I noticed I had at least one pepper and one tomato, I may as well keep them in the house, if I had them in the ground they would have been frozen. I think the tomato is an early girl, and the pepper is a pimento of some kind.

I have moved them in and out so much they have lamp burns and sun burns. I hope I can plant this week.....

Larry

Congrats Reed!

Larry, I am tired of moving mine in and out also and I haven't been doing it nearly as long as you have. I have all of mine out today for a dose of outside light. I'm not sure they will get much sun though because it is overcast here. I hope to plant tomato plants on Thursday, but only if I can leave them outdoors a large part of the next three days. The forecast for the days looks good, but with Tuesday and Wednesday nights dropping down too low. My plants have spent too much of their lives under lights so far.

Congrats, Reed. I have an Early Girl with a fruit. I planted 19 tomatoes in the ground last Sunday and have covered them when frost threatened. Will cover again Tues and Wed evenings and then I hope that will be over with. I still have backup plants and plants for other people that I am dragging in and out but I hope to get them all to their new owners by the end of the week.

Woo-hoo, Reed! Those first tomatoes are always such a thrill to see!

I haven't even put mine outside yet. If we were having consistent temps, I would, but what good would a couple days here and there do if they then have to stay inside for a couple days here and there. I feel like I'd have to start over too many times and am not sure that would do them any good either. A lot of them are blooming and I may need to remove those blooms, right?

Congrats, Reed!

Susan

Yay, Reed! Just a quick 60 days or so and you will be eating! :) Ha!, it's sooooo slow to wait for a much-anticipated tomato to ripen.

I'm mid-hardening off with my tomatoes and peppers - they're very well-traveled at this point going in and out of the garage and grow lights for the last week and a half. It's such a PITA when the weather is up and down like this. Today they are going to be outside all day, left them in dappled sun this morning which will be full sun by 1pm. When I get home after work I will hope they are OK! I spent lots of time driving home at midday or leaving work as early as I could last week to babysit them. After our predicted cold spell this week, the tomatoes are going in the ground on Thursday and they will just have to deal with it! Peppers might be a little later, we'll see what the forecast for next week looks like. This weekend I'm planning to build a trellis to send the zukes, cukes and cantaloupes up - fingers crossed I get it all done!

Congrats Reed! It always is so exciting to see the first fruit form.

My tomato plants fall into 2 separate categories:

1) with the plants raised from seed, fruit have set on the following varieties: Terenzo, Lizzano, Early Doll, Early Wonder, SunGold and JD's Special C-Tex. The remaining varieties aren't even blooming yet, though some are very close to blooming.

2) with the plants purchased as transplants in late January and then immediately planted into larger pots, all have bloomed and set fruit. The first two to ripen were from Bush Early Girl (April 12) and Better Bush (about 4 days ago). One tomato on Better Boy is breaking color now,

Larry and Carol, I hope y'all get to plant soon. My plants likely were dizzy from the constant movement as it seemed like I was moving them far too often from the greenhouse to the house or outside to harden off and then inside again. It was very hard to keep track of which ones were hardened off and just how hardened off they were. The recurring cold spells have made it a really challenging spring.

Dorothy, I started putting tomato plants in the ground about a week to ten days ago and have been covering them up on the cold nights. I finally put the last plants into the ground in the big garden last night and will have to cover them up tonight. I still have backup plants and plants grown for friends in the greenhouse, and hope to get them out of there before May arrives. It is just too hard to keep them cool on hot days, as you well know.

Mia, this has been the hardest spring in some time with regards to hardening off plants. I agree it has been a huge PITA. I'm ready for the weather to stabilize a bit so we can stop worrying about freezes and frosts (or wintery precip for those folks in NW OK).

I want to put peppers in the ground sometime in the next few days but have steadfastly refused to look at next week 's weather. If another cold front is going to bring us yet another freeze/frost danger next week, I don't even want to know that until this week's cold spell is over.

Susan, People in climates that are milder than ours usually remove the first blooms if they form while the tomato or pepper plants are still small and not yet in the ground. I don't remove them. Our window of opportunity to get good fruit set here can be incredibly short ( as it was in 2011) because we often go from "too cold" to plant to "too hot" to get good fruit set in a very short time frame. You can remove the blooms from your plants if you wish at any time, but removing the early blooms can backfire if we go from cold to hot really fast.

Dawn

I have tonight and tomorrow night to worry about then I am going to start planting tomatoes. For us tomorrow night will be a bigger threat than tonight. Today we have 100 percent humidity and 9 mph wind and a forecast of 31. Tomorrow night we also have a forecast of 31, but following a mostly sunny day. I will still have to add protection to my plants because the hardening off process has not been good. Yesterday they stayed out all day, with morning sun, dappled shade mid day, then shade. Today they are inside. It has really been hard to take care of them. Thankfully I planted late so they are not big. I considered putting up a poly tunnel a couple of weeks ago, and I should have done that.

How exciting it is to see fruit! I just had a couple of flowers on my tomato and strawberry plants open up and was very excited about that. Hopefully they will survive tonight's freeze.

Blooming are Greek Rose, Gary'O Sena, San Marzano Redorta, Hawaiian Currant, and Chocolate Stripes. On CS, one is a megabloom.

Thanks, Dawn, I will leave the blooms. I actually quit feeding the tomatos about 3 week's ago, hoping to slow down the surging growth. It didn't work and they started showing signs of nutritional deficiencies, so today I fed them some blue water. Hope it helps. It was a dilute solution. I'm sure they will pick up once they get outside. I hope these 1-day snippets of cold are done!!!!!

Susan

Carol, I put my last tomato plants in the ground yesterday. Well, I say they are my last but you never know what I'll do when I start looking at those back-up plants. I did it with the full knowledge that I'd have to go out there and cover up everything today, which I did...beginning at 7:30 am when it still was 67 degrees here. By the time every last row of plants was covered it was lunchtime, drizzle was falling and it was 43 degrees with a wind chill in the 30s. My hands and feet were blocks of ice.

Tonight is supposed to be our worst night. For a couple of days now our forecast low was 32 for tonight and then they raised itto 34 degrees this afternoon. We were supposed to be 40 tomorrow night but they've dropped that to 36. Regardless of how the forecast changes, my plants will stay covered until Thursday morning. When I uncover them, I hope that is the last time for this spring I have to go through that routine.

We have been cloudy all day, but on the 6 pm news, the TV met said the skies will begin to clear before we wake up tomorrow and that will mean maybe more frost tomorrow than previously expected. This is why I cover things up....because around here you never know what will happen and the forecast can change sort of frequently and late in the day.

Susan, The only way I know to slow them down once they are starting to get too big is to drop their temperatures cooler---maybe 55 or 60. Anything warmer than that and their growth becomes unmanageable. I usually don't feed them until they are in the ground unless for some reason they start looking hungry and then I feed at half-strength. I did everything I could to keep them smaller and happier this year, and they still grew into big monsters even when I thought I had managed their growth fairly well.. I wish everything else would grow that fast...but only once they are outdoors.

I hope this is the last cold front. My 10-day forecast looks good, but the 6-10 day and 8-14 day forecast still show a good chance of cooler temperatures. It drives me up the wall....and I am hoping they are wrong. Of course, cooler-than-average temperatures don't necessarily mean below-freezing, but still.....

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: CPC 8-14 Day Temperature Outlook