Plants are very ineffective at taking up water when it's very cold. Watering before a freeze period is important and sometimes essential for some container plants depending on how long the freeze may be. It also helps create a moist/humid environment (especially under covers) which is better for most plants than the dry air that tends to come with a cold snap. The two combine to create a turgid plant that can better survive the cold snap and provide a less extreme environment to do it in. It's all about keeping the plant on a slow/steady path to warm-cold-warm-etc. more than it is about making sure the plant isn't cold. During this time if high winds are a concern you really need to keep an eye on anything tender or in containers. The uptake of water is slowed during the cold period to the point where some plants can dry out pretty quickly. BTW, if you see frost on your plants...leave it alone. It may damage your plant, but removing it (especially with water) will do more damage to most plants because of the sudden temperature change. That one is just a general guideline, though.

Ditto what pixie said--thanks for posting this. I picked up some perennials at the nursery this week that might have been nipped if there was a frost. Thanks to this post they're all inside the garage and should be fine for the night. It has been brutally cold with strong winds all day but it would be just my luck the wind would die down and we'd get a frost. Fingers crossed my winter sown seedlings are okay. I moved as many sprouted jugs under the covered area of my breezeway as would fit so wish me luck. My hellebores are blooming too, and for the first time, but I'm putting my faith in them being impervious to frost. Whatever perennials are up by now shouldn't be susceptible to frost...I hope. Our last frost date is mid-May so other than my hydrangeas the rest are on their own from here on.

It just figures, doesn't it! Today our forecast high was 33 and we went up to 39 degrees at our house, even though our Mesonet station was closer to 33. Our temps have been all over the place lately....much higher than forecast, much lower than forecast, etc. It's like our temperature is going out of its way to be as far off from the forecast as possible. I have been so sure that our thermometers are malfunctioning that we've added more and now have 5 or 6 or 7 thermometers around the property. All of them reached 39 degrees today in the shade. Even the one in the garage was 39, but all the garage doors were open, so I wouldn't have expected it to be warmer than 39. I'm not complaining because 39 degrees sure felt nicer than 33 would have, but I don't understand why our temps suddenly can't even get close to the forecast. So, tonight we're scheduled to go down to about 12. It will be interesting to see if we hit that forecast, go higher or go lower. Because our dewpoint is very low, I bet we go lower. At least we had sunshine here today. Everything started melting off, although there's still a lot of ice and snow on the east side of buildings and large trees. The east side of the barn and house have icicles about a foot long. I think in another day or two all the frozen stuff will be gone, but that will leave nothing but mud. Have I mentioned today that I hate winter? I know I said it yesterday and the day before.

We didn't have a freeze warning or a frost advisory or anything here in Love County but I never trust the forecast lows here in April. I brought in all the seedlings and had nothing in the ground that could freeze. At the last minute when it was nearly dark, Tim and I covered up the lettuce with a frost blanket because our temperatures were dropping more quickly than I thought they should. I know from experience that a forecast low of 34 here often means we'll actually see 30, 28, 26 or 24. Or worse. Our Forecast Low: 34 Our Actual Low: 26 At almost 4 a.m., the Fort Worth office of the NWS issued a Frost Advisory for the counties across the river from us. I hope the gardeners in those counties covered up their tender plants last night. I was prepared. Our local CBS TV meteorologist said on the evening news that he thought many parts of our area could go below the forecast low and even down into the 20s and that there would be some "patchy frost". By then, I'd already brought everything inside, but his words helped convince me to cover up the lettuce. I know it can take very cold weather, but it has had such hot weather (upper 80s and 90s) that I wasn't sure how much cold it would tolerate. I expect that my baby peaches and plums froze and will start dropping from the trees. With the strawberries and blackberries that are blooming, I think it is iffy. I've had frost and temps this low hurt them some years and not other years, so there's a 50-50 chance they'll be OK. I've linked the Minimum Temperature Recorded map that shows the lowest temp recorded at the OK Mesonet stations. It looks to me like most of the state went at least as cold as forecast or, like our place, colder than forecast. The weather this year is yo-yoing so wildly. It is hard on all our plants, even the cool-season ones, to have highs in the 80s one day and then have the lows plunge to the 20s. We'll probably be back in the 80s in a day or two. Can our weather get any more bizarre? Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Today's Minimum Air Temperatures (Mesonet)