First off, thanks for the quick response, Okiedawn!

1. Yes, indoors, up against a window - using natural sunlight. They had not been hardened off and in fact, I had completely forgotten about that concept when I posted this. I actually first read about it on this site a few days after they had died. So could the turning grey aspect be due to this?

2. No, I believe the temperatures stayed above 40 although there were significant temperature increases/decreases regularly throughout this time. The weather was incredibly temperamental (as I've learned the hard way here in Oklahoma!).

3. Based on looking at pictures, I'd say sandy loam. Since then, I've started mixing the natural soil here with potting soil for my peppers and they seem to be doing just fine.

4. For covering, I used some large glass bowls, propped up by rocks so as not to suffocate the plants but to keep the rain from beating them down. Unfortunately, there were times when I was at school when the weather changed and couldn't get a hold of anyone at home so they were up against the brutal weather on their own. Whenever I did cover them though, I removed the coverings first thing in the morning when the weather improved.

5. Some of the leaves yellowed a bit but nothing too intense. They were solid grey spots that were mostly found at the ends of the leaves. They started out small but gradually took over about half of the each leaf eventually and left the leaves droopy. The initial grey spots happened over night.

I think that I may try one more solanaceous plant in the area using the advice you provided me. It looks like the majority of the problem was user error! After looking at pictures of various tomato diseases, I couldn't find anything that looked exactly like what was happening to them. This leads me to believe the problems were: me not hardening them off, and exposure to far too much water! Thank you!

Oh My. Poor Maters and Poor YOU! It sounds to me like there were several contributing factors at work against you on these seedlings. But you sound like a smart "Early Master Gardener" that has read the signs correctly. I'll differ to our "Tomatoe Queen" but I think your diagnosis is spot on! And seriously, do NOT whip yourself. I could take up a whole page on the goofs I made when I first learned I could start tomatoes from seed! Hang in there!

You could probably plant some seeds now outside and they would probably do as good or better than what you planted.

I'd get the spot ready and put the seeds there and lightly cover them with about 1/4" of sand and keep it moist. They would probably sprout in a few days and grow normal. You wouldn't have to worry about hardening them off as they will acclimate to the temperature on their own. As long as we don't get any really cold weather.

Kelsey,

You're welcome.

1. I do think you figured out that the lack of hardening off was the main issue. The gray spotting on the leaves likely resulted from that. This sort of damage to a plant is known variously as physiological damage or environmental damage and usually results from an indoor-raised tomato plant being placed outdoors permanently into conditions it is not strong enough to handle. You don't see as many photos of it online for ID purposes because each and every case of environmental damage can look different. I'd suggest you just chalk it up to a lesson learned and move on. Do not criticize or shame yourself. There is no shame in being new at something and at having to learn a few lessons the hard way. We've all been there, done that, and we survived (even if our plants did not) and moved on. Some rainy day we should start a "true confessions" thread where everyone can admit their various "mistakes" and tell us how they've killed plants accidentally. I could fill pages all by myself. Part of becoming an experienced gardener involves (sadly) killing plants and it's all good because we learn from each experiences. I believe that Texas A&M's Tomato Problem Solver Webpages do feature a photo of physiological damage. I'll see if I can find it and link it below but it is only one example. If you had 100 people with tomato plants that suffered this type of damage, you could get 100 different photos and none of them might be exactly the same as the damage presents in many ways. Tan or gray bleached out spots, ranging from tiny to huge, are a common symptom though.

2. This is a misconception that Oklahoma has only one season---hot, hot, hot. Or, maybe two--Tornado Season and Hot, Hot, Hot. Ha! We have 4 seasons here just like everyone else, and sometimes (especially in early to mid-spring) we have all 4 seasons in one day. In my years here in OK (we've lived here since 1999) I have spent more time trying to protect plants than on any other single garden task. This year has been especially erratic and especially trying for gardeners trying to harden off plants. Even when plants are partially hardened off, if you have to move them back indoors because, let's say, late March brings you two late snowstorms, guess what? If the plants were back inside for even just 2-4 days, they can lose their hardened off status and you get to start all over again from Day 1. I've started over more times this spring than I can count. I keep waiting for that perfect Spring where I can harden off plants in 1 week without taking any steps backwards and it hasn't happened yet. It is just something we have to deal with.

3. Sandy Loam is great. I wish I had started out with sandy loam. So, at least you are starting out with soil that likely drains well. This is important. Poor drainage is hard on many kinds of plants, and tomatoes are very sensitive to it. So, Yay for you for having great soil!

4. In the future, you'll increase your odds of success if you use a breathable covering. I use floating row cover. I was a slow learner on this one. I first read about floating row cover in Dr. Sam Cotner's amazing book on growing vegetables in Texas, where I was born, grew up and lived until moving to OK. I read about it in, I am pretty sure, the 1980s. I laughed. I said I was never going to spend our money on some sort of flimsy, lightweight material to cover up plants. Plants don't need to be covered, I said. I. Will. Never. Do. This. I am totally ashamed that I was so stupid back then.

Flash forward to the 1990s and I started to get a little smarter (finally) after finding the weather in OK was much more rapidly changing than the weather where I'd lived in Texas. I bought my first row cover. Now I have tons of it. Tons and tons. I have become the poster child for using floating row cover. I cover up plants to protect them from very cold temperatures and frost and freezing. I use lightweight row cover to protect plants at times from some types of insects. I use row cover and bird netting to protect plants from hailstorms. I love the stuff. It comes in different weights that offer different degrees of light transmission and freeze/frost protection. I love the stuff. But, back before I started using row covers, I used old bed sheets and, on colder nights, blankets (albeit, with some sort of structure to keep them from crushing the plants). With row cover or bedsheets, even though they are breathable, air can heat up beneath them so I always use supports (usually low tunnel hoops made of PVC or EMT) to hold the row covers above the plants. While you can let the lighter weights of row covers float directly on top of the plants, I prefer to have a lot of air space between the plants and the covers so I suspend them above the plants. In our wind, row covers that float can cause abrasions to the foliage by repeated wind movement. Oh, and row covers that are not well-anchored to the ground can float right out of your garden and into the neighbor's barbed wire fence where they then become the row cover equivalent of cole slaw (because they are shredded into pieces). Another lesson learned.

Row covers are hard to use if your cats and dogs think they are pet hammocks. Guess how I learned this?

A glass bowl even propped up, could have acted similarly to a magnifying glass in sunny weather, so you probably should remember that in the future and use something else. Maybe a cat hammock. (grin)

5. Gray spots that start at the end of leaves and spread sounds more like physiological or environmental damage than disease. Hope that gives you some reassurance that a soil-borne disease likely was not the culprit.

So, now you've survived first grade in the Tomato Seedling School of Hard Knocks. I'm sorry it was such a disappointing experience for you and hope you can laugh it off and move on to bigger and better and more successful gardening ventures.

I wish you lived here near me. I have a greenhouse full of tomato plants, ranging from huge to tiny (not my fault, I blame the tiny ones on a later start and horrible weather, and I am grinning as I type this statement) and I'd load you up with replacement plants....which all are going to Paula's house on Saturday for our annual Spring Fling. If you are coming, we'll send you home with more free plants than you have room to plant. (Lesson: always have backup plants in case disaster strikes.) I can plant earlier than most folks here since I'm also in zone 7B like you, but I raise plenty of back-up plants to use as replacements in case my early plants die. Then, when my plants don't die and I don't use the replacement plants, they all go to Paula's where I beg everyone to please take home my orphan tomato babies. I only have one "rule" for the Spring Fling, which is that I am not bringing back home any of the tomato plants I raised, and everyone there kindly indulges me by adopting the extra plants so I don't have to drag them back home to southern OK and throw them on the compost pile. I hate to waste plants, although a composted plant never is actually wasted as it will return to the soil as compost.

I like Robert's suggestion that you could direct-sow seed now with cherry tomatoes and still get plenty of fruit. You'd be amazed at how quickly direct-sown seed, when sown after soil and air temperatures have warmed up, will germinate and grow. I wouldn't do it this late in the season with anything other than varieties that produce bite-sized tomatoes, though, as the plants that make larger fruit shut down in the heat, and the heat is coming soon. Maybe. It is a weird year. I think May might stay cool, mild and wet but even so, the heat that shuts down the fertilization and fruit set of tomatoes usually arrives in June.

Or, if you are in a hurry to have ripe tomatoes yesterday (like me), and you're not coming to the Spring Fling, you can buy transplants at any nursery or big box store garden center. There's an amazing selection of plants in all sizes with fruit in all shapes, sizes and colors.

I hope you'll keep us posted on your continuing adventure into growing tomatoes and other things. Gardening is addictive and it is a wonderful, joyful addiction.

Have a wonderful day today and don't hesitate to come back here with questions, comments, etc. We might not be able to solve all your plant problems, but we'll try, and we'll do our best to make you laugh and smile while doing it.

Finally, I just want to add that you never, ever have to raise a tomato plant from seed if you don't have time or don't want to. My dad grew up on a farm in the 1920s and certainly knew how to raise plants from seed, but he worked and had a houseful of kids and never, ever raised his own tomato plants from seed ever. He had a magnificent garden anyway. He usually bought his tomato plants at a little Greek grocery store run by a family that farmed on the banks of the Trinity River near Fort Worth. He grew great tomatoes. He gave away brown paper grocery bags full of them every Sunday after church. He did it all without ever raising a tomato plant from seed. So, if growing from seed fascinates you and you love it, then do it. It if doesn't fit into your schedule and lifestyle, skip it, and buy your tomato plants (or come to the Spring Fling every year and adopt the extra plants we all bring). I firmly believe that gardening should add more joy and fulfillment to our lives, although of course it does bring a share of stress and even causes distress at times. True confession time: when I worked full-time in a career I loved and had a small child, I didn't grow my own tomato plants. I didn't start growing tomato plants from seed until a few years after I gave up my career to become a full-time wife and mom, and apparently, also a full-time gardener. I really didn't start growing tons of tomato plants from seed until a couple of years before we moved here, but I really was raising them for my brother's garden (which he turned over to me for several years so I could do all the work) because my Fort Worth yard was too shady to grow more than a handful of veggies. As my garden here kept enlarging itself and getting bigger, I grew more and more from seed. Now, I find it hard to stop, which explains the huge number of tomato plants I have now---some of them in the ground growing and the rest of them in the greenhouse awaiting a permanent home. The world will not end if you decide not to raise your tomato plants from seed. Do what fits your life and makes sense for you in any given year, and no guilt or regrets are allowed!

Dawn

Thanks for all the information, everyone!

p_mac: I appreciate your words. For a while there, I was beginning to feel like I just didn't have a green thumb.

oldbusy1: I'm definitely going to try starting some from seed again. Instead of starting them inside, I'm going to keep some seed starter carton packs outside and plant them there. I will also plant some directly into the garden. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I'm glad it's not just me having issues this spring. In fact, one of my friends posted a picture on her FB yesterday of her garden. Everything was submerged in water! I'm sorry she's dealing with it, but so glad it's not just me. Parts of my garden withstood the rain pretty well but other parts seemed to have been planted in a "dip" (hadn't realized this until the rain turned these dips into mini-ponds!).

Dawn: You are completely right about my misconceptions about Oklahoma. It also doesn't help that the summer I first moved here, the drought was really bad. I think it rained maybe once from August through October, and then the following spring wasn't too rainy either. Another friend of a friend said she won't be planting early again next year because of how many plants she has lost already.

My gardening experiences since I moved here have been rather... daunting. Two years ago, I planted a bunch of stuff in May. Then we had a tornado sweep through Johnston County and pull up everything. Eventually I planted more stuff. Then the guy who mows our lawn mowed right over the flowers! Flash forward to the next planting season: another guy is mowing our yard and repeatedly mows over most of my flowers. I plant again. At this time, I didn't realize my yard grass is Bermuda grass. It completely smothered one of my succulents. I didn't know anything about Bermuda grass so I thought the stolons of the grass were an extension of said plant. Turns out it was stealing the nutrients from my plant. This year I kindly reminded him that that area was OFF LIMITS! I also dug up as much Bermuda grass from the gardening area as I could, but that stuff is SO hard to get rid of. I've had every member of my household out there, digging up the roots (great stress reliever though). I even set up bricks around it to make sure I didn't lose any more from mowing or the Bermuda grass! Unfortunately, the rain isn't bothered by the bricks so that's what I'm dealing with now haha.

I would've loved to attend the Spring Fling; unfortunately, I don't have easy access to transportation right now so just getting to class usually ends up being a huge fiasco!

Again, thank you everyone for the reassuring words. I'm going to give this another shot!

Kelsey,

We've only lived here since 1999, so I certainly don't have the weather here all figured out, but what I have learned is that we rarely have the same weather two years in a row. If one year is a drought year, the next year often is much nicer. If a given year is nice and wet throughout the growing season and the weather is mild and pleasant, then we'll likely pay for it the following year by having hot, dry, miserable weather. It does help with garden planning because you know that whatever happened last year is not likely to happen this year. Does that make sense? It keeps us on our toes.

Since moving here, we've experienced our last freeze or frost of spring as early as the last week in February and as late as the first week in May (several times). Our first freeze or frost of fall has hit us as early as late September and as late as mid-December. We've had a horrible year with a little under 19" of rainfall and a year with about 52" of rain. We've gone 60 days with no rain, and we've had 12.89" in one 24-hour period. It is the lack of consistency that can drive a person crazy because, as we often say at our house in reference to the weather, "there is no normal here". (That statement might apply to the folks in our household too.)

We just muddle along the best we can and try to interpret what sort of a weather year it will be and garden in whatever way is needed to ensure our plants can handle whatever Mother Nature throws at them.

This year it is really wet here in Love County, and y'all may be even wetter there in your county. It is a nice change from being so dry most year, but my plants are going to need swimming lessons if the rain doesn't stop falling several days a week.

In case no one has mentioned this to you, our feelings about bermuda grass can be summed up in one statement: "Bermuda grass is evil." I am sure that people who want a lawn and only a lawn and nothing else love it, but I hate it. It won't die, you can't kill it, and even if you think you have killed it all, it will come back....again and again and again. The only thing worse than bermuda grass, I think, is Johnson grass, which is like bermuda grass on steroids. Despite everything, I love gardening here and I bet you will too once you get used to the wild weather and erratic climate.

I hope you have a great Spring and a great garden.

Dawn

Dawn, you've said it! In August, it will be three years since I moved here from Ohio. In that time, I've become even more confused about Oklahoma weather each year than I was to begin with! I saw this picture one time that said, "Welcome to Oklahoma, where we love our seasons so much we have them all in one week" haha. That summed it up pretty well. I'm learning to just "roll with the punches." Lord knows we need the rain but I'm with you, some of my plants are drowning. Other ones, like my cayenne peppers seem to be holding out surprisingly well though.

I'll definitely keep reminding myself of your advice about the weather each year.

As for the Bermuda grass, I am so glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. I'd never heard of the stuff and only noticed it when it began suffocating one of my succulents last year. It looked so odd I just assumed I knew nothing about succulents and that it was a part of it. Then, this year we noticed we had a brick pathway (or what we thought was one) covered by grass. I got to work pulling up the grass over it 'cause I just love brick. I was absolutely horrified and started googling "invasive grass" and immediately found what I was looking for! I have no idea if someone planted it there on purpose or if it has taken over. This house was falling apart about three years ago and my in-laws renovated it so I can't be sure how long it sat without anyone living in it.

It's certainly possible the previous owners were looking for a quick fix and threw some Bermuda grass seed down. I was actually freaked out when we were at a local store and saw the seed being sold. I so badly wanted to put a note next to that said something along the lines of, "You will regret it if you buy this!" The worst part is I'd already started planting along the house before I realized what was going on with the Bermuda grass. I've dug up as much as possible but you're right, it just keeps coming back. I've even got my husband and my housemates going out there with me regularly to help tear it up. What surprises me is how strong its roots are!

On top of that, there appear to be tree roots coming out from under my house. I'm not even sure where to begin with to fix that issue! When I first moved to Tishomingo, I heard quite a few stories about trees growing in older buildings so it's not exactly surprising. I find it kind of funny but am also like, "ok, are these from the many trees in the backyard or have I got a tree growing under the actual house?" Can't even get under the house either since there are so many rusty nails hanging down.

Oh yeah, and yesterday I realized I've got spider mites galore on my indoor plants. I've been spraying the outdoor ones with garlic, which has helped a lot. I think the beneficial bugs in my garden have been helping too, and I intend to put out some bug food to attract more ladybugs. I've just been wiping down my indoor plants daily to keep them at bay. Even found the dang little things inside my cayenne peppers' flowers! Now it's war! :P

Kelsey, I don't have any answers for ya, but I can say this sounds exactly like my home. I have bermuda and many other horrible things. I started gardening here. I also have other invasive grasses like cheat grass. To me, cheat grass doesn't seem invasive as it comes out easily, because I'm so familiar with nothing but hard work.

Kelsey, Everyone on this forum battles invasive grasses from time to time, mostly bermuda grass, but then there's lots of other prairie grasses out in the rural areas so some of us have all kinds of grassy plants we don't want. I try to stay on top of all the weedy grasses by at least getting them removed before they can set seed, but it is a challenge. I spent a significant portion of yesterday trying to pull out all the grassy plants that are trying to grow in the garden fence line. The Grass War is just one of the battles we fight here in this state every year.

Spider mites already are at epic numbers for April here too. I think it is because southern OK had some temperatures in the 80s very early in spring. I'm hoping the prolonged rainy spells will slow them down. In case you don't know this, the hotter the weather gets, the more quickly the spider mites reproduce, so it is important to get rid of all of them that you can before the real heat arrives. I haven't seen many on my garden plants yet, but I've seen tons of them on weedy plants that grow just outside my garden fence and I know they'll move into the garden soon.

Bon, We have so many prairie grasses here in the fields that I had to buy a grass ID book when we first moved here so I could figure out which ones were native prairie plants we wanted and which ones were invasive junk. Of course, any grass that sprouts in my garden is invasive junk, even if it is a grass I love to see growing in the meadows/pastures.

This land didn't appear to have any bermuda grass on it when we bought it. It was fallow farm land with a few cattle grazing on it. About a year after we bought the land, we mowed the pasture down short in the area where the builder was about to start building our house. As the grass regrew, horror of our horrors, it was mostly bermuda. A neighbor told me "Oh good, you have bermuda grass already. You won't have to plant any." I smiled and made some sort of polite response, but my brain was screaming unprintable words about that bermuda grass. Clearly the tall prairie grasses outgrew the bermuda grass when there was no mowing going on, but it still lurked and hung around, just waiting for some fools to come along and mow down the prairie grasses, and we were those fools.

Dawn

Dawn:

Goodness, I don't even understand why anyone would plant Bermuda grass! I get that it's easy to grow, but at this point, I'd rather have no grass. Bermuda grass is insanely ugly to me, and I can't really even walk through my yard without shoes on because it hurts. I guess I'm used to the Bluegrass and Fescue we had in our yards in Ohio. When I first took a really good look at the Bermuda grass, I didn't even think it was grass! I can't believe it was growing in your yard under the prairie grass. That stuff is so tricky and so... dead set on surviving!

I also read one of your older posts about spider mites so I've been spraying the leaves with water. I got a soil pH, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous test kit so I'm going to whip that out soon. I know it will get much, much more hot here, and the spider mites are already going crazy so I've got to get this taken care of.

I was talking to one of my friends lately and he said, "I like to grow plants but I don't know as much as you do." I had to explain to him that I only know so much now because I've messed up so much! I was telling him I just started out wanting to grow some tomatoes but I've had to search for more and more information to battle against the elements, insects, and invasive species. This is a guy who's been gardening for years but is now asking my advice, haha. I told him he needs to sign up for an account here. I also got to pass on your information about hardening off to him as he'd never heard about that and was dealing with bringing a plant outside from inside and having it stop growing suddenly. Your advice and everyone else's on this forum has not only helped me but is helping others!

People plant bermuda grass because it can survive, even with no irrigation, during our all-too-frequent summer droughts. It may turn a tan or wheat color and look like it died in the absence of rainfall and irrigation for a couple of months, but it is only dormant, not dead (unfortunately).

In Fort Worth I had St. Augustine grass which will crowd out bermuda grass, and I'd grow it here if it wasn't a big water hog. That was in the relatively rainy (compared to now) 1980s and 1990s.

Farmers and ranchers used to plant a form of bermuda known as coastal bermuda for cattle forage and hay. I don't know if they still do, but I suspect that's how the bermuda came to be here in what was once a cattle pasture and then was farm fields back before that.

I'm glad you're passing on what you learn here, and I do the same thing. Everything I know I learned the hard way too, by having problems and searching for solutions to them. Experience is a great teacher, but a hard taskmaster all at the same time. No matter how much a person thinks they know about gardening, there's something new to be learned. I learn something new here on GardenWeb every day, even though I am a lifelong gardener. It is amazing to me how much more there always is to learn and to try. I do a lot of experimenting to figure out what works best here for me in the specific soil and weather conditions I have. I keep thinking that maybe in another 10-20 years, I'll have it all figured out.