Dawn,

I rolled my big plants into the living room yesterday. Glad I did because it dropped to 29 here this morning at daylight.

I wouldn't be surprised if it hit 24-26 here tomorrow morning.

randy

Randy,

Hubby and I just rolled our big plants into the well-insulated garage about 15 minutes ago. They can survive a few cool nights there as long as the temps only go into the 20s. Eventually they've have to come into the house.

I'm sitting here watching the local news and our local weather guy (whom I actually think is the best one we've ever had here) says we can expect a hard freeze (which I think is at least 4 hours before 28 degrees?) in most of southern OK and RECORD LOW temperatures for the date in some counties. Personally, I am not ready for any record low tempeatures.

Do you have to fire up the greenhouse heater tonight, or is there still enough residual heat in the ground? Our ground temps. are low enough here that I can finally plant pansies, I think, although we're expecting a warm-up after this one cold night.

Just thinking about how cold it will be tomorrow morning makes me want a cup of hot cocoa. When I head out the door tomorrow morning to take the two old house dogs for their morning walk, I guess I'll be wearing a coat, hat and gloves since we usually leave the house around 7:30 a.m.

Dawn

Got the last of my things in the greenhouse and opened the heater vents.

Dawn,

I ran heat in the greenhouse last night. It was 30 at 10:00 pm last night. Sitting at 25 right now. May drop another degree at daylight.

Organicfrmr,

What kind of heat are you using?

randy

Good Morning Y'all!

Well, when it is over, it's over, and my 'warm season' is over here. It got down to 24 degrees here in the Red River Valley and we have an extremely heavy frost. Plants that have skated through a few not-quite-so-heavy frosts with little to no damage undoubtedly did not survive this freeze.

When the sun went down, it was 61 degrees at about 6 p.m., but by 9 p.m., it was 42, so I knew we were going to 'get it'.

I'm headed out in just a minute to walk the dogs and then I'll get to see the damage to the plants as the sun comes up.

Back later,

Dawn

It bottomed out at 24 here. Today will be an odorous day. I can already smell rotting vegetation as I go back and forth from the greenhouse. It will get very strong as the day warms up.

randy

I think we finally got frost at my house too. I'm not sure about a real freeze. The vegetation all looked good this morning, but I may come home to black stuff once the sun warms up.

I did take my air conditioner out of my window last night! I haven't lit my furnaces yet though. I hate lighting them, they are original to the house and they always give me grief...plus I'm kinda cheap...uh, frugal :)

Lisa

We hit 23 F. at the Tahlequah airport. When I checked on things the garden smelled of frosted vegetation. It's over now, except for my parsnips.

George

When I left to walk the dogs, it was barely sunrise and everything was still green but covered in frost. Now, several hours later, everything is black. It was a nice growing season while it lasted.

Dawn

I don't know how cold we got here last night but it took out the ornamental sweet potato vines. The pepper plants are still green, but are droppy. I still have cannas and hostas and that kind of thing.

I threw a blanket over my containers that have salad greens and carrots in them and they look great. We will see how long they can hold up I guess. I have picked from them three times already but it is mostly mustard. The leaves on it were so big they were shading the spinach and lettuce. I think it is going to warm up again. Maybe that will last awhile.

Well, the weather guys said it reached 31 degrees overnight. At my house it looked like maybe a slight frost. Even the cannas are still standing...browner, but still green and still standing.

Lisa

Took a slight frost here too. The only things it took out were my tomatoes. Everything else still looks great. Everything at work made it really well too. I went in expecting the cyclamen to have dropped off since the grower told us it's not the hardy. They were all outside, as they've been for the past 2 1/2-3 months and looked amazing yesterday.I'm thinking the grower is mistaken. I seriously doubt that florist cyclamen would be doing as well outside with the temps we've had the last few months. We've been above 85 and below 60 and these things are thriving. I've been very careful to make sure that customers with questions know that the grower says it's not the hardy, but also let them know how they're behaving. All the ones we put inside (didn't have room for all of the over 2000 they sent us) died.

So, back to my toms, I'm gonna pull the plants and hang them upside down and hopefully give the small toms still on the vine a little extra time, then pull them and make something with them still green.

Kathy

It's all over for me, too, except for the cabbage and romaine. Ah, but it was a good, productive, educational summer! --Ilene

I am surprised my basil is still green, and upright. It drooped a bit yesterday morning, but it came back up.

I guess, the tree nearby, and the house on the side, kept the temp up enough for it to not freeze out yet.

I did take some cuttings and they are in water on the kitchen window sill.

Bought a light fixture for over my big shelf, but still need bulbs. Can't believe I missed the fact that there are no bulbs in the box. Carp.

Oh well, got to go to the hardware store anyway.

Here is the stuff I ended up getting half price at Lowes yesterday.

{{gwi:1134335}}

two little mungo pines
a hosta
a gardeniea
and a sky pencil (which I was charged the full price for, and I took the container back to get half that money back, but still have to plant it)

Moni

I walked through the veggie garden today to see what, if anything, survived the 24 degree temperatures Monday night/Tuesday morning. (Yesterday, I just stood and looked through the fence.)

The basils froze, but the catnip, catmint, lemon balm and parsley look fine. Most of the warm-season flowers froze, but some of the "Laura Bush Pink" petunias (a very drought-tolerant wild petunia native to Texas) survived and are still blooming. The "Laura Bush Purple" petunias did not survive. Malva 'Zebrina' not only survived, but showed absolutely no freeze or frost damage at all on the foliage or flowers.

All the peppers and tomatoes froze with the following exceptions: On the Poinsettia ornamental peppers, the top foot of the plant froze--both foliage and peppers, but the bottom two feet, both foliage and peppers, are fine. Two 'Black Pearl' ornamental pepper plants in pots that were in the garage are fine. Two tomatoes--one is Red Grape and the other is Husky Red--in large containers on the garage patio survived. They were on the concrete slab, right up against the building, but in an area where there is no overhang, so I thought they'd freeze. The foliage shows moderate damage, but the tomatoes look fine.

All the brugmansias in pots survived in the garage and are now back out in the sunshine enjoying the warm, mild weather. They should be fine for a while longer as we're going to be up near 80 degrees for the rest of the week and in the 40s and 50s at night.

One coleus survived in a pot in the garage, and several of the ones in the ground froze back to within 6" of the ground, but the lowest part of the plants survived.

The cannas on the south side of the house have damage on the foliage at the top of the plants, but the blooms are fine and so is the lower foliage. Cannas in more exposed locations frozed to the ground. The same is true of the 4 o'clocks--only the ones on the south side of the house survived the 24 degree night.

Water lilies in the pond show no damage and are, in fact, still blooming. Most years we have water lilies in bloom from late March through late November to late December depending on how many hard freezes occur. The lilies usually bloom until the pond itself freezes, and that usually happens only if we go into the upper teens. (The lilies survive a thin skin of ice on top of the pond, but die if the ice gets an inch or so thick.)

It is scarey to see how quickly most of the grass that was still green has already turned brown, although most people's bermuda grass still has a little green. At the fire association meeting Monday night, the fire chiefs from our county's 14 departments seemed to be in agreement that they are expecting a very bad fall/winter fire season because of our ongoing drought here. That is not good news.

Many of our trees still have most of their leaves, although a lot of the persimmons, winged elms, pecans and cedar elms have lost most of their leaves now.

Considering it went to 24 degrees, our yard and garden actually don't look as bad as I thought they would.

Dawn