Mentally ready? Yes

But tomorrow I have lots of work to do. And all my tomatoes put on these beautiful new blooms this week, wasted effort.... I have one row I am going to attempt to cover just to see what happens but the rest are getting picked. My fall garden area should be OK I will wrap plastic around the fence.

Waiting for the freeze to kill the potato vines and morning glories that are trying to take over the world. Then it's clean up time. I have brought in all my plants, so I guess I am ready. I think it's suppose to rebound right away, so I can take a few cold days.

Okay...so even a couple of hours of freezing will kill most plants like tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, and pumpkins?

I haven't been home other than to sleep and feed the animals this week, so haven't had a chance to harvest anything. I have several watermelon and lots of green tomatoes and a few peppers. Oh, and okra. The pumpkins won't make it either? Or will they be okay? it would be nice if the new fruit had a bit more time because my last batch was ruined by bugs.

And I haven't had time to plant my garlic (y'all, this has been the craziest year as far as being busy and away from my house goes. and I'm sick of it.) Can I still plant it next week even though we will have had a freeze?

I'll be honest I am ready for snow. If it wasn't for people having to drive to work and such, I would love to see about 2 feet!!! Ya, ya......I know.....how could I.....I don't know either. I've noticed more changes in the leaves lately to dull yellows. I didn't see any of the oranges or reds this year other than my neighbors little tree.

Last week we had such lovely weather, not too cool but not too warm. We went to the zoo and had a great time. Not too many people there so we really took our time. We had a lot of fun and much needed quality family time.

Oh, we have had an influx of potato bugs. Somehow they have been getting in the house and of course my girls freak out. Lilo?! No......Lilo just eats them, lol. She loves bugs and my tomatoes and my peppers. Silly dog.

Supposedly, and I have never gotten up early enough to try it, if you hose the frost off the plants before sunrise, it prevents freeze damage.

I have been hand sewing velcro onto the vent I cut in the new greenhouse. My thumbs hurt, my hands ache. Stupid cheap greenhouse. Tomorrow, all semi tender plants go in the greenhouse. I'm wondering how the plants that should be hardy will deal with 80 today and freezing tomorrow, considering throwing some sheets over some of them.

I broke my ankle on ice in 1979, been terrified of ice and snow ever since. Add 3 artificial joints and falls are unacceptable

I'm trying to keep the freeze in perspective. It really is time. The garden needs to be cleaned up big time because morning glories and cypress vines came up all over after I abandoned the garden during the prolonged late summer dry spell in order to work on the kitchen remodel. Once it cooled off enough lately that I could work in the garden, I mostly just have been harvesting but leaving the invasive blooming vines alone because the bees and butterflies were flocking to them. There's still so many random flowers in bloom that a part of me hates for them to freeze.

Yesterday I noticed all these were still blooming: zinnias, moss rose, marigolds, bat-faced cuphea, morning glories in shades of white, blue, purple and pink, lantana, cypress vines, four o'clocks, autumn sage, mealy cup sage, pineapple sage, ornamental sweet potato vines, wax-leaf begonias, daturas, brugmansias and Laura Bush petunias. It is sad to think that by Sunday morning probably at least 75% of these will be gone. Normally the Laura Bush petunias survive frost and freezing temperatures pretty well. I've had the LB petunias tolerate temperatures down as low as 18 degrees before they freeze to death, but they had prior conditioning to cold weather. With little to no conditioning this year to colder temperatures, they probably will suffer a lot of damage from the first round of freezing temperatures. The autumn sage withstood temperatures last winter down into the 20s and bloomed on and off all winter and I expect it will do the same this winter if the weather stays as warm as the forecast indicates it might.

It is hard to let the flowers go because I'd like to keep them blooming for the butterflies and bees, but they are scattered randomly all over the garden and I'm not going to spend hours covering up the plants at night and uncovering them in the morning. I'm just not. Maybe if all the flowers were in one bed in one big mass, then I'd cover them, but they aren't. They are growing in virtually every raised bed in the garden.

I'll harvest the last peppers today. I left them on the plants as long as I could so they could grow a bit bigger, but the end is here. There's jalapenos, habaneros, sweet bell peppers, hinkelhatz, sweet banana peppers, hot banana peppers, anaheims, and poblanos. There's also some purple ornamental peppers (very small peppers) that I want to harvest to use to make pepper sauce (pepper-flavored vinegar). I've already made pepper sauce with hinkelhatz peppers, but I want to make some with these small peppers too. With this last harvest, we should have fresh peppers to eat for several more weeks. I'll harvest the green tomatoes, but I doubt any of them are mature enough that they'll ripen indoors. I'll bring in the last of the winter squash----the ones that are still dark green. They are not likely to mature as they're still very green, but I'll bring them in and we'll see what happens. I don't even know if I'll harvest the last of the southern peas and Lima beans. There's a lot of them, but I already have tons of them in the freezer. It probably depends on how windy and how cold it is when I'm out in the garden.

There's a part of me that really doesn't want for it to freeze too. That part of me is urging me to put row cover over everything and save it, but I'm not going to. I push the boundaries hard in late winter and early spring to extend the season by planting early and covering up the rows with frost blankets, but at this time of the year, I just need to let the plants go so I can focus on cleaning out/cleaning up, heaping compost onto the tops of the beds, and covering all that with a mix of grass clippings and chopped/shredded autumn leaves. Well, most of the autumn leaves are still on the trees, and most of the leaves are still mostly green, but I think this weekend's freeze will hasten the departure of the leaves from the trees, and then I'll have leaves to add to the raised beds. The compost pile also is awaiting its big autumn meal of spent plant material. I've been raking leaves that have fallen (and a gazillion acorns too) and putting them on the pile a bit here and there but it really needs a nice layer of green plant matter too so it can make a lot of compost by spring.

Hazel, In general, yes it will. Tender vegetation can be killed by frost damage or by freeze damage. The amount of time required depends on many variables and includes if the plant roots are dry or moist (dry roots freeze more readily than moist ones), prior cold exposure/hardening to cold temperatures, and even how much wind you have. On a frosty night, if there is enough wind, the frost settles on the plants randomly and is patchy rather than solid and some plants (or even just parts of some plants) can survive that. Each type of vegetable has a minimum temperature it can withstand without damage. For most, it is 32 degrees, but sometimes some warm-season plants will tolerate temperatures down to 28 degrees without frost. With freezing temperatures plus frost, most warm-season vegetable plants will freeze back on the top wherever they are hit by freezing air and frost. Sometimes they freeze on top, but plant parts beneath them live to see another day. Regardless, between the cold nights and rapidly decreasing daylength, the warm-season plants are about through producing even if they survive the first cold night. Sometimes, when the first couple of cold nights are in September or early October, if you cover up the plants and they survive those first couple of cold nights, the plants will live on for another 4 to 6 or maybe even 8 weeks, but that is because daylength is still good, sunlight isn't as weak as it will be by December, and temperatures warm right back up. This late in the season, even for plants that might make it through this weekend, the prognosis isn't good.

Whether plants survive the next couple of cold nights also depends on how warm the ground is (you'd think it would be pretty warm since we were just in the mid-80s this week). I've had pumpkins and watermelons (the fruit, not the plants) survive under dead foliage for up to 6 weeks. Then I found them while cleaning out the garden in December, harvested them and brought them indoors. The watermelons were ripe and edible, and probably at least 80% of the green pumpkins eventually turned their mature buff color and ripened indoors, but there's no guarantees. That was a year with an earlier freeze than this one, but it probably was only a couple of weeks early.

You also have to consider the duration of the freezing temperatures as well as how long the frost sits on the plants. There's a big difference in how much damage occurs with an hour or two of freezing temperatures versus 6 or 8 hours or more of freezing temperatures.

If you have something to cover up plants with, you could try it, but there's no guarantees the plants will survive. They may or they may not.

We now have a Freeze Watch in effect for our county for early Sunday morning. It is interesting because they don't have us under a Freeze Watch or Freeze Warning for early Saturday morning. Our forecast low for Saturday morning is 32 and our forecast low for Sunday morning is 33. So, why for one night and not the other? It is hard for me to guess, but I'm sure they have a reason, and it likely is the duration of the cold temperatures, how much wind will or won't be blowing, and whether the skies will be clear or cloudy. Frosts are complicated too. We all tend to think of freezing temperatures and frosts as occurring together, but real life is more complicated than that. I've seen frost hit ground-level plants hard even when the overnight low only dropped to 38 degrees. One explanation is easy----the thermometers are at 5' above ground level and warm air rises, leaving the coldest air at the ground level. So, my thermometer is recording what the air temperature is at 5' above grade level and plants are frosting and/or freezing with colder air at ground level. Sometimes, though, we have wind that leaves only patchy frost or no frost at all at the same temperature. And, sometimes real life defies logic. I've seen some tomato plants totally freeze at 32 or 34 degrees while other plants right beside them didn't freeze or suffer damage until we went down to 28 degrees. That's the different between a light freeze and a hard freeze---it is considered a hard freeze at 28 degrees and most warm-season vegetables cannot tolerate a hard freeze. However, most cool-season veggies can survive down into the lower 20s, and some can handle temperatures down into the teens without snow cover and even colder temperatures if they are insulated by snow.

Melissa, I'd be okay if it snowed. I doubt we'll see much snow this winter as the forecast is for both drier than average and warmer than average weather, but that certainly doesn't mean we won't have any cold weather or any precipitation. All we need is that combination of cold weather plus precipitation and we can have snow. Or, sadly, we could have ice, which is so much more dangerous.

I've never heard of potato bugs coming indoors. That is so odd. Thankfully you have little Lilo to take care of them! We're still fighting a lady bug invasion. I'll let them stay in the mudroom, but if they make it into the house, I usually vacuum them up and take them outdoors. I don't just dump them on the ground though. I empty the vacuum cleaner's dirt cup onto the ground in the greenhouse where there's plenty of heat and warmth as well as green plants. We usually have a lot of lady bugs overwinter in the greenhouse and most, if not all, the lady bugs survive being vacuumed up and removed from the house.

Amy, I've hosed frost off plants before but with mixed results. I'd be more likely to do it in spring than in fall. I believe much depends on how cold the air was. If you stay above freezing temperatures but with frost, hosing off the frost seems to work. If you go below freezing with frost, then hosing off the frost may not work because the plant cells may have been damaged anyway by the freezing temperatures. I've noticed over the years that the plants don't necessarily die in one night. Sometimes they freeze back or get bit back by frost bit after bit, night after night. Before I started using row covers so much, I'd set up a sprinkler in the garden the night before a frost was possible, and I'd run outside and turn it on shortly before sunrise in an effort to wash the frost off the plants. Sometimes it seemed to prevent damage and other times it didn't.

We can fight the effects that the changing of the seasons will have on our plants, up to a point. However, the seasons are going to change and we also have to accept that to some degree. Winter is coming. It is time. Acceptance of that can be hard, but we cannot live in denial either. I will console myself with the thought that having a frozen garden means that I don't have to choose between harvesting/weeding on a Sunday afternoon or watching the Dallas Cowboys play football. Or, decorating the Christmas tree or canning peppers or whatever. It is time to take a brief hiatus from the garden and do a few other things, right?

I've been working on my tomato grow list, and it is going to be full of surprises.

Ok, I was wrong and kinda feel a bit silly and dumb. They aren't potato bugs. Those things are so nasty looking lol. They are yellow lady bugs. Please excuse my bug ignorance (insert dumbfounded look here).

I have been making a pile of cuttings from the tomato plants when I prune them. Was thinking they would decompose and then work them back into the ground. That hasn't turned out very well since.....LILO TAKES THEM!! She loves taking them out into the yard like they are toys. "sigh" So much for my pile.

lol, Melissa. I wanted to ask if they might be lady bugs but I didn't want to sound snarky or anything. I'm glad they weren't potato bugs.

Lilo is hysterically funny. She needs her own FB page featuring photos of Lilo in the garden, destroying the garden, helping in the garden, etc. She'd probably become the next internet pet sensation.

At 2:44 p.m. the NWS issued an "urgent" Freeze Warning for our county and several others in southcentral OK for tonight. I knew they would. They always do that--leave us off the one they issue for practically all the rest of the area covered by the Norman forecast office and then add us in at the last minute. I was ready anyway and was outside putting the last 2 plants in the greenhouse when I saw the Freeze Warning. Our warning is for 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. I don't know how many of those hours we'll actually be at or below freezing, but with a warning that long, I'd expect the plants will be hit hard.

I watered every thing. Brought in a bunch of green tomatoes, about 2 dozen off the Black Brown Boar! and I threw about a dozen to the chickens. There were still some on the plant, ONE plant. There are potted plants I wish were up by the house, but it's not going to happen. The greenhouse, sitting on concrete, is 10* warmer than the open patio. I hope it stays a little warmer overnight. The lettuce and solo cups of greens are in there.

All the melons, pumpkins (all of two that are as big as a baseball), green tomatoes, and peppers are inside now.

So...the Seminole pumpkins...one is maybe baseball sized and the other a little bigger than a softball. What would you do with them? Keeping in mind that I've only harvested two others...and would like to eat them.

Also, all the tomatoes bigger than a golf ball have been harvested. Does anyone have a good green tomato salsa recipe. I don't have enough to can...but enough to make maybe a quart. Do green tomatoes make good fresh salsa--the pico de gallo type?

Just this second I remembered the potted plants on the shop porch! Better go get them.

Well...

It's cold. (so glad the wind settled down. Walking the dogs yesterday afternoon was miserable.)

However, the water in the coop is not frozen or even frosty. Haven't had a chance to look at the garden, because my son has an early jazz audition this morning. Looked at the weather on my phone. Says that Norman is 30, Moore and OKC are 34. I'm at the edge --in between--of all of those, but must be closer to the Moore/OKC temp. We don't have an outdoor thermometer. Hey, there's a Christmas gift idea. :)

I want a thermometer too. The phone said 29 at 3:00.

I got 2 pumpkins and 4 sweet potatoes cooked and seeds and apples in dehydrator. Smells so good in here. Perfect fall day!

The low was 31 on my patio. The sensor is near the house, so I expect it was colder. Get a thermometer you can read indoors that tells you high and low temps in a 24 hour period. Some are "line of sight" um, not sure of the technology, radio or wifi. I had one with corded sensors I used to use in the greenhouse that would not reset the high and low unless you did it manually. I want an actual weather station, maybe for Christmas. Some tell you temp and humidity.

The tomatoes and okra and some flowers are done. The brassica and Asian greens look OK. I have winter pea cover crops, some were just sprouting, not sure how they will fare. Garlic unscathed, but I need to mulch it before the weeds take over. The blanket flower looks like its ok and the mums. The firehouse petunia looks good, too. I have a Chinese celery (leaf celery) that Speckles dug up twice, it seems to be ok. Greenhouse plants are good, but it was 90 in there by the time I got out there. I told DH he should open the vent when he lets the chickens out.

I found a broccoli plant that spent the summer buried under tomato vines. I thought I pulled them all. It is probably Piracicaba, and it has a sprout on it.

I want to play outside, but I have to clean house. :(

I think it was 29, here near Tahlequah, this morning. Definitely the end of warm weather crops here.

No freeze at my house last night. I drove to Grove earlier today and I didn't see anything that looked frozen. We were 82 on Thursday, and I imagine the lake is still giving us some protection. The Mesonet showed freezing temps, but it is between Jay and Grove. My friend lives near the Mesonet station and some years I have 2-3 weeks more growing season than she does.

Winter-sowing containers are collected and gathered. The wood is chopped, hacked, cut and stacked. The stove is clean, lit, warm and heating a cinnamon brew. All the drafty spots are isolated, plugged or rugged. Granny smith apples rest on the counter seemingly without purpose, but will meet their end in the most awesome apple pie eva. These sit next to the dough peaking from beneath the tea towel. If I only had some home grown pumpkin... sigh.. next year. ha

Hazel, Are the pumpkins green? Turning buff? Fully buff-colored? I usually just line up the green Seminoles in a row and wait for them to turn green. Generally, most of them eventually turn buff colored. It is possible the baseball-sized one is still pretty tender and could be used as a summer squash. It just depends. In the summer, they hit baseball-sized maybe 3 or 4 days after the blossoms are fertilized and they are tender and can be eaten like summer squash. In the autumn, depending on daylength, temperature, etc., it can take them longer to reach baseball size and they may not be tender even at that size.

With all winter squash, the longer you let them sit, the better the flavor. This process is known as curing, and as they cure, the starches in the winter squash fruit turn to sugars and the flavor improves. I've had some Seminoles that were picked green take up to two months to eventually turn buff-colored out in the garage (unheated, but insulated) after I harvested them on the day before the first freeze. A few never do turn buff and just start to shrivel and rot. There's no cut and dried answer because each pumpkin is different. I always try to line them up in the order they were harvested, so that I know which ones to use first, which ensures we aren't using the more recently-harvested ones before they get a chance to cure.

It got colder than forecast (32 was our forecast) here in Love County, though some parts of the county were colder than others. We have a lot of variation in elevation, so it seems like the lower-lying areas got a few degrees colder than some of the higher elevations. At our Mesonet station at Burneyville, the low dropped down to 27 degrees and it was below freezing there for 6 or 7 hours. At our house, we dropped down to 29 degrees for about the same amount of time. We had a heavy, heavy, heavy frost. It looked like a dusting of snow (except on vehicle windshields where it was a sheet of solid ice), and our electronic rain gauge recorded the frost as 0.15" of precipitation.

We were out running errands all day and I didn't get a good look at the garden, except first-thing this morning when it was still covered in frost. I imagine when I look at it tomorrow, almost all the warm-season stuff will be toast. I had spent tons of time harvesting and canning (particularly peppers) over the last two weeks, so doing the last harvest yesterday only took me a couple of hours. We have winter squash and peppers piled up everywhere. I'll deal with them tomorrow.

Tonight's another cold night and then we warm up again. Today was a gorgeous day considering how cold it started out.

It was beautiful here too. It always amazes me how the tomato plants go from big lush green plants to melted mush with one quick frost. I wanted to take video for my mom and I forgot. The fall garden looks great and I have plenty of greens to eat. Got my hoops finally moved and will wrap my fenced area this week before I leave for Denton

We hit 31 degrees on Friday night & 30 degrees last night. Chilly with a heavy frost last night. All my flowers that were left & my herb plants are done for. The trees are dropping their leaves like crazy. But it is nice to see that autumn has finally arrived. Yesterday was a gorgeous day & hopefully today will be the same.

We got down to 28 degrees last night, so anything that might have squeezed through the first night at 29 degrees probably didn't make it through the second night. I haven't even looked in the garden to see. I expect the Laura Bush petunias and comfrey plants are still green and blooming, but doubt that much else is.

Yesterday's temperatures were decent during the day but dropped like a rock as soon as the sun set.

The leaves on the trees are coloring up so fast now, with lots of golds and yellows, but the reds are lagging behind.

My (random) potato plants, pumpkins...and basically everything else other than the herbs are done for. I know it's time. I'm a little sad, but a little not. I need to get into the holiday mode/mind set.

Right now, it's nice outside except for the wind. I hate cleaning the coop when it's windy and it always seems to be windy on the day I have time to clean the coop.

Our first frost of the season was a hard freeze at 23 degrees yesterday morning. This morning was almost as cold. I prefer the years that cool down more gradually, with frosts of 30+, but I remember several that have hit us like this. One year several years ago, the first frost was 19 degrees and a local apple orchard split all to pieces and had to be bulldozed. I think that was late November of 89. 2004 we had a first frost after Thanksgiving, although not quite as cold. Other years, the first frost has hit the last week of September.

We survived night one, but night two hit us with 27 degrees, so we are done.

Bon, sure wish we were closer together since my Seminole Pumpkin was unstoppable this year. It was fun, but I hope I never have this much again. I stopped weighing at 1105 pounds and probably got two wheelbarrow loads after that. It was still blooming when I started pulling out vines and I have green squash still on the ground. It was crazy.

Carol, all those Seminoles came from the square trash can planter you talked about? How many seeds did you plant?

Wow that's a lot of pumpkin. I got 4:) and since it was a volunteer I am tickled pink to have fresh pumpkin for some of my recipes. My white ones I was given I am going to puree and dehydrate.

We stayed above freezing last night! This week I think our coldest night will be only 40 degrees. It won't do anything for the now-frozen garden, though it ensures the few surviving flowers and herbs will have a good week.

I'm switching to holiday mode, and as soon as Thanksgiving is behind me, I'll be making my grow lists, checking my seed crates, and ordering any seeds I need for 2017. I'm actually late on this whole part of the gardening process, but the kitchen remodel and reorganization has taken up a lot more time than I thought it would.

Leaves are coming down like crazy now, so suddenly it looks a lot more like autumn.

He's so cute. I'm willing to bet he'll take care of any other little critters that would like to come inside and live in your greenhouse.