Jeff, Y'all have had too much shakin' and quakin' going on there in 2009 and 2010. I can see Jones making lemons from lemonade....they could come up with a new slogan like "Jones, Oklahoma.....We really rock!" Melissia, Just stay tuned. I'll post when I start planting. Diane, Your situation is one of the reasons I post weather extremes when they are in the forecast. And, by the way, if I know a really severe T-storm or tornado is headed your way, I will e-mail you in addition to posting. I worry about y'all when I see red on the radar heading towards you. Hopefully any warning I could send you would reach you ahead of the storm and before the satellites shut down. Jay, Our forecast has changed twice today already and I haven't looked at it since I started this thread, so I'm almost afraid to go look and see what it says now. Undoubtedly it has changed. I think originally we were expecting rain and snow (only rain this far south) on Friday, but then they moved it to Thursday as Paula noted above. For our area, El Nino usually means extra rain and I'm about sick of rain. We haven't has a lot in 'inches' this month, but the ground is so saturated from the fall rains and the earlier snowfall that it just never dries up. Paula, KFOR's forecast matches what the NWS was saying this morning, although I do think that pretty much all the media outlets hype the weather to some extent and scare people into expecting something worse than what is really expected. I "think" the increased bird activity occurred because the weather was so nice, but then I also think I'm seeing a lot of 'new' birds coming in from the south and west. I do start seeing additional robins in late January of most years and they may be more or less migrating through. Some of the robins stay all winter, but then all of a sudden, it seems like we have 4 times as many as we had before. I hope the Purple Martins are still hanging out down along the Texas coast. We wouldn't want them flying too far north too early. If anyone wants to look at their long-term forecast, you can go to the websites for Accuweather for a 15-day forecast or to the website for the Weather Underground (Wunderground.com) for similar info. I look at both of them, our local TV station's website and the NWS websites and then try to make sense of what all 4 sources are saying....and, often, they are not in total agreement so then you don't know who to believe. Dawn

Bon, I hope you get lots of nice, wet snow that will put more moisture into the soil. That dry powdery snow fails to provide much moisture when it melts down. I haven't heard anyone say if this is expected to be heavy wet snow or dry powedery snow, perhaps because in our county we will barely get anything at all, and it is likely to melt as soon as it hits the ground unless our air temps go lower than currently forecast (35 degrees on the night the snow is forecasted to fall here). Every drop of moisture is good and certainly still needed. Paula, Is that the worst timing in the world or what? I guess this is not your lucky week. Oh well, maybe y'all can get everything processed at least and make room to put up more goodies when the harvest of 2013 begins. Maybe later in the week y'all still will be able to get everything planted. I am planning on being outside, even if it is muddy, planting whatever I can beginning about Wed. For us the rain and snow should end Tuesday night, and maybe the ground won't be dry enough until Thursday or Friday, but I'm still planning for Wednesday and hoping the weather cooperates. Child labor! That's how I learned to do yard and garden work, and we kids had so much fun doing it that I don't think we even thought of it as work. Well, at least not until we hit those teenage years and decided we had more important things to do. I don't have anything new in the ground yet, though we still have winter greens and cole crops in the ground from fall, and lettuce and perennial onions in the cattle trough feeder also from fall.. I do have 5 early purchased tomato plants in pots and all of them either have fruit, flowers or both. Last year I put those early tomatoes in a non-movable container on Feb 23rd, but you'll notice I haven't done it this year. I have a greenhouse full of cool-season stuff I'm very eager to get into the ground, but have been holding off on transplanting them or on planting onions and taters or sowing seed in the ground until after this week's winter storm blows through the state. Down here I feel like the issue isn't like to be snow, but there's a chance of severe weather and with last week's severe weather we had pea-sized hail.....not that pea-sized hail would hurt anything but larger hail could. I'm more worried about tomorrow's winds here that could gust up to the mid- to low-40s during the day and the night. We need for rain or snow or something to be falling when the wind is blowing that hard, or we could have trouble controlling any fires that start in winds that high. After last year's early warm-up that allowed us to plant earlier than usual, this year's winter is less enjoyable. I know we don't usually have an early warm-up two years in a row (wouldn't it be nice!), but these recurring snow storms are a trend that Oklahoma gardeners cannot ignore this year. I have a gut feeling that there may be another round of snow sometime after this week. It just seems like the fronts bringing the snow storms keeping rolling across the country week after week. I'm still going to start planting later this week, but I'll be keeping an eye on the cold nights and the chances of freezing precipitation. I am so ready for spring! Dawn

Sherm- I live near Portland and started planting out in early April, but under TunLCovers, which are 18' long, 18" tall double-walled plastic with wire ribs that push into the soil. I have been using them for more than 6 years, still have my first ones, and have used them to get the tomatoes through frosts and snow. I also put them out a few weeks early to dry the soil before planting, so it doesn't matter that it rains frequently. I posted a photo on the thread below which Photobucket failed to rotate, of my first transplants. I had to replace 3 of them. I plan to put my peppers and eggplants that will be in pots outside this week. I harden plants off on my concrete east-facing porch and so I've had tomato plants out there hardening off since early April, though I tried to cover them when temps get into the low 30's. Here is a link that might be useful: photo

Kim, Sophie has my sympathy. Our dogs hate it too when the neighbors are shooting. I usually let them stay in, but sometimes they just have to go out at least for a couple of minutes, and then they are at the back door barking and carrying on and wanting back in within 60 seconds. I'm glad Sophie did so well getting her pins out. Nice score on all the seeds! You CAN teach a class. Just pretend you are talking to Ryder or to any of us instead of a larger crowd. You can do this! Sorry about the wind. I wish it would blow hard here---it would help dry up some of this excess moisture, but I know you don't need it there. March is coming and you live in a very windy part of Texas, so I'm guessing the wind is going to be an issue for quite a while yet. Is there any sort of windbreak anywhere near your new garden plot? Nancy, That sounds like a wedding miracle to me! Of course you cried---seeing one of your kids so happy on their special day is going to lead to tears, and rightfully so. Kim, Most of the seeds you got should do just fine with direct sowing. I am a little worried about the wind, but we have wind here too (usually not quite on the scale you have it there) and it doesn't seem to blow away my seeds. Everything you listed except ice plant and delphinium should be fine from seed sown directly in the ground. Ice plant---it might do okay. Do you have clay there? It needs well-drained sand or sandy loam and it does not tolerate staying overly wet for long periods of time. Delphinium is very iffy. They are beautiful flowers but they like prolonged, cool weather so your luck with them in any given year will depend more on the weather than anything else. Think of them as something that would like the weather in the cool, wet parts of the Pacific Northwest more than the west Texas plains, and don't get your hopes up too high. I simply grow the closely-related larkspur instead, and even the larkspur sometimes rots off at the ground when we are too wet for too long, but it tolerates the heat a lot better than delphiniums do. I have had the best luck with delphiniums when sowing them in the fall. They will germinate and remain as small plants down close to the ground all winter, but then when it warms up they'll grow pretty quickly. Sometimes I have managed to get blooms before the heat kills them, and sometimes not. Our Spring weather is so variable that the results were all over the place when I tried to grow them here. Whenever I see them in bloom in gallon pots in the stores in the Spring, I want to buy them and bring them home and plant them....but I don't.....because they'd basically be expensive annuals here in our hot climate. Jennifer, Three sounds like a nice number. Another 100 might be a bit much, you know, and that's doubly true of the straight runs, which tend to lean very heavily towards being roosters and not pullets. It sounds like yesterday was fun, and I hope you're outdoors enjoying your free afternoon now. Nancy, Well, 10 minutes of plant shopping squeezed in at the end of a day with the girls was enough to hold me another week. We saw ladybugs all over the garden center flying around, and then saw some outside Wal-mart so they certainly are swarming and enjoying this lovely day too. Rudbeckia is a large family with many members and some do great here for me, and others do not. I think some are more finicky about drainage (and powdery mildew) than others, but they're not the hardest things to grow if you choose the right ones. In my garden, most rudbeckias are happier with morning sun/afternoon shade than with full sun all day long. Kim, That's crazy about your friend's Dodge pickup. Try explaining that one to your insurance agent! We do try to be careful which way we park on really windy days, but it is more to keep the wind from slamming the car or truck door shut on someone who's attempting to get in or out in strong wind. I never once thought about the wind being able to break a door off a vehicle. It still is sunny and warm outside, so Tim's got ribeye steaks (our standard Sunday dinner) cooking on the grill and I have everything else cooking indoors. I suspect he'd have been out there grilling even if rain was pouring down, but I'm grateful he didn't have to do that. It only took one week of nonstop rain and cloudy skies to make us tired of the rain. I'm not wishing for another month or two with no rain, but I'm hoping whatever rain we get over the next couple of weeks at least will come in smaller, more manageable amounts. Dawn