WOW...I hear ya Bill! Winter is finally coming. Just checked our temps for Pahrump next week and YIKES!!! Our high on Tuesday will be 46..low 25 but Wednesday & Thursday the low's will be 21 & 23. I did move my lemon tree inside the sunroom. Other then doing that my plants just have to deal with the weather. Most of my plants were planted for the hot and freezing cold and then the gusty winds too.
I have my sunroom that I keep my precious babies in it. I wonder if my impatients will make it inside this year. Outside they would die when it gets cold.
I picked my tomatoes already and there were TONS of green ones...literally I can say I have at least 500+ of them in baskets slowly turning red. I will bring the tomatoe baskets inside the house because of the impending freeze. But that's it for me.
Hard to believe in a few days we will only have a high temperature of 46!!!!! I've started decorating the house for Christmas. Glad we got the outside lights up already.

Freezes come to Northern Nevada even earlier. I finished up the last of the post-freeze chores this weekend. And so it goes...

Lisa

We were in Napa, CA over Thanksgiving weekend and couldn't wait to get back because it was about ten degrees colder there than here in Las Vegas. It was not rainy but it was humid. For our early morning drives through the wonderful downtown victorian and bungalo type houses we had to scrape a lot of frost off our windshields.

When we got back here I noticed damage on the peppers and tomatoes so we must have gotten some cold weather here too. I just walked outside this morning though and it doesn't "feel" as cold as it was supposed to get.

Thank goodness for plants like perky sue that bloom all year round and never look bad. Oh and the grasses that just look great all winter until I hack them down in the spring. I have an aloe sinkatana that blooms in the winter and it is doing so now and I guess the paperwhites must be thinking it's spring because they have popped up and are starting to bloom. Also the cassias are blooming and I'm wondering if they will keep it up all winter this year.

Rebecca I'll bet your sunroom is great to have this time of year. Our little six foot square greenhouse is looking very small and vulnerable right now. I keep putting in gallon bottles of water as fast as the kids can make it through a milk jug to hold the heat but I don't know if it will be enough for those tomato plants we have inside.

Bill, our bouganvillea looks great right now too. Fall is when it always looks its best but ends up dying to the ground every winter and having to start all over. Good thing they grow like weeds.

Lisa, you may have a longer winter than we do down south but I do envy you those Japanese Maples that you can grow there. They would hate it here.

Happy Gardening, Maria

Hi,

One thing that helps if you don't mind using a little extra electricity is to get one of those large window fans and point it in the general direction of the plants you don't want to get nipped by frost. Turn it on in late evening. Slow speed is fine.

We have extended the tomato growing season in some cases by several weeks to well over a month in past years.

Last week we still had peppers maturing.

All you need to do is move the air around the plants and if the temps get above freezing during daylight, you can prolong maturation a bit.

dRahme

Hey Maria...it is sooo nice standing in my sunroom watching these gusty, freezing winds blow by.....it's 45 degrees out there though but it sure beats the 38 degrees and at least 60mph winds. I have never seen it blow this bad since we've moved here. I am so glad I picked the green tomatoes from my garden (like you told me too) and brought them inside the house. You are right, they are turning red too...and thank goodness-not at the same time. Yikes.

Hope everyone is okay out there "if" you have to go outside at all.

Beca