Redbirdroad, My gut feeling is that it still is too early to put anything, including wintersown plants, into the ground just yet. Here's why: First of all, cold-hardy plants do tolerate some degree of sub-freezing temperatures, but not as much as most new gardeners expect they will. Almost all of the cold-hardy plants that we grow here in vegetable and herb gardens can tolerate temperatures between 28 and 32 degrees and some amount of frost. How much cold they tolerate below 28 degrees is highly variable depending on what they are (kale is especially cold-hardy), how much previous cold exposure they've had, etc. Some veggies and herbs can tolerate frost and cold air temperatures down to 26 or 24 degrees, but there's no guarantee ever that they won't freeze. For example, a plant might tolerate an overnight low temperature of 24 degrees if that temperature lasted only an hour or two, but might freeze if that temperature lasted 8 or 10 hours. They might tolerate 26 degrees just fine in dry weather, but be miserable if 26 degrees and icy. There are lots of variables that help determine if any given plant can survive frost, freezing temperatures, or winter precipitation. Some of those variables would include your specific microclimate (my microclimate is colder than that of some nearby neighbors and I keep that in mind when they sometimes start planting earlier than I do), how sheltered from cold wind your garden either is or isn't, how warm the soil is, how much freezing precipitation might fall on the plant, etc. Without knowing the historical data for your specific location, none of us can even guess if it is okay for you to transplant your plants now. None of us has a crystal ball either, so cannot say if it is likely your plants will or will not be exposed to temperatures of, say, 32 or 28 or 24 degrees during the next few weeks. So, what it really comes down to is how much of a risk you want to take. If you feel like a hard, killing freeze (28 degrees or lower) is unlikely based on historical climatological data for your area, feel free to plant. If you have a sheltered location where buildings or solid stockade fences block north winds from your garden and also reflect light and heat onto it, you might feel like you can transplant those plants now. If you have floating row cover and can cover up the plants if freezing precipitation or a hard killing freeze is expected, you might feel like you can plant now. This is no specific date in February or March where anybody in Oklahoma can say, with absolute certainty, that there will not be another hard, killing freeze or even a light frost.What we're all doing is guestimating, wishing and hoping! I am about as far south as you can go in Oklahoma and still be north of the Red River, and I haven't put a thing in the ground yet because it is very likely I have between 1 and 3 killing freezes left to occur yet this winter. I have many flats of plants ready to put into the ground, but am not willing to risk losing them. In 4 or 5 days I might feel differently. We'll see.....after this week's cold spell passes. I am in southern Love County and my average last frost date is around March 27th, and my average last killing freeze of 28 degrees usually is a week or two before that. I normally don't put anything in the ground, except for onions, this early in the year and even the onions have frozen some years when put into the ground in February. I usually don't put edible podded peas into the ground until around March 1st. You do not necessarily gain anything by putting them into the ground while it is too cold because they will just sit there and sulk until it warms up to a temperature they like. So, for me, I feel like the risk of losing a very early planting to a hard freeze is greater than the small reward gained by planting when it is still as cold at night as it has been on some recent nights. If the plants are going to sit there and not make new growth because the soil and air are too cold at night, I'm not gaining anything by putting them in the ground early. You also have to decide how much of a gambler you are. If you don't mind taking the risk of losing plants and having to start all over again with more seed, then why not plant early? I plant a huge garden so I'd rather wait a little bit longer to put plants in the ground than have to start hundreds of new seeds for the replacement round of plants. I'm going to link some climate data for OK that shows the average last date of various temperatures. Keep in mind that with all averages, there is still a 50% chance of that temperature occurring after that average date. I don't even trust that 50% date because in 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008 I had a killing frost on May 3 or May 4 of each year, even though my average last frost date is March 27th. Does that mean I don't plant until May 4th? No, but it means that I am very careful about when I plant, I watch my weather like a hawk, and I have 5000 square feet of floating row cover in my garage so that I can cover up everything in the garden if very cold temperatures threaten. On the linked data below, if you can't find a listing for your city or town, just find the nearest city or twon. I will plant very early when I feel like I can. Last year my instincts were screaming "early spring" and I put 4 tomato plants into a huge, non-movable container on Feb 23rd. This year? My instincts are screaming "Don't you dare!" I've learned to listen to the little voice in my head because it rarely lets me down. You will develop your own instincts about what will work for you in your location, your microclimate, your soil, you wind and temperature patterns, etc., but it will develop over time. My general rule of thumb is that if I have to ask myself "does it seem safe to plant now", then the answer likely is no. When is just feels automatically feels right with little doubt, then it is safe to plant. Susan, I plant in flats sometimes, but only when I am going to quickly transplant the tiny plants either into small pots so they can grow on or if I am going to transplant them into the ground almost as soon as they sprout. I don't like to let the roots get too tangled in one big mass. Pam, I sow peas into 3 oz. paper cups with a big X cut into the bottom. I put two peas per cup and plant them,cup and all, once I feel like it is warm enough. The cups mostly decompose over the course of the season. Right now I have 400 paper cups in the unheated green house. About 80% of them have pea plants about an inch tall. The 20% that don't are just beginning to sprout and are one specific variety that seems to be more of a slow starter than others. They have been exposed to some nighttime lows as low as 25 degrees in the last week or two, so that may have kept them from sprouting as quickly as they would have if I had kept them indoors on the light shelf. I'll be watching the weather closely the next 5-10 days to see when it seems 'safe' to put my pea babies in the ground. We have to get through this week's rainy and cold spell first, then I'll see how the 10-day forecast looks. I have plenty of other cool season veggies and herbs in the greenhouse but am not rushing them into the ground. My experience here is that I am better off waiting another week for the cold nights to warm up a big more. While we are having some gorgeous daytime weather, the nights are still cold and frosty. I am eager to get my cool season plants out of the greenhouse to make more room for warm-season plants, but the cold weather isn't through with us yet. Larry, No matter how much room and light I have, I always need more. It seems like there is never enough. I've had my Dixondale onion plants for about 8 days now and haven't put a single one in the ground because I'm waiting for the Wed.-Thurs. cold and rain to pass. Then I'll see if I am ready to put those little baby onions in the soil. Last year it rained cats and dogs (two 3" rainfalls a few days apart) right after I planted onions and it got really cold and a lot of them froze, so I am not in a big hurry this year. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Climate Normals for Oklahoma

Pam, Usually when the aphids show up here, masses of lady bugs arrive about 7-10 days later and start gobbling them up. Oddly this year we have tons of lady bugs early and no aphids yet. It is possible the lady bugs are controlling the aphids before I ever even see them. Are aphids a regular problem there or is this out of the ordinary? Louise Riotte used to recommend dusting agricultural lime on plants infested with aphids, but since our soil here is already so alkaline, I've never used lime for them. I think planting and covering up the plants you mentioned would be fine. However, you still need to check the plants daily for aphids underneath the covering. Nothing would be worse that having aphids multiplying under the row cover since the row cover could prevent beneficial insects from reaching the aphids. The row cover will provide decent wind protection and, obviously, the heavier the row cover, the more protection it provides. Row cover might protect the plants adequately from rain. It just depends on how heavy the rain is. We usually don't get heavy enough rain here at our house in mid-spring to pound tomato plants to a pulp. By the time we are warm enough for violent thunderstorms with heavy rain to develop, the plants usually are big and strong and generally remain undamaged. When I put tomato plants in the ground, I immediately hammer a stake into the ground close to each plant and use zip ties to hold the plant up close to the stake. This protects the plants from strong winds and the occasional heavy rainstorm. Normally I cage at planting time as the cages will give some hail protection, but this year we put hoops over the rows of tomatoes and covered the hoops with chicken wire and with heavy duty deer fencing. Now that the plants are growing well, I need to remove the hoop coverings in the next few days and get the cages around the plants while the plants are still a manageable size. In some past years, I wrapped each tomato cage in 4 or 6 mm plastic on the same day I put the plants in the ground, in effect turning each cage into a mini greenhouse. I would remove the plastic as soon as the plants reached it so that hitting the plastic wouldn't slow their growth or make the plants misshapen. This works really well but is very labor-intensive. My dad used to put #10 vegetable cans (he got them from the lunch ladies at our school cafeteria back then) around each small tomato plant when he planted them. He'd cut the bottom off the cans and work them a couple of inches into the soil so they wouldn't blow away. By the early 1980s he was using 5-gallon buckets in the same way, but cutting the bottoms off of them was a PITA. He also sometimes used black nursery pots the same way. By the time the buckets, cans or pots were removed from the plants, the worst spring winds had ended. Lots of gardeners here in my neighborhood use black nursery pots or 5-gallon buckets the same way he did, and on some recent cold nights I saw big molasses feed tubs turned upside down and lined up in a row in a garden. I bet they had been placed over tomato plants for frost protection. The main way I protect tomato plants from wind or rain is by hardening them off well in heavy wind exposure after they've already had significant wind exposure indoors from a fan. I try to get them strong enough before they go into the ground so I don't have to worry much about severe storms hurting them. Oddly, when I started hardening them off this spring, it was not nearly as windy as usual. I remember complaining to Tim that the March winds were not strong enough. I felt like the plants were not as strong as usual at planting time. We did finally get our strong winds -- in late April and early May. However, the tomato plants tolerated the winds just fine. This has been such a challenging planting season. I feel like I am so far behind on warm-season planting, but at least the cool-season plants have had the kind of weather they like. It is not yet a bad pest year here. So far this year the only pests I have found doing damage in the garden are 2 army worms (one on a potato plant and one on a lambs quarters plant I was pulling out of a bed), 2 cabbage loopers and one cutworm. The garden is full of birds every day and I assume they are taking care of a lot of the pests. Ever since we hit 91 degrees last week (before dropping into the 20s and 30s a few nights later), grasshoppers (older ones, not nymphs) have just appeared out of nowhere. Yesterday I found some fairly newly hatched grasshoppers ( about 1/8" long or maybe even a smidgen smaller) and one very small potato leafhopper. Well, cucumber beetles have been around all spring, but our fields always are full of them and there isn't much I can do about them. For every one I kill, 100 more appear, so I just don't even bother trying to control them. Aphids usually are not an issue here except for pea aphids some years, though not this year, on the sugar snap peas and for green aphids on the Piricicaba broccoli (and only on this one variety--it is an aphid magnet). If aphids are a huge issue, you could buy and release lady bugs. Also, keep an eye on your soil's nitrogen levels. Aphids often flock to plants that are growing in high-nitrogen soils. Dawn

My husband was in michigan this week and that was one of the flights he thought about taking on thursday night. He flies a lot and it just hit close to home. Clarence is not far from where we live. We are a little more out in the country. Big sigh of relief. When the news came on at 10pm they announced at the end of the broadcast that a plane had crashed by the airport, but they didn't know anything yet. By the time the 11pm news came on, it was not until after the weather that their news crews made it to the neighborhood and they announced it was a commercial plane. WIVB broadcast without commercial break until I went to bed at 2am. When my husband called to say he was alright i was so grateful. (wipes tears and sniffles) Fran, Could i have the blanket flower, please? BTW, DS#3 watered my keyboard once, its still a little iffy. We set it in from of the blower on the woodstove for a week. Just FYI those of you sowing in the keys LOL! Thank all of you for the prayers. Families here are esp. close knit and things like this are difficult for anyone. Praying for your FIL, too Nichol. Fleethart

Stupidlazydog, I wouldn't worry about your trees being out in the rain. In fact, it's great for them. I love the fact mines get flooded. It cleans all the crap out of the soil mix from tap water and fertilizer deposits. They love the fresh rain. That is when mines perform their best and send out all kinds of new growth. Ladylotus, wow. Do you spend time in there during the winter? maybe read a book or set a chair there? Very nice. Do you ever worry about Mealy Bugs with that many plants? Bugs at all? That would put a dent in things, but if not, such a relief! Beautiful and great job. Do you treat them to prevent pests at all before they come in? Matt, sounds a little warmer than my temps although it has been very warm this year for a change. How are your plants faring today? You have quite a good collection there) Mike