Hazel, Hmm, I wonder if we googled if we'd find a circus tent company? Probably, but I doubt we could afford a circus tent, and I'm fairly sure my DH wouldn't like the idea of erecting a circus tent in our yard---he wouldn't like that idea at all. One year I put up one of those 10' x 10' folding canopies (like you use for shade while tailgating or camping or whatever) over my favorite plum tree and wrapped the whole thing in row cover fabric. My plums survived that freeze, but it was an incredible amount of work and my plum trees are too big now for that to even be a consideration. Really, in the year I did it, my tree was already too big and I had to do some pruning to make it fit, and I really wasn't happy about that either. Mike, That's a perfect comment about our weather----it is so, so true! I am familiar with how Fruitnut grows his fruit in his greenhouse way out there in west Texas, and if I had a greenhouse that size, I'd likely do the same. I think he is near El Paso? What he does is awesome and I admire how disciplined he is in maintaining his fruit tree size and such. For ordinary dirt gardeners like us, though, the occasional late freeze is always going to be a risk. Gardening is never going to be risk-free and is never going to provide guaranteed results. Kim, It works up to a point, but it just depends on how cold the weather is. You can protect fruit that way (sometimes, results are not guaranteed) and the professional orchardists/commercial growers often do. I think stone fruit is good down to 28 degrees for a limited time frame, but I don't remember if it is 1 hour or 2 or 4 or whatever. Hazel, I've done that before, with mixed results. Some years it worked, others it didn't. Likely the variability has to do with how cold the temperature dropped and how long it stayed that low. It rained here heavily a couple of weeks ago. It rained here yesterday. It is raining here right now and we're supposed to have rain on and off through 6 p.m. It is too bad all this rain couldn't wait and fall during the hours this weekend when the temperatures are in the danger range. I might run a sprinkler on Saturday night, or I might not. We're already so horribly wet that the idea of adding more water to the mix is not a very appealing one. It was bad enough when all the different varieties of stone fruit trees in our yard bloomed early, but then when the Mexican plums and Chickasaw plums bloomed early, I knew exactly what it meant----we were going to have a "late" freeze (which isn't really late, I doubt anyone in OK has hit their average last freeze date yet) that would kill, or at least threaten to kill, all the fruit. It has happened every time the native fruits have bloomed early since we moved here, except for one year. Our forecast has deteriorated, and since it updates frequently, who knows what we will end up with, but currently my forecast overnight lows are 38 for tonight, 32 for Sat, and 35 for Sunday. If I get a chance in between thunderstorms, I'll cover up the two tomato beds today and likely just leave them covered all weekend. If our temperatures don't drop lower than forecast, the fruit trees should be fine, but then our temperatures almost always drop lower than forecast at this time of the year, so I won't be surprised if that happens. If we're going to hit 32 here, then surely some parts of northern OK must be going to drop well into the 20s. Dawn

There's nothing wrong with that. I do that sort of freezing for later a lot at peak tomato harvest, which for me is usually June-July and peak fruit harvest, which is about the same time frame. I often have a freeze full of stuff in fall that I do go back and can eventually, or I use it for cooking. This year I kept up on the fresh preserving fairly well though. And, so course, some things like cucumbers need to be canned immediately so I always do them first even if it means freezing fruit and tomatoes for later. I did a huge amount of food preservation pretty much daily in June and July, mostly canning but also quite a bit of freezing and fermentation. When I stopped watering the garden and walked away from it in August or whenever it was, I didn't know if it would produce anything else. We were so hot and so dry, and at that point it doesn't matter how much it rained in May or June because that rain is long ago all used up And, I wasn't sure how the kitchen remodel would go and if I'd have a usable kitchen in time to do any fall food preservation either. Thankfully, the kitchen is almost done now, so I can use it for food preservation. Surprisingly, the garden is still a huge jungle and has produced a lot since the weather cooled down some earlier in the fall and rain began falling again. The plants don't look great as it still is too dry and they remain wilted most of the time, but they are productive which is what matters. And it is weedy, but snakes hide in weeds, so once I lose control of the weeds, I cannot do major weeding to get rid of them until after we freeze. Of course, it still hasn't rained enough, and it has stayed hot too long but the heat has been good for the garden in the sense that it remains in production. I harvested a ton of stuff about 2 weeks ago and have been preserving like crazy. I've also continued to harvest occasionally since then. The latest things I've made are pepper vinegar and a currently fermenting pepper mash that eventually will be made into hot sauce. I need to harvest again before the weekend frost/freeze, as there's still a lot of peppers I left in there to continue to grow and size up. When I walked through the garden earlier this morning, I made a list of things to harvest: watermelons, winter squash, birdhouse gourds, about 10 kinds of peppers, fennel, dill, lima beans and southern peas. There's green tomatoes that I may harvest on Friday, or I may just cover them up overnight. There's Laura Bush petunias that are newly sprouted volunteers about 4 weeks ago and about to bloom. Those usually can handle temperatures down to at least 20 degrees, so I'll work around them when cleaning up. I'd like to start cleaning out beds, but every bed has blooming plants in it and the garden still is full of butterflies and bees. So, I'll be patient and wait for it all to freeze. I really don't want to deny the bees and butterflies any of the flowers that remain even if it messes up my own timetable for garden cleanup. No matter what we do, I never have enough room to store everything when harvested, so it piles up in bowls and buckets all over the walk-in pantry, laundry room, kitchen and breakfast room. We have been working on fixing that. We put in a tall cabinet type pantry with pull-out drawers in the kitchen for normal pantry type food storage so I now can use the walk-in pantry only for produce and for home-preserved foods. I think that will help a lot. We need to reconfigure the interior of the walk-in pantry,move some shelves around, etc. (we moved the door to that pantry from the kitchen to the breakfast room), improve the lighting in it, etc. but that won't be hard or take long. Tim still has been working 6 days a week so we haven't worked on much of anything lately that requires power tools and his expertise. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be having to harvest produce and hang on to it for a couple of days before going to market. You're going to need a food storage facility bigger than your camper, Kim! Hazel, Are you good about watering indoor plants? If so, almost anything would work in a hanging planter. If you aren't really good about watering, then you could put something like a succulent in the hanging planter. Succulents like to stay on the dry side and don't need a lot of water. Just be sure you hang it in a place that has enough natural light. Dawn

Carpet is your friend. Gluing a floor into place will cause issues. The glues that are available on the market are not designed for low temperatures. Many of them 'let go' around 45 F. Some will get you to 35F...but those are rare. The only thing that might get you what you need would be a loose lay vinyl plank with a perimeter glue. I would still expect the perimeter adhesive to have a problem...but the fix would only be the planks around the outside of the floor. But you still have to assume the floor will fail. A low-grade laminate for $0.79/sf might give you 5 years. With a price tag that low, you can replace it 3 times before you get into the price of a vinyl plank that is stable enough for your temps AND has a loose lay install with perimeter glue. There's always solid hardwood (narrow plank = 2" strip hardwood) with an old fashioned oil based polyurethane (the stuff that stinks for 30+ days). But that will need a new subfloor.

It will freeze fine even with cooked potatoes. Just freeze what you will use for a meal in quart freezer zip-locks pushing all the air out. So many things freeze ok. Might lose a bit of that fresh-from-the-pot zip, but starting from frozen I always start with some fresh onion, celery, herb, or your apple...add the frozen on very low heat and cover to steam/thaw. Even the whole prepared meal with the sausage would be fine. For guests I like the fresh prepared but we never hesitate to freeze any leftovers for a quick mid-week meal for us. Even slaws and pickles will freeze 'ok'. Just don't expect the 'crunch' if you prefer that. Most krauts are soft with liquid/juices. We had a frost so I pulled some greens and heads of salad, chopped, then wilted/quick saute and froze topped off with some stock. (I'll add to winter soups). half pints. Go for it and experiment. A freezer is just another preservation method.