Brrr! That is too cold. It was 29 here at our house and there was frost , though it wasn't nearly as heavy as yesterday's frost.

I'm ready for the last frost too, but if I base my expectations on experience in recent years, the last frost is probably a few more weeks down the road. I feel like frost is always a possibility thru the first week of May any more. (Except for 2012 when the last frost was gloriously early!)

Let's hope we don't have excessively warm weather like 2011 and 2012 again. Dawn I don't know how you do it. It drives me crazy worrying about frost, but you have milder weather warm enough to plant things outside early and have to worry about frost until May. I wore a coat here yesterday so I won't be trying anything like tomatoes until April and then under walls of water.

I once planted coleus from seed in Jan. watched the tiny plants grow, planted them out after warm weather had arrived and they were all killed May 6 many years ago. I still haven't forgotten that and never grew coleus from seed again. Cuttings yes but they stay inside until late.

Helen, Our weather seesaws back and forth so much in March and April (and sometimes even in February) that it drives me crazy. If I wait for the weather to stabilize before I plant stuff, the daytime highs are getting ridiculously high by then. Thus, I plant when the soil temps reach the right range and then just try to cover up plants on potentially frosty or freezing nights.

I know that in March we have had several days where it hit 85-87 degrees at our house, but still have had nights in the 20s this week, and had temperatures in early March of 10 degrees one night and about 14 or 16 degrees another night. It drives me up the wall. I hate having to worry endlessly about the occasional freezing nights, but I'm not going to wait until May to plant...because in the same week we have our last night near freezing in May, we'll likely start hitting high temperatures in the 90s. It makes growing tomatoes and getting a good harvest extremely challenging some years. I just cannot be one of those people who put their tomato plants in the ground at the end of April or in early May and then gets the main harvest in August or September. I have to have fresh tomatoes all the time! It is my own fault. Once you have achieved tomato harvests in June, you start pushing to harvest the fruit in May, and once you do that....you want fruit in April, etc. I'd grow them all winter in the greenhouse if the greenhouse tomatoes had good enough flavor to make it worthwhile,but they don't.

I've lost all kinds of flower seedlings to early planting, so am more careful about putting them in the ground early. I usually watch for volunteer seedlings in the garden from last year's flowers, and then just sow more seed of the same kind to ensure we have plenty of them. If anything, I keep home-raised flower seedlings indoors under the grow lights much longer than I'd like to, but that's so they won't freeze back. I didn't find growing coleus (or begonias) from seed very rewarding either. They are so slow to gain a decent size, and the plants pop up in the stores in wonderful sizes while my coleus plants are still little dinky things. I tend to buy a big coleus plant I like, and root a bunch of cuttings from it.

I hope we don't have excessively hot summer weather again like we had here in 2011 and 2012 either, and 2013 was no picnic either though more because of drought than excessively high temperatures, but I'd like for April to be decently warm and for the temperatures to just be stable.

I never feel safe from a snow storm until Easter has passed, and Easter is still so far away. I have to slow down my planting of stuff in the ground now because I'm going to have more garden beds planted than I have row cover.

I wore a coat yesterday morning when I went outside to feed the chickens around sunrise because it was cold and frosty, but by 1 pm I was working in the garden wearing a t-shirt and capris. That is a pretty typical March day here, and I always try to get the greenhouse closed up around 4 pm so it can build up a little heat to get the plants in there through the night. This week, my greenhouse temperatures on sunny days have been in the 90s with both doors open, but quickly drop to the 70s around sunset. As long as both doors were closed by 4 pm, the greenhouse will stay roughly 10 degrees warmer than the outside air temperatures overnight, as long as we had a reasonable amount of sunlight in the afternoon.

The tomato plants I put in the ground already are making new growth, so clearly they find both the soil temperatures and air temperatures to their liking.

Dawn

I give up on cool crops. I lost half my seedlings last week when it froze. It's impossible. I'll try with my tomato seedlings that are left, but I cannot really keep them warm. The only thing really surviving is San Marzano. It seems unstoppable. My soil is only 38 degrees. By the time the soil has a chance to warm up, it'll be too hot. I guess I'll become an avid fall gardener.