Ouch. I thought it was chilly here at our low of 54.

My warm-season stuff is really starting to take off now. Well, except the peppers that I had issues with from the beginning.

Diane

brrr! It was 43 on my back deck this morning. I thought I was just too short to read the thermometer correctly. Sure enough, when I got in my car to leave for work, the thermometer read the same 43 degrees. Dang it! It's really helping my sickly broccoli though. Diane - my peppers haven't grown ANY in over 2 weeks, and I lost one of my Mucho Nacho's already....=(

I went ahead and planted most of my warm season crops like okra, squashes and melons last weekend. DD is coming out tonite with grand-daughter so we hope to plant all our bean crops. We have highs in the mid-80's for this week so I'm hoping the ground temps warm up. This is the first year that we've had our garden in before we opened our pool!!! Guess that shows a shifting of priorties!

I've lost peppers this year, too. I'm actually buy store-bought ones now to replace those that have already died plus the remaining from-seed ones that just aren't looking very promising. It's not a good year to be a pepper around here. LOL

Have fun with your granddaughter!

Diane

Dawn you were the winner. Our low was 44 this morning. They are saying mid 30's to upper 30's Friday night. After that is looks promising. Starting this weekend I will start putting some plants in the ground. Those that are ready. I'll have several that look great but on the small side. The peppers that did germinate look great. Diane it hasn't been a great pepper year here either. My troubles were mainly germination issues. My tomatoes was my latest trouble.

Dawn still lots of opinions but nothing I feel certain about yet. The stems, veins and leaves don't indicate 2,4-D damage. One horticulturilist thinks it is an nitrogen overload. I remember an issue several years ago with similar problems after I sprayed with Neptune's Harvest. I haven't used it on small plants since. He says that they cool night temps along with high nitrogen levels would make it worse. And he said plant in the Miracle Grow would tend to be high in nitrogen. He also said most should start recovering and most should recover ok. I guess that will tell me for sure if it is a fertilizer issue. There were a few last night that looked a lot better.

Glad no one got any frost bitten last night. Most of mine are in the frames now. Jay

Diane, Gee, I would have been thrilled with 54! Even with 44! lol

My plants are going nuts....the nights are colder than average and the days are hotter than average, so the plants don't know if they should go crazy and grow like mad or stop growing completely and stall. They may have a nervous breakdown over this.

Have you ever overwintered a pepper plant, even in its dormant state? I tried it this year with one red sweet bell pepper plant in a 2 gallon pot. It spent the entire winter in the garage, which is insulated but not heated. On the nights we went down to about six degrees, it dropped all its leaves but survived. It quickly leafed out again.

On warm days I carried it out onto the concrete patio in full sun, and every single night I carried it back inside. Anyhow, I always heard an overwintered pepper would produce earlier. Is it true? Yes. This crazy plant had about 5 leaves when it bloomed in late January, and although that pepper is small and grew slowly, it is ready to harvest now. In the meantime, the plant has leafed out really well since the temps warmed up and it is about 18" tall and simply covered in blooms. I may try overwintering more next year...digging them up in late fall when the cold shuts down production, plopping them into 1 or 2 gallon pots, and then pruning them back by about half. It is an interesting way to get peppers started producing earlier in the spring.

Paula, I did see where you had mentioned planting all those veggies already, and I was jealous. Our soil temps are great....staying steady at 70-72 or higher, but our night time temps are too low. I'll plant mine whenever the nights stop throwing us curve balls.

Shifting priorities? lol At least once all the veggies are in, you can relax and enjoy the pool time.

Now, don't you and Diane throw things at me, but my peppers are doing just fine. (Ducking to avoid incoming flying objects......)

Jay, It was unbelievable. I opened the side door at 4:45 a.m. to let the dogs out and got hit by the cold air and thought "Oh, crap!" We had heavy fog and a very heavy dew and it made me nervous to think about how close we came to having patchy frost....I hope that was our last night in the 30s!

What's up with all the pepper issues this year? It is just strange.

Dawn

My peppers are doing OK as well. I had a few germination issues with Odessa Market, jalapeno, and red marconi, but all the others did well and are still doing well. The only problem is that I still have some in tiny pots and I am running out of room to plant. The ones already in the garden look good tho, but they are still not very big.

We haven' been that cold but I think Friday, they are saying down to 43°. We have been having 50°down to 48°a couple of mornings. Days have been between 70 and 80°. I have left my tomato plants out in the hay bale cold frame with the peppers. I sure hope those nights have not set them back any. Do you think I should at least bring in the peppers for the 43 night?