....the Black Cherry tomatoes. I did move all the flats of plants back into the garage.....only 12 to 15 flats.....nothing like what you had to do. I still have plennty of back-up tomatoes....I guess 4 or 5 flats, including some 30 primary plants (and their backups) that I hadn't even planted yet because I was waiting for this cold spell to pass. I have tons of sweet, hot and ornamental pepper plants and do not even know when I will feel it is safe enough to finally plant them.

I haven't planted any other warm season crops yet because....well, because it is just that kind of spring here in the Red River Valley.....and I guess MAYBE I'll plant my beans and corn this week unless the 10-day forecast has any surprises in it.

I set up a sprinkler last night, and turned it on when I went outside at 5:15 a.m. but I don't know if it will help. I don't know how early we had a frost....I'm guessing probably as early as 3 or 4 a.m. (but I didn't wake up then like I usually do on a frosty night....should have set an alarm to wake me up earlier).

I moved all the container plantings up under the barn's covered patio, including the 10 tomato plants that all have fruit....some of which is close to ripening.

I guess by 9 or 10 a.m. I'll know how much damage the plants sustained. It got much colder two weeks ago (29 degrees) and I only lost a handful of plants, and those that were damaged have all regrown.

Between the recurring late freezes and the higher-than-usual winds, my fruit trees have been aborting more and more fruit daily, so I'm guessing I won't be having to deal with a huge fruit harvest this year like I had last year.

I'm ready for summer weather here, 'cause spring isn't so wonderful this year!

Dawn

Dawn,

It was nice getting that rare pat on the back for doing something you should know how to do. :-)

I also did salmon. Our dogs love salmon and there was some scraps left over from the grandkids plates that will keep them happy for a day or two.

I'm surprised you got colder than we did here. Seems I'm always the one with coldest temps here on the forum.

It has been a strange spring. But the word strange has been attached to each season now for a couple years. Hope your garden recovers.

Our fruit trees in the yard dropped all their fruit with that last freeze. The ones in the pasture are loaded. They are up slope from us so I guess that's why.

I waited this spring the longest I ever had to move stuff out of the greenhouse and still had to do the plant shuffle.

Guess boredom would kill us if things were always average and like they should be.

randy

There is always one good thing for us procrastinators, our plants didn't get to cold. :)

I only have 12 tomato plants, and none are in the ground yet. I know, HIGH time, but it is going to be kinda cool again towards next weekend.

Got to be cool, cause I am going camping. Sorry folks.

Moni

Randy,

Yum! Grilled salmon. We haven't had that since last summer. The dogs will be the happiest dogs in the county for a couple of days.

The cold surprised me too. I thought you'd be colder than us as usual. However, I have noticed this year that our low-lying microclimate has gotten significantly colder than the upslope areas.....more so than usual. It was showing 32 degrees at our mesonet station (Burneyville, somewhat west/northwest of us and at a slightly lower elevation) a few minutes ago, but only 36 on the front porch, so I am GRATEFUL it wasn't worse. On the mesonet map I looked at when we were 32 degrees, one Panhandle station was showing 29 and a couple of other southern Oklahoma counties were showing 32 or 33, so I blame it on our lower elevation.

My plants seem OK, so maybe turning on the sprinkler helped. I do know that all the birds in southern Oklahoma are in the garden playing/bathing in the sprinkler. (I usually use soaker hoses and drip irrigation, so the sprinkler is a rare treat.)

This morning I'll carry out the flats of plants one last time (I hope) and move all the container plantings of tomatoes and ornamentals out from the patio and back into their places in the sun. Then I am going to start planting warm season plants, probably tomorrow since my garden is now soaking wet from the sprinkler used for frost damage control.

I noticed that you didn't move your greenhouse plants outside until late this year....and it worried me. I thought to myself "What does Randy know that I don't know?" So, I have been watching the weather oh-so-carefully. Last night I set up the sprinkler because I expected the frost, although I think we got a little more than we expected. I didn't try to cover up all the tomato plants because they are too tall for the 5-gallon buckets, so there wasn't much I could do.

I'm not convinced we won't have a light frost sometime the first couple of weeks of May. It just seems to be that sort of weather pattern this year. (I hope I am wrong about that too.)

Gardening in Oklahoma is many things....and never boring!

Dawn

I got up at 3:30 am to make a hunting run for armadillo - they are digging everywhere. There was already frost on the pickup and starting on the grass. It was 36 degrees.

This morning at 5:30 am it was 33 degrees and frost was covering the grass. I covered up all the tomatoes yesterday and put straw on the greenbeans. The potatoes look alright but I sprayed them with some water for good measure. Looks like it just frosted the edges of them. I'm sure there is some damage to other plants but it was too cold for me to wander around too long. I bet we lost fruit in this one...

I'm with you Dawn, I'm hating the weather this spring. I feel like I'm on "hold" and can't plant or enjoy the garden yet. :(

Lynn

Everything fine here in OKC - no freezing temps, altho the wind chill was 31. The temps are going up fast, too. I went out and warmed up the car to take GD to school this morning, and by the time I got back it was MUCH warmer. YEA!

Randy, what do you mean cooking salmon for the dogs? Susan LOVES salmon!

Susan

Just in case you haven't seen it on the news, salmon will be going sky high price-wise. It seems the annual migration yielded virtually no salmon this year because of the problems they are having in the north with warming seas.

Susan

Susan,

I love my dogs a lot, but I don't buy salmon to grill just for them. :-)

Parents always put too much on kids plates and kids always get more than they can eat. So my dogs were blessed with an abundance of salmon scraps. At five something a pound it's awful expensive dog food. My fault for not fixing enough chicken.

randy

I got up a little after 5 Am. and found it to be 36 here this AM in Southern Ok.. but I found no frost at all.

So far at 11:13 AM all looks well. even my zinnia's seedlings are ok..

Still recovering from surgery that I had on Friday. So I am not up to playing in the gardens yet.

Despite the heavy frost, no damage on the veggies or flowers here and I am relieved.

The hummers were at the feeders in full force even before sunrise so I guess they were trying to eat enough to stay warm.

Kirts--I hope the surgery went well and that you recover quickly.

Dawn

Hi Dawn
I'm beginning to wonder if I'll EVER get these tomato plants of mine in the ground. Today (Monday) they were definatly going in but now I see we are in for low temps again tonight. Forecast for us is 36F,feels like 34F.
The plot they are going into has the floating row cover in place so I popped them under it for a few hours to harden them off but now they are back in the house with the lamp on again. They looked a little droopy when I brought them in. I'm shooting for Tuesday...............

Mick

Mick,

I think we all will remember this as the year that winter kept sticking its freezing cold, frosty, wet little nose into spring. LOL

You would think that down here in southern OK, the tomatoes would be all right by the end of April, but last night's low of 32 in Marietta (and Davis hit 31!) blows that theory out of the water. Some years I plant my tomatoes in early March, protect them through a couple of "late" freezes in late March, and harvest early tomatoes in late April to mid-May. This is NOT one of those years.

Our forecast for last night was 41 degrees, and we went to 32 officially, 36 at our house, and a moderately heavy frost. Tonight's forecast: 41. (sigh) I don't know what to do. Cover the plants? Not cover them and just not worry about it? Not cover them and toss and turn and worry all night? Not cover them, not worry about it and then, tomorrow morning, wish that I HAD covered them? What is the world is the right choice? At this point, who knows?

All I know is that I have 80 plants in the ground, some are in bloom, some have fruit, some in containers have fruit that is about to ripen, and we're still having frost at night. I want to trade in this spring for one with better weather.

If it frosts again tonight, I think I may cry.

Dawn

Don't feel bad - I still haven't got my tomatoes in the ground. I get easily distracted with the myriad of clean up work, planting other things, watering, checking for caterpillars, grooming, trimming back old wood, etc. But, I have good intentions!!!!!!! Oh, well, if I don't get any tomatoes, perhaps I'll get hornworms! YEAH!

Susan

Darn weather. I have been in Texas since Saturday. We expected some low temps before I left so the seedlings came inside, the next size potted in 6x6 pots went in the shed with protection, about 24 pots came in the house (mostly peppers). Of course that left the garden and about a dozen tomato plants in pots outside. I felt pretty good until I looked at the weather warning Sunday and saw we were getting frost Sunday night and maybe Monday night as well. I couldn't do much from Texas.

When we got to southern Oklahoma today and learned that they had frost in Lone Grove this morning I just knew my plants were gone. We decided to go ahead and drive home a day early and thought we could be here before midnight. We would have been, however, we got hit by a semi in Pryor. We were driving through town and this truck just pulled into our lane slamming its front wheel into the side of our truck. It just cut little curly-cues from the front of the back door, all the way down the door, onto the back quarter panel then hit the tire before the driver pulled it back. Then she didn't stop so we were chasing her down the road and I am motioning for her to stop and she just kept driving for over a mile. We were calling the troopers because we thought they would have to stop her. Finally she pulled over and claimed she didn't know she hit us.......then why did she pull over...finally?

The officer was looking for the part of the truck that hit us and she told him to go look at the front lugs. Of course all of the lug covers had been knocked off the wheel ---- but she didn't know she hit us. HA

We are both OK but I know a 2008 Avalanche that is a little worse for the wear tonight.

We got home and walked by the potted tomatoes and they were all OK so I guess we didn't get frost last night. Then I turned on my computer and read that frost could occur here between 1 AM and 9 AM. So at 1 AM I was running around outside (with a miners head lamp on my head) turning flower pots over plants. I got the potted ones covered and 7 of the 17 tomatoes that were in the garden covered with a thin plastic pot. It is 2:30 AM and I am just going to bed. If they freeze, they freeze. I am tired and frustrated.

Wow

I'm glad to hear you two are OK, even if the car isn't :-(

Mick

Well thank goodness you all weren't hurt; but frustrated is an understatement I'm sure.

Oddly enough we haven't been getting the frosts/freezes in my area. Just around 40 but enough wind to keep things okay. I still haven't put much in the ground, but would have tried to cover if I had just in case. I plan on going ahead and at least planting some tomatoes either today or tomorrow. I won't plant all I have, but at least the hybrids; it won't break my heart as bad if something did happen to them -- my heirlooms on the other hand would make me cry. Hopefully this is it for the cold and wet so gardening can finally begin, because I'm out of patience.

Jill

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'.

Yipee - No frost for me this weekend. I hope we can stop worrying about that now. I am spending the morning taking plants outside that I had "sheltered" before we went to Texas. Some look a little light deprived but we have bright sunshine today so maybe they will bounce back quickly. All of my tomatoes that were outside look fine. The broccoli seems to be liking the cold just fine and my sugar snap peas are beginning to bloom. Although the few peppers that I had out are not frozen their production will probably be limited because of the cold temps they have suffered. I think I will leave them there and just plant others as well. I think I have 18 peppers that are in pots that weren't exposed to the cold and a few small ones I haven't potted up yet. Actually I feel very lucky to have no damage. I live so close to the lake that I think the large body of water helps with the temps.

My husband doesn't feel so lucky today since he has to go deal with all of the results of our accident last night, but we didn't get hurt, so that is a blessing also. He was so keyed up that he couldn't sleep last night so maybe he can catch a nap today. I read my post from last night and saw that I typed my husband's truck as a 2008 and it is really a 2007. I slept and its a good thing because I have lots of plants to move. LOL

Susan,

I am easily distracted like you.....so much to do, and only so much time and only me to do most of it. (DH mows and weed-eats when his work schedule allows). I think you'll get summer tomatoes as long as you get your plants in the ground by mid-May (especially if the cool nights hang on).

Carol,

I am just so grateful that the two of you are all right. What a horrible ending to your trip.

You and I have something "special" in common now....since DH and I were hit by a semi in Ardmore earlier this year. Our truck had damage similar to yours, all down the one side. Our truck driver stopped, though. AND, his insurance company paid up promptly. (We had several witnesses who stopped and gave statements to the officers who worked the accident, so that helped, I think.)

I'm glad your plants are OK too. It must be a terrible feeling to be away from home and unable to get back in time to beat the "bad weather".

Jill,

Have fun planting!!!!! Yippee!!!!

Ilene,

I know it defies logic that some of you in northern Oklahoma fared better, frost-wise, than some of us in southern Oklahoma. Remember, though, that cool air sinks into valleys and low-lying areas, so these lower-lying areas can have freezes and frosts when no other areas do.

In our case, we are on a fairly narrow "finger" of Oklahoma that sticks down into Texas, and we are in the Red River Valley. We are so close to the river that we have the Red River to our west (about 1/2 mile), to our south (about 8 miles) and to our east (about 3 miles) so we are WAY DOWN in a low-lying area and we get hit by frosts and freezes a lot more often than people only a couple of miles north of us who are at a higher elevation.

I've planted tomatoes several ways--in trenches and in standard holes and in very deep (8" to 12" deep) holes, and it doesn't seem to have any effect when it comes to cold weather survival. Tomato plants are highly variable when it comes to surviving cold weather and no one know exactly why. Sometimes, you can have several plants of the exact same variety planted side-by-side, same size, same planting method, and some will freeze and others won't. I guess it is one of the mysteries of nature.

I do think that tomatoes that are planted deeply vertically do much better in hot, dry weather (but you obviously have to water more deeply to reach those roots). I also think that tomato plants that are trenched form better roots and survive the heat better, but only if the trench is at least 2" below the soil surface.

Mick,

When are you gonna plant those tomatoes? Maybe I should ask "When is Mother Nature finally going to let you plant?"

Scott,

Where are you??????? I am waiting for you to make your declaration that the last frost of the year has occurred so I can stop worrying.

And, if case y'all were wondering, yesterday's 32 degrees WAS a record for Marietta for that date.

Dawn