Good luck & hope the snow melts quickly. At least this late in the season you know it won't last very long. I'm beginning to dread seeing "30% chance of showers" in the forecast day after day. We need a really good soaking rain.

I bit the bullet yesterday and got out a gallon milk jug, poked a pinhole an inch from the bottom, filled it with water and set it beside one of my astilbes. I filled it again this afternoon when I got home and set it next to another one. The water comes out the pinhole and slowly waters the plant at the base. The inch of water left in the jug keeps the wind from blowing it around. It's my poor man's drip irrigation system. The astilbes are all sending up new growth and I don't want them to start the season with a water deficiency.

I use 3-gallon recycled cat litter jugs to water the hydrangeas since they really need to be watered deep and well. It's a lot of work but we obviously can't count on Mother Nature to do the watering for us.

Like you I was outside a couple days ago and decided it was just too cold & windy to be out there so I gave up trying to get anything done and came inside. My fingers are itching to start tidying up the flowerbeds, spreading mulch & setting in a few perennials I wintered over in pots.

I hope the snow you get melts quickly and doesn't do much damage. I just can't imagine snow here this late in the year.

Hope your garden fairs well with the snow. We had snow last year on April 19th! No damage, but then last year everything was so much later in waking up!

Last night, tonight and tomorrow night we are under a freeze warning. Last night it got down to 29 and maybe 28 tonight. About the same for tomorrow night. In some places wind chills were down into the teens.

I did cover my strawberries as they have blossoms and small green berries already. Also cover 3 hydrangea. Everything else is on their own.

I noticed this morning that a couple canes on some of my peonies were drooping, but when I got home from work tonight they were upright again. So I am keeping my fingers crossed. Our apples trees are in blossom, peonies and roses are budded and iris are starting to bloom! :-(

Oh my, here in Texas it was in the 80's today, much too warm for this time of year, makes me wonder how too soon our summer heat will hit, and we'll be whining about the heat(again). Mother Nature is just not fair to any of us!

We didn't get snow here but these freezes have been harmful to the plants. Have quite a number of Hosta that were fully leafed out that it affected pretty bad. Hope things went better for you farther North of me.
Cher

No accumulation this morning, but awhile ago I was driving and got caught in an ice/snow pellet storm that left about 1" of the stuff laying along the edge of the road. Just as quickly the sun came out and melted it all by the time I got home. Sorry about your hostas chohio, I didn't think the temps would get to them maybe I'd better heap some leaves up around mine this evening. It's suppose to go down to 29 here also.

My apple and crabapple trees are blooming now so I don't think they will get hurt, good luck with yours mary lu. I think I will definitely cover one of my newer roses again tho.

I feel for all of you who are getting cold stuff after having spring-like weather for weeks. I've experienced that here for way too many years.

It is supposed to get even hotter this summer. I hope and pray that forecast is wrong, but I don't think it is.

For all of you in the Northwest and the Southwest, you have my deepest sympathy. The weather channel was telling about the severe drought in your areas. They showed a map with the graphics of last year's drought and compared it to this year's so far - it is already worse and we are just beginning the season! Holy cow!!! Looks like you will get what we got last year.

I had to put a camping canopy over my flower gardens last year to try to keep the temps down and keep them from cooking in their own juices and many things still fried. The good news is that most everything survived, but it was a lot of work to keep them alive.

The drip system using cat litter containers is an awesome idea "gardenweed". Thanks!
I saw an idea in BH&Gs using empty terra cotta garden urns, with the same idea. So I set mine between tomatoes and if all the rain we are getting stops, I will fill them with water every morning and let it soak down deeply and irrigate my 'maters. I have lots of those big cat litter jugs I can use too. I recycle things and that is a really great way to reuse them. Love it!

Bless you all.
~Annie

I use large empty soda bottles as makeshift "waterglobes".
Really, just the same idea, keep the tomatoes from drying out without having to water every day!

My neighbors use recycled milk jugs to water their vegetable garden. They're the ones who clued me in on the idea. I added the cat litter jugs (1) because I had lots of them; and (2) because they hold three times as much water. I don't have any terra cotta garden urns so folks passing by will just have to get over all my jugs unless we get some decent rain PDQ.

Gardenweed....who gives a rat's arse what other people think. You guys can all smile all the way back to the house with your buckets full of tomatoes.

The urns: I got them at Wally World last fall - they were normally 35 dollars for the short, squatty ones, and 75 dollars for the tall ones. I got them for five bucks each. And since my daughter bought me two of them, I only spent ten bucks total.

Another way to help conserve water when irrigating tomatoes is to bury bottomless buckets or large pots deep in the garden soil. Plant your tomatoes down deep and bury most of the stems, but only to within a foot of the bucket rim. When you water, just fill the buckets with water and they will stay moist and cool for days, even in the heat. It makes feeding them easier too. You only feed and water each tomato plant. You can pile hay mulch around underneath the plants, but don't put any inside the buckets or you will create snake pits. This method really helps with dry weather. (My darling Papa taught me this method years ago.) The hardest part is finding enough 5-gallon buckets or big pots. I did find quite a few at a hamburger joint. They get dill pickles in them. As for the high temps, nothing helps when the temps get over a hundred. They just will not set fruit when it is that hot. Good luck everyone!

We are expected to get severe storms tonight, tomorrow and Saturday night too. Then, next week, the temps are supposed to drastically cool down. I don't know how cold the cool down will be, but not looking forward to it AT ALL!!! Worried....

~Annie