WIND!!! You do live in Ok!!! Sorry can't help you I haven't planted anything!

I had wind damage also. We had stuff scattered from the house to the north and to the south. Sheet metal pulled loose on the house and barn, shingles blown off the old house, the top broken out of cedar tree behind the house.

The garden looks ok, but I have checked harder for damage in other areas.

I live in a valley that runs north and south and deal with wind every year. I have trellises in my garden, I even use them for my corn if I have time to weave binder twine around the corn and trellis, I don't tie every row but it still sorta makes a windbreak. I seldom have wind damage on cole crops, but corn tomatoes and peppers are different story.

It's always windy here, but I never really have problems with the plants that are lower to the ground. I have to make sure to stake tomatoes and peppers and stuff like that really well. Make sure they're tied to cages. I don't think this wind has caused any problems for any of my stuff, but on the way to work this morning, I noticed my fence had blown down. With no protection at all, I may have some damage. Not that it matters. Tonight's temperatures should take care of anything the wind doesn't hurt.

Leslie

Wind finally died down to more or less normal levels, here.

Looks like the early blossoms on the apples and cherries are gone, now....and there's other people's trash blown into into the garden to pick up....again.

The rest of our veggies look ok, but they're dry as a bone, now. That wind just sucks the moisture out of the top couple of inches of soil.

Two nights ago we slept with the windows open in our RV and this morning we had snow.

The wind here is not slowing down at all. I just got off the roof where I was screwing down sheet iron and I reattaches the latch chains to the barn doors. The rest of the repairs will have to wait for better weather.

The garden looks good, but all my plants are leaning south.

I think that everyone in OK has trouble with wind, and it can happen pretty much any month of the year...not just in traditionally windy March. It isn't summertime here until a severe thunderstorm has flattened all my corn plants.

To some extent I don't really do anything to block the wind from the garden. In some cases (depending on the strength and direction of the wind), the way my garden is sited might help the plants a little because there's multiple acres of woodland just north of the garden and that woodland likely serves as something of a windbreak for some of the garden plants. I do grow taller perennials and some annuals around the edges of the garden and they serve as a windbreak later in the year, but not this early in the year.

If you decide to use your plywood idea, be sure it is sturdy and won't snap and fall on top of the plants.

When I am hardening off plants in flats before putting them in the ground, I am careful to harden them off not just to increasing amounts of sunlight but also to ever-increasing amounts of wind. I try to toughen them up as much as possible before I put them in the ground and then I don't worry too much after that. Usually, they will adapt to the wind through repeated exposure to it.

I have had some plants looking kind of wilty and sad during the windy periods of the last week, but they bounce back overnight and then the wind beats the tar out of them all day again. I haven't had any shredded plants like you did. Our highest wind gust yesterday was 47 mph and that probably was our highest gust during the last week too. I cannot imagine what sort of wind you had that they got shredded like that. Are you sure some hail didn't sneak in with some of the rain you had? I have had hail shred plants about a billion times.

Leslie, Now, let's think positive. Maybe the plants will pull through tonight. It happens.

Warren, Yesterday I found one lone little plum on the plum tree nearest the driveway. We lost all the blooms a few weeks ago when the temperature dropped as low as 24 degrees while they were blooming. I am pretty sure tonight's temperatures will make that last little plum fall off the tree. I moved the potted fig into the greenhouse, and the orange tree, which is in bloom, in there as well. They ought to be okay. I haven't even checked the peach trees. They bloomed later than the plums so might have formed fruit. Otherwise, the strawberries have blooms and berries and the native blackberries just started blooming in time for the freeze to damage them tonight. Some years it is really hard to get fruit here! Make that most years.

Carol, That is too funny. They had a 30% chance of snow in the Thackerville forecast (I didn't even look at my forecast---we are so close to Thackerville that I assumed ours was the same), but it didn't happen. I was outside finishing putting row covers on the plants so they'd be covered in case it tried to snow. The wind was blowing so hard that the snow probably would have been blowing sideways anyhow.

Larry, You must have had stronger wind than we had. Everything is more or less intact here.

The sun came out for a while this afternoon y'all, and the wind is starting to weaken a little. I left the greenhouse closed all day so it could build up enough heat inside to get through the night. Last night the greenhouse stayed 10 degrees warmer than the overnight low temperature outdoors. I hope it does that tonight too.

I'm tired of the wind, and our weather is so wacky lately. Yes, I mean wackier than normal. At one point last night, I counted all the different colors on the NWS-Norman county weather map, with each color standing for one thing or another---watches, warnings, advisories, etc., and there were 14 different colors represented on the legend.

Everything in the front garden that can be covered up is, but in the back garden, where the perennial herbs and flowers are up and fairly large (comfrey, for example, already is blooming), I didn't cover anything. That is a pretty exposed area in terms of wind and cold, so I think the perennials are tough enough to handle whatever we get tonight.

Dawn

Yeah, I get worse than usual wind here. I'm up near the top of a hill just south of the South Canadian River. Newcastle has a very high elevation in relation to surrounding geography.

Our neighborhood is still a fairly new developed area; only about 10 years old. So not too many big trees around.

I also use raised beds, so I think that makes the plants take a harder hit than if they were along the ground.

My broccoli plants had been outside for probably a month already? They were still fairly small though, so perhaps there was something else wrong with them. But they should've been more than hardened off.

I do have a 4' tall chainlink fence about 8-10' north of my raised beds. I've never really wanted to plant anything along it because it always tears up the fence over time.

Is there anything I could plant along the fence that would provide cover in March that doesn't really grow too big?

It's mainly the "trunk" of whatever I plant that I'm worried about. Those things can grow over time and mess up the fence.

Because you need for your windblocking plants to be there in March, you'd pretty much need to go with an evergreen shrub or tree of some kind. You might want to consider one of the dwarf hollies, for example. Don't let the word "dwarf" fool you---some dwarf hollies still get 8-10' tall and 6'-8' wide so they are dwarf only in the sense that they are smaller than the original shrub. Mature Burford hollies, for example can top out at 20' in height or more, but mature dwarf Burford hollies would top out at 8-10' or so, or maybe 12' in height. In this case, 'dwarf' is relative. There's tons of dwarf hollies, and lots of other evergreen shrubs and trees. As long as you plant them pretty far out from the chain-link fence they shouldn't grow into it.

Another option would be to attach a windscreen (like you see at nurseries/garden centers or on athletic field fences) to your chain link fence. Just Google windscreen and you'll find lots of info on them.

I like the idea of a row of evergreens because it doesn't seem like our weather is becoming more kind and gentle and you need a long-term solution.

I don't think the plywood would work since the wind would go over the top and drop very quickly on the other side. You need to use something that would slow the wind flow by breaking it into smaller pieces, so to speak. Even the chain-link is probably helping a little. If you could find knitted shade cloth and build a frame to hold it, with the cloth sandwiched in between 2 layers of frame so it would be secure, then it would probably give you adequate wind break mounted on the ends of your raised beds.

I have a book with a good explanation if I can find it.