I'm glad you clarified that, because I thought the same thing Larry did, Susan, and I was horrified....thinking to myself "No, Susan, No." Now I am ROTFL because I knew that you knew better than to put a poor, unsuspecting plant in a Topsy-Turvy thing and I couldn't figure out what in the world was going on. Forgive me for thinking you'd lost your mind. : ) I'd move those plants back inside because you cannot count on a forecast to be that precise and if they are saying 40 degrees now, it could go lower. Last week our forecast low was for 36, and then the forecast dropped to 34, and our actual temperature was 28. This week, it was for 39, and then they dropped it to 37 yesterday and now it is 34....so maybe we'll see 28 again if the skies are clear. When they keep dropping the forecast low as the cold night approaches, it makes me nervous to the point that I cover up everything I possibly can within reason. Even 40 degrees is a temperature the plants won't like, even though it won't cause freeze damage. Remember, though, that frost can and does form at above-freezing temperatures up to 39 or even 40 degrees (a hard lesson I was slow to learn after we moved here because it never happened in Fort Worth) so don't take any chances with your plants. Dawn

Dorothy, My experience with planting in the ground is exactly the same as yours. Not only did they begin to rot without sprouting, but something was eating the peas underground because they would entirely disappear overnight without a trace. You and I do sprout our peas in similar ways and plant out at about the same time even though I am a lot further south and it would seem like I could plant earlier than you, but I can't....and I blame it on my cold microclimate. If I planted much earlier than you, I don't think I'd get a crop any earlier. Amunk1, One thing I love about gardening is that everything we do can be viewed as an experiment. Try something one way, learn from that and then the next time you can try it a different way in order to improve upon the previous effort. My entire garden is just one big experiment every year with many smaller experiments going on within the big experiment. Dorothy and I both have been gardening a long time(and I won't rat out her age or mine by admitting exactly how long) and I guarantee you I do not do things the exact same way now that I did them in the 1980s or 1990s or early 2000s, and certainly not the way I did things in the 1970s when I was very young and tended to love my plants to death by overwatering them. It is important to not get stuck in a rut and keep on doing things the same way you did them in the past. There's always room for improvement and it is fun to try to improve your garden's appearance and productivity every year. Realistically speaking, here in OK, sometimes we are happy if we just manage to keep our gardens alive. Peas grow best and taste best when they mature before temperatures begin regularly exceeding 75 degrees. That statement sounds so calm and logical, but Oklahoma weather is not calm and logical. It is a wild roller coaster ride, and I find it rare for us to stay cool enough long enough for my snap peas to grow well enough that they are producing much of a crop while the daytime highs are still in the 70s. In that sense, this is looking like a really good pea year. The issue, though, is that just because we have highs at our house in the 70s this week, that doesn't mean they'll last long. We could be in the 80s next week and the 90s the week after that. That is why is it so important to plant early. Technically, the ground usually is a bit too cold for peas to sprout during the OSU-recommended planting time. They will sprout if conditions are perfect, but if we are too wet or too cold, they can rot before they sprout. That's why a lot of us sprout our peas indoors by soaking them in water for a few hours, wrapping them in a paper towel or coffee filter and popping them into soil-less mix as soon as the peas have small sprouts. I have done that every year I've grown them here except the first year, when I planted them in the ground and they sprouted and grew...and then it got hot and they died before making very many peas. The odd thing is that while they won't sprout easily in cold soil, they grow well in it. So, we start early and baby them through a few bitter cold nights (by covering them up) because it is the best way to "guarantee" a crop, though you really aren't guaranteeing a crop so much as improving your chance of getting one. In areas of the country that have a slower transition from winter's cold to summer's heat, gardeners can just wait for the soil to warm up some more and then plant the pea seeds directly in the ground. In OK, where we can literally go from too cold to too hot in one week some years, we don't have that luxury. I deviated from sprouting the pea seeds in paper towels this year because I wanted to see if they would sprout in soil-less mix as easily as in paper towels. They did, but were a little slower. I started early, so that wasn't a big issue. Had I been running behind on seed-starting, I would have sprouted them first in paper towels to speed up the process. I learned to grow almost everything in the ground from seed first (except tomatoes, peppers and eggplant which need to be started indoors far in advance of the transplant date) and then learned how to start seed indoors for transplants. I think that helped because I already knew when everything should be put into the ground, so all I had to work on was learning how early to start them indoors so they were the right size at transplant time and learning how to harden off plants grown indoors, which I learned in Texas in the 1990s. I had to change things a bit when I moved farther north to OK because our nights stay a lot colder a lot longer. With greenhouses, there is a learning curve. The smaller the greenhouse,l the harder it is to regulate the temperature and the light. I feel like the shadecloth made growing in the greenhouse so much easier. It also helps to have a fan to give your plants good air movement for good plant health while in the greenhouse, and I think that Dorothy has a heated propagation bench, but I don't. I'm going to assume you've seen the OSU Garden Planning Guide that has planting dates for cool season crops in winter/spring and warm season planting dates in spring/mid-summer. So, instead of linking it again since we link it often in various 'new gardener' threads, I am going to link the Fall Garden Planning Guide. You can look ahead to what you can plant in summer (and a few things in fall) for a fall harvest. I usually start my seeds for my fall tomato plants in May so I can put the fall tomatoes in the ground in mid-June through early July. It seems silly to a non-gardener when they look at the beautiful tomato plants in my garden in June and then look at the tiny seedlings I'm growing for fall. Not being gardeners, they don't understand why a person starts new plants for fall. If they were gardeners they'd understand that July and August are really tough on tomato plants here and that fresh, new plants that just went into the ground in early summer have more vigor and do better in fall than older plants that are running out of energy. For a long time....and I mean a couple of decades or further back, I carried over the spring plants through the fall but once I tried with fresh plants for fall, I was amazed at how much better they do. Now, see, that is the sort of experiment that pays off. I never would have known how well it would work if I hadn't tried it. One of the wonderful thing about gardening in Oklahoma is we have a very long growing season, although technically it is broken up into smaller sub-seasons. That means that we get a second chance in fall with many cool-season and warm-season plants. Keep in mind, we often have to plant in ridiculously hot and miserably dry weather in June through August so we can be harvesting in September through December or later. The fall season really is a fall harvesting season because the fall garden planting mostly occurs in summer. Technically, the fall garden planting season starts with tomatoes going into the ground July 1st. That means you need to start your seeds 6-8 weeks before that so you'll have transplants ready by July 1st, and I often put them into the ground a week or two earlier than that, usually to fill a space made empty by the removal of a cool-season crop that is finished producing. I personally haven't had much luck with snap peas in fall. Often, just about the time the heat drops enough that the plants grow well,, we turn significantly colder and we get too cold too early and the blossoms drop off the plants. I keep trying though, because maybe one of these years I'll get it right. Some crops, though, like kale, cauliflower and brussels sprouts do better in the fall than in the spring. Just keep planting and plugging away. Even when you encounter obstacles, every experience is a learning experience. Every learning experience makes you a better gardener. Nobody is successful with every crop every year. I'm happy if 75% if the crops I plant produce an edible harvest. We just have too much odd weather and too many pests to reasonably expect 100% success every year. Remember, too, to enjoy the process. Don't worry, don't hurry....and don't forget to stop and smell the flowers. To me, the process of gardening is more important than the end result. I try to enjoy every day of the journey, and then whatever crop is there at the end of the journey is just a bonus. Gardening is very rewarding and can add great joy to your life, but some years it brings a lot of stress and I think we all find ourselves too garden-stressed at times. If we had perfect weather and no pests, what would we talk about? We'd just sit here saying "the broccoli is going bonkers, the potatoes are perfect, the lettuce is lovely and the tomatoes are terrific" and it would be so boring. Generally, gardening in OK includes a certain amount of, hmm, let's call it "drama", and it often arrives in the form of late freezes, late snow, sleet, hail, tornadoes, derecho winds, microbursts, an occasional haboob, wind-driven wildfire, graupel, thundersnow, flooding rain or, conversely, months with almost no rain at all and tremendous drought. Sometimes I think to myself "if the weather was perfect, what would we discuss here?" Not to worry, though, because it never will happen. Our weather is many things, but "perfect" is not one of them, but we just keep on keeping on anyhow. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Fall Garden Planning Guide

I am liking anything above 65. However, we are having a lot of fluctuation of temps going on now. I put mine outside in the sun yesterday and it was about 70 degrees. Today the high is 44. On these colder days like today I dont put mine out. But what does this do to the harding off process? If you skip a few days because of mother nature, I am thinking that it has to extend the process correct? 2 days nice and harden off, then 4-6 days of to cold.... Bill

Anne, I have to admit that I do the same thing. I take brand new seedlings outside ASAP when the weather is warm and sunny, since they'd be in the sun if they germinated outside as in winter sowing. I put them in a spot that blocks off heavy winds, though breezes flow through, and the sun hits that part of the deck only about four hours a day right now. It grows longer as the sun creeps northward. I bring them in at night when the temps are going to get below 50 and leave them under lights if it's overcast or cold outside during the day. Fortunately, I have only three large flats of seedlings, not just tomatoes, and it's easy enough to bring them in and out. I just think they're healthier under natural light as much as possible. By the time they're set out in the garden, they're well-hardened and sturdy. This way of handling seedlings isn't to everybody's taste or liking, of course, but it works fine for me, even if they have to miss their playtime outside because I'm gone for a weekend or there's a cold stretch of a few days. The physiological strengthening of the seedlings by being outside in the breezes and natural light is not lost when they're brought inside for a couple of days. My confidence about handling the seedlings this way is based on the information in the link below, which is the best description of what hardening off accomplishes for the plant that I've ever seen. Actually, it's the ONLY description that I've seen. It is not a simple matter, but the more you understand about what an indoor-germinated plant experiences during hardening off, the more sure you can be about what you're doing by exposing them to the "real world". Here is a link that might be useful: Bracing Up: Hardening Off Transplants