Channel 9 gives 9 day forecast.
Ch. 5 gives 10 day forecast
Both Oklahoma City channels

Well my forecasting skills arent all that great but I will predict this with 100% certainty.

This weekend I will be very tempted to plant some onions but Im not falling for that trick mother nature. You took too many of mine last year with that nasty early march freeze. Do you remember those days the 2nd and 3rd when you let it get down to 7? well i do and it wasnt funny!

I just hope the fruit trees dont think its time to wake. I noticed a few buds swelling on my peaches a couple weeks ago.

Relax Bon. Deep breathing should work. Almost time for onions, but that's about all for outside planting for awhile.

Bon, I didn't even look at the long-range forecast, but I will predict this: the winter is not done with us yet. Not by a long shot. I don't care what they have in the forecast, it is only the first week of February and we have a lot of cold weather left. No forecast will change that. Your average last frost date is....what.....two months away? And that is the date upon which you still have a 50% chance of having freezing temperatures. Why are you getting in such a hurry?

I haven't even started peas yet. There's no reason to do it. They sprout and grow pretty quickly and then need to go into the ground before they grow very much. It is too cold here----all my almost-year-old Swiss Chard plants just froze back to the ground a few nights ago when we dropped to 16 degrees. That's what I call a clue sent to me that I shouldn't feel any need to plant any time soon. The cold is not gone and it is not leaving anytime soon. Odds are we are going to be very cold again before too long even if the forecast for the next week shows awesome warm temperatures. February often is a cruel month---with some amazingly warm, even hot, days but with nights that still drop very cold at night. I don't even like planting onion plants in February. Oh, I'll do it, but I have frost blankets that give 10 degrees of protection. If I didn't have those, I wouldn't put onion plants in the ground until sometime in March.

When a person gets busy starting stuff too early, the odds are that the seedlings will be lost as they outgrow their indoors location, they will die of damping off, they will get root-bound which will lead to them being poor in productivity the rest of their lives, etc. Plants that are too old when they are transplanted out often get transplant shock and sit and stall for a few weeks, negating any perceived benefit the gardener was expecting to get by planting early. Getting in too big of a hurry almost never pays off in our climate.

Soil temperatures where you live still are in the 30s. (I am referring to three-day averages at 4" below bare soil.) Even as far south as I am, they're barely in the 40s. Not much grows well in soil temperatures that low when nights still are in the teens, twenties and thirties. What's the rush? Maybe if you were a market grower who would benefit financially from getting the first veggies to market (higher price for pretty much any crop when it is the first week it has appeared in the farmer's market that year), the risk might be worth it even if you had to take extraordinary measures to protect plantings from cold weather. I cannot even call it late cold weather because any cold weather that occurs now isn't late---it is seasonal, it is on-time, and it is expected. You're not a market grower though, and the risks of starting too early won't pay off for a home gardener.

I don't know why you think you're behind on starting warm-season plants. If anything, you're early. I just started my first tomato seeds (and no other warm-season seeds yet) this week and I am about as far south as you can go and still be in Oklahoma. If I lived where you live, I likely wouldn't start warm-season seeds until close to the end of February.

S-L-O-W D-O-W-N. lol lol lol Don't we have this conversation every year? Tim can tell when I am writing a response like this every year. It must be the gritting of my teeth and the banging of my head against the wall that gives me away.

The Drought Monitor is a better indicator of soil moisture levels than the amount of rain that's fallen lately. Some places have had great rainfall for the last 3-6 weeks, but remain in D-2 (Severe), D-3 (Extreme) or D-4 (Exceptional) Drought. Just because rainfall lately has been average or near average is not necessarily a great indicator. What is a better indicator is when deeper soil moisture levels are improving, and for drought areas, that takes a long time---we have had fairly wonderful rain here in our county since June 2014 and only recently have we clawed our way out of drought, although we remain in D-0 "Abnormally Dry". That is a big deal. In spring or summer when we hit "Abnormally Dry", I struggle to keep the garden watered enough to keep it producing. So, going into planting season "Abnormally Dry" bothers me, even if we currently have puddles on the ground from recent rainfall. We need moisture down in the root zones, not puddled on the top of the ground.

Mike, I totally agree with everything you said. My onions ship and arrive next week. Knowing Dixondale as I do, it wouldn't surprise me if they ship a day or two early and I get them Saturday or Monday instead of Tuesday. I'm okay with that. I'll plant them. I'll protect them. I'll do all I can, and yet there are no guarantees. Even when I do all I can to protect them (short of digging them up and moving them indoors when snow and overnight lows of 15 degrees are forecast in March or April), I still have had years when I've planted them, protected them, and had very late very cold weather kill almost all of them. Mother Nature bats last so she wins a lot more than she loses. You've gardened here long enough to know that as well as I do.

My fruit trees have been on the verge of blooming since we hit the 70s in mid-January, followed by the 80s a week or two later. The cold nights aren't slowing them down enough. Since we got cold extra early this past fall, I believe they got all their chill hours pretty early, which is such a bad thing. They will bloom early and we will lose the fruit again. I'm about 95% sure about that. I look at them every day and implore them to slow down.

Our weather is such a roller coaster any more. I used to be thrilled to have a day or two in the 70s in January or February, or an occasional day in the 80s in March. I was stupid. Those early hot days are so bad for the fruit trees. Now I hate the early days for the sake of the trees even if I enjoy them for myself. Nothing much (if anything) good comes of being too hot in the winter months when it is supposed to be cold.

This weekend I won't be planting. I'll likely be mowing down the tall, dormant plants in the pastures, weedeating, doing a little pruning, etc. I surely will not be planting. I'll likely gather deadfall from the woods, grass clippings and autumn leaves. I might build some new compost piles. I will not be planting. Not even seeds. Not in the greenhouse. Not indoors.

I do kinda feel like spring might be early, but I don't think it will be this early. We're on a wild roller coaster ride, as usual in February, and I think there are lots of ups and downs to come. The downs are what we have to watch out for. Bon, are you listening? Slow down, slow down, slow down. I am the world's worst about starting too early, so trust me.....if I think you are itching to start too early, then you are itching to start WAY too early.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: 3-Day Ave Soil Temps 4

Thank you, Auther!

haha Dawn, you had me cracking up. Sorry to be so frustrating. I'm still a newb in spring planning. At least my planning is more reasonable. I've strung out seed-starting week to week based upon transplant needs. This week is eggplant (and something else, I forget) and next week is a few tomatoes .. e.g.

I'll stick a couple of pea plants in a window and nibble on the growth. LOL

You know, I was thinking, I could mow and trim. But that would be weird, right? So, okay. It's not weird. I'll do that and some other clean up stuff.

I get psyched when seed packages suggest 8 weeks germination prior to last frost, but that only a few. The rest are 3, 5 and six weeks.

*inhales*

mksmth I remember my mother being outside talking to the tree buds with all sincerity, I wouldn't do that if I were you. I get it, now.

For some reason LisaH is coming to mind.

Winter sow. Winter sow...

You still have time :) the Winter Sow Group on Facebook keeps posting their jugs covered under snow. I sigh just a little. It would be nice to have a little snow this winter! My boss's five year old son and I were lamenting today that we were both in Michigan for Christmas and all the snow was in Oklahoma!

Speaking of long term forecasts...anyone have an idea about rainfall this year? I heard a rumor the next 12 months would be drought busting and fill the lakes. Anyone else heard that?

That would be awesome. It is time for a refill isn't it.
Bon you and I can sit in the corner and practice deep breathing tapping our feet waiting waiting waiting.
I am going to jump out there early this year with some stuff because I am experimenting and I have ALOT of seed to back it up. I will be setting up hoops to put cover over when necessary.
I too am waiting for onions, my first order from dixondale. I have ordered 16 bunches for me and a friend. I have tried to calculate how much space will this take but really don't have a clue. I will probably plant a few at home and the bulk in town. This weekend is going to be great here so we will be getting it ready. Cant wait to get in the garden.
kim

Here's what the long-range weather models are showing........

The CFSv2 (USA) and the ECMWF (European) are showing colder than normal for the period Feb 12 - Mar 15. It's likely not going to be a month-long cold spell, as there will be some ups and downs with the temperatures. But it does look like the downs will out number the ups until mid-March. Both models show Eastern Oklahoma more below normal than Western Oklahoma. There will be lots of Arctic airmasses moving down from Canada. The models are struggling with the trajectory of these airmasses. Lately, the cold has moved more to the SE from central Canada, so Oklahoma has only seen some glancing blows of cold air. There is some hint that the movement of these cold airmasses will revert back closer to how it was in January, with more of a straight southward trajectory. But that's not certain.

The ECMWF also predicts wetter than normal conditions across Western Oklahoma for the same time period.

So don't let the next 5 warm days fool you. Winter is coming back. And I'd venture to guess we've got another good snow/ice storm or two to deal with, as well.

Lee

Lisa, I agree. I mean... if it's necessary for me and Sir Thor to stack, snap and haul wood for the wood-burning stove, it'd be nice if the outdoor freezing included snow to play. Bill wants snow, too, but that's because he busted his knuckles on our new truck for the 4x4 and purchased awesome traction tires. haha boys

It is time for a refill. Last I bothered to study, the drought was decadal. I forget how many years we're into it now. When I checked was about 2 years ago. I don't remember if this year would be a break or finality. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. No control. darn it I have tons of seeds, too - especially with perennial wild flowers that I should squeeze my brain over.

Lee -

You are awesome!
את�" מ�"�"ים
أنت رائع!
Usted es maravilloso!
Du er awesome!

bon

Lee, Thanks for the informative Reality Check. We appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

Bon and Lisa, Repeated drought years have stomped all my weather optimism to death these last 10 years. I look at the springs that aren't there because they stopped running, the swamp that rarely is swampy any more, and the ponds that are just empty, bare depressions in the ground and I doubt our land ever will return to its former degree of wetness. Too many dry years stacked on top of each other have just dried us out too much. Even when we get drought recovery for a while, each time, we recover less than the time before. After a decade of that, you understand the ponds, swamps and springs aren't likely to ever come back.

The Seasonal Drought Outlook is all bad news for western OK, showing persistent or worsening drought over the next several months. This doesn't mean they won't get rain---just that they aren't expected to get enough to bust their very persistent drought.

I've linked it below.

I think we all should enjoy the weekend as a break or a vacation from winter, but we also, as Lee noted, should expect winter weather to return. I've never seen spring arrive "for good" in February. It is rare enough when it arrives for good in March. No matter how warm I think it is at our place in March, we're always going to have a cold spell around Easter. That's the cold spell that usually gets the fruit on the trees. I really don't get too awfully excited about warm winter weather until we're getting close to Easter because the warmth isn't likely to last. After we get the Easter Freeze, things start looking up.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Season Drought Outlook

Oh... snap.

Don't want to get things stirred up but these showed up here in Bixby today. Six varieties. I remember the 7 degrees in March last year and was worried about it but I have a small garden and was able to cover the onions. I am definitely not making any recommendations but it was the best crop I have grown here so I have mixed feelings. Wish gardening was easier on us but it is not. Someone talk me out of planting.

Don't do it! Listen to soonergrandmom. :D

BixbyM

are those are Carmichaels?

Yes they are at Carmichael's. Nice to have a supply so close to home. This is how mine did last year.

My onions shipped yesterday and will be here any day now. When they arrive, I'll plant them, and then I'll mulch them. Then I'll put up the low tunnel hoops over the bed so that when the cold weather gets cold enough to threaten them, I can put a frost blanket over the hoops to protect them. I'm not going to advise anyone else to plant their onions this week or next unless they feel comfortable with the soil and air temperatures in their area. However, for those of us who order from Dixondale, unless we specifically ask for a shipping date that we have chosen for ourselves, they automatically ship them at the right time for planting in each purchaser's area.

Dixondale usually ships onion plants to my part of southcentral OK for arrival around February 10-12th. The retail stores in my area? Some of them have had onions in their outdoor garden centers since the week after Christmas, and I certainly wouldn't want to buy any onions that have been sitting outdoors in crates ever since then. By now they'd be all dried out and would have been through temperatures ranging from the low teens to the mid-80s.

If I was going to buy onion plants from stores like the beautiful Dixondale onions shown above, I'd buy them right after they arrive at the stores, whether you plant them now or not. At least if you have the bundles of plants under your control, you can hold them under the proper conditions so they don't get exposed to excessively cold or wet conditions, or to too much dry, breezy wind. I've held plants for 3 weeks many times before putting them in the ground, holding them heeled in, and usually I heel them in using lava sand, but any sand works. You just want to keep the roots covered and moist, but not wet, and not exposed to air where they will dry out.

BixbyM, I won't try to talk you out of it. Like I said, mine are coming and I'm planting them....but I'm over 100 miles south of you. It is all about how much risk you're willing to take. Onions can tolerate temperatures down to the low 20s without freeze damage most of the time.

Often, though, it is all about the size of the plants and how long they are exposed to cold temperatures. The bigger risk than having onions freeze most years (unless we get ridiculously cold), is that once they are a certain size (roughly the diameter of a No. 2 pencil, or have 5 true leaves), prolonged exposure to temperatures at or below 45 degrees can cause them to bolt.

Last year, half my onions bolted and the other half didn't. They all were ordered from Dixondale, shipped together in the same packaging, were planted the same day and treated exactly the same. All the ones that bolted were in the same raised bed, and all the ones that did not bolt were in the raised bed next door. There were short-day, intermediate day, and long-day onions in each bed. Puzzling isn't it? Two minor differences likely accounted in some way for one bed bolting while the other did not, but I don't know which difference it was.

In my sloping garden, the onion bed with plants that bolted sits about 8" lower on the north-facing hillside than the bed where the onions didn't bolt. Could such a minor change in elevation make that much of a difference? The only other difference is that the onions in the non-bolting bed were single-type bundles. The onions in the bed where all the bolting occurred were the mixed samplers that have 3 varieties per bundle.

I always plant far more than we need. In a good onion year when every plant survives, grows and reaches harvestable size, we have far too many onions and I can a bunch, set aside a 6-8 month supply for fresh eating, and chop up the rest and freeze them for use in cooking. In a bad year, we still have enough. Last year was a great year despite the bolting (lol, because I overplant), and we still have several dozen in storage for fresh eating.

Sometimes you do everything you can and they bolt or freeze anyway. That doesn't mean I don't plant them.

If I lived in NE OK, I wouldn't plant those onions yet until the weather settles down a bit more.....but if I saw those Dixondale onions in the store, I'd be tempted. I'd buy them and take them home though. Part of it, too, is the size of your planting. If a person is planting a bundle, it isn't a huge financial risk. If they die or bolt, just plant more. If a person is planting 10 or 15 bundles, then it kinda becomes a whole different ballgame because it is a much larger investment.

You also could stagger the plantings, dividing your planting into thirds and planting 1/3 in each of the next three weeks. That is, by the way, a terrific experiment. Will the onions planted in week 1 grow any better than the ones planted week 2 or week 3? It is experiments like this that have allowed me to figure out what works best for me in an average year. One of the problems is that average years aren't all that common.

I also think that planting early is a calculated risk, and it can pay off much of the time if you are in southern or eastern OK. The farther north or west you are, the less likely it is to pay off because the cold weather is more likely to keep on coming in northern and western areas.

Dawn

That's what I was thinking okiedawn. Since they got here early this year it seemed safer to buy them now and keep them protected at my place instead of unsure conditions. Am I going to plant them now? I will tell you in a few months. I like your idea of staggering the planting. I did that last year in a way because I was also planting later for my mom at her place. Not sure if I learned anything from that except it's a lot of work. I will pay closer attention this year. I consider setting up hoops as just part of where we live and trying to juggle what I want to grow in a small garden. Extreme south Tulsa can get breaks from bad weather that north Tulsa does not. That makes living on the edge tempting.

I feel like my whole gardening experience involves living on the edge. It keeps life interesting!

I hope you'll keep us posted on what you decide to do and how it all works out.

FYI: I confess that I have planted onions as early as January 1st and gotten away with it, but that was in the early 2000s when we kept having these really hot winters. I doubt I could get away with it nowadays as the pendulum has swung the other way and in recent years we are more prone to having our last freeze or frost around May 3-4. My average last freeze date is March 28th. That's one reason I feel like I live on the edge a lot, garden wise, and it is why I have tons of low tunnels and lots of floating row cover in three different weights. It is a whole lot easier to plant early when you have a backup plan.

A couple of years after I planted January 1st, a member of this forum who lived a couple of counties east of me---I cannot remember if he was in Bryan county or Marshall county---also planted exceptionally early and got away with it. I believe he also planted around the first of the year. Would I recommend that anyone in this state plant that early? Heck, no, but at least a couple of us have gotten away with it.

That's ... like ... cheating or something.

So, from the sounds of it we're getting our onions too early. And I should dedicate a bunch of blankets. sigh

Probably. It is because they are biennials and because we have wildly fluctuating weather here in mid-winter through spring. I've seen the temperatures hit the low teens after I've planted my onions well within OSU's recommended onion planting dates. I've planted onion a month beyond their recommended planting dates and still have had them hit by exceptionally low temperatures, and I mean temperatures low enough to kill them. I've had the onions hit by highs in the upper 80s and lower 90s when they've only been in the ground a couple of weeks. Gardening here is crazy. You can hop on the crazy train and go with the flow or you can fight the craziness. The one thing you cannot do is defeat Mother Nature. All you can do is work around whatever she throws at us and our gardens.

Sometimes I think we're all crazy for thinking we can overcome all the weather challenges, but then what other choice is there? We, here, are the garden obsessed, and we are going to do whatever we have to do to be able to grow and enjoy all the plants we love---from veggies to herbs, from flowers to fruit, from trees to ground covers to shrubs to vines. We plant them and care for them and watch them grow, and then we watch as baseball or golfball or (God forbid) softball sized hail hits them, tornadoes dance over the plants or though them, trees get blown down on top of them, flash flooding runs through them. Surely there are many other hobbies or past-times or lifestyles one can pursue in our lovely state, but gardening is my addiction and I'm going to do it and enjoy it. It is just easier to enjoy it if you can cover up the plants as needed and protect them from the wrath of our weather.

The link below is the Dixondale Farms shipping chart by zip code. I would not plant earlier than their date, and keep in mind that the onions can be kept up to 3 weeks.

It usually takes me 3 weeks to get all of mine planted, so I guess I get a built-in experiment. LOL

Here is a link that might be useful: Dixondale Shipping Chart

Carol,

Don't rat me out to anyone here on this forum, but I've kept onion plants as long as 6 weeks in rainy years when I was hoping the soil was going to eventually dry up enough for planting. One year I kept them 8 weeks because I put them in the garage and forgot about them. Almost every plant still grew and produced well after planting, though the onions were smaller, most likely because they spent half the growing season in a paper bag in the garage. In my defense, I normally don't abuse onion plants that way, but it was one of our worst winter fire seasons ever and I really wasn't even home enough in February, March or half of April to plant much of anything.

I hope to get the planting of mine, which arrived yesterday, done by Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. I'd like to think I'll get it done this afternoon, but something always seems to come up when Tim is home on his days off----like he expects to be fed and other time-consuming things like that. (grin) Doesn't he know it is planting season?

Yesterday one of our cats that I was watching from a distance jumped suddenly, totally freaked out and ran away. It was exactly the way a cat acts when it encounters a snake. I was watching from an upstairs window and ran outside to see if a snake was in the yard but couldn't find one. The cat was long gone, having fled from whatever scared it. The cat's startled reaction was a reminder to me that I need to be careful out there when working in the yard and garden on these nice warm winter days. I have encountered snakes before on an occasional rare warm day in February, March and November, so it is not outside the realm of possibility. Usually I see them on the edges of the woodland where it meets the grassland.

This likely will be the first year I've had to watch out for snakes while planting onions. Usually I'm sticking onion plants in the ground when the ground and I both are cold. It is going to be a lot more fun to plant them while it is warm.

Dawn

Just a reminder from last year. This was Feb. 28, 2014.

This was a few days later on March 3. You can sorta see the row tunnel peaking through the snow. The spinach, lettuce and carrots in there made it just fine.

Striking! I had to look real hard for the row covers.

I want some snow! We hardly ever get it down here.

Bon, As OSUEngineer illustrates with his photos, floating row covers make gardening here a lot less risky. I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of it, and it has saved my plants from snow, sleet, frost, freezing temperatures and hail many times. I don't know who invented floating row covers, but we owe them a huge Thank You.

Clear plastic from the paint aisle at Home Depot + #9 wire = poor mans row tunnel.

That'll work.