Jay,

I am sorry that Mother Nature felt compelled to ruin your gardening fun in October.

Don't you hate it when a freeze or heavy frost ruins everything? To me, that's the saddest day of the year...when the garden is nipped back hard or completely killed. I think the official weather recording stations record at 5' above the ground, so you certainly could have had lower temps below 5' and still have frost/freeze damage even if your own thermometer or others around you didn't reflect that. All our thermometers are at 5' above ground and I guess if I was smarter, I'd put one of them down at 1', 2, or 3' and see for myself what the difference is.

When we went down to 29 degrees earlier in the month, the warm-season plants I didn't cover with Agri-bon had damage, but didn't completely die back, so I guess they didn't stay cold enough long enough. The taller portions of the pole beans growing on the fence froze completely, but from about a foot above ground and at all points below that, there was no damage, so the plants lived and are climbing the fence again. That fence is near the driveway and I wondered if heat from the driveway kept the lower part of the bean plants from freezing.

I am hoping to keep the beans, peppers and southern peas going a few more weeks, preferably without having to cover them. I don't mind taking the time to put Agribon over a few rows if it is needed--I just hope it isn't needed for a while yet. I have a bunch of tomato plants and pepper plants in containers and will enjoy them while they last, but don't know if I'll move them into the greenhouse or garage to keep them alive deeper into winter. Maybe I'll keep one tomato plant and one pepper plant going. I am mostly focusing on cool-season crops in the greenhouse and garden at this point. My garden still is about half and half---half new cool-season plants, half warm-season plants that are just hanging on. Volunteer plants are popping up everywhere, mostly from self-seeding flowers and the zinnias that began popping up in August after a good rainfall now are in bloom, so the garden is full of butterflies. Between the zinnias and butterflies, I can pretend it is still summer if I just don't look at the trees, some of which have leaves that are now a brilliant yellow and golden-orange, with a few of the oaks and pears starting to show red foliage.

Anytime they forecast an overnight low temp in the low 40s, that does make me nervous because it often drops lower than forecast, and we often get pretty hard frost at 37 or 38 degrees. I never can decide at what forecast temperature to put the Agribon row covers on---38, 40, 42, 45?

I wonder if the patchiness of the frost on the vehicles indicates you had a little light wind---though I don't know why it would keep frost off one vehicle and not the one right next to it. That has happened here before too.

I've also had a really hard killing freeze kill tomato and pepper plants randomly, both in early spring and in fall. The randomness sometimes surprises me. I might see 3, 4 or 5 dead plants in a row, then a live one, then more dead ones. Does that make any sense? No, but it happens.

I hope you'll be able to get a lot of good garden work and bed preparation done before it starts getting too cold up there.

Dawn

Dawn, I think I have an answer for why one vehicle had frost and the next did not. It probably had to do with how warm the inside of the car had been. If I have not drove my car all day and I get in it at 9 it can be pretty warm if the sun has been out. However if I drive my car during the day it will be a lot cooler inside at it at 9. That would be my guess about why one window is frosted and not the other. Or maybe just some cars hold heat better than others?

Josh

Josh I had 4 vehicles in the same drive way. In the open. Two were drove yesterday and two weren't. One of each had frost. There were two pu's and two cars. Again one of each. No real rime or explanation. The results in the garden was the same. Most of the pole beans are fine. About half of the bush beans were hit hard and the other half ok. It seemed some varieties were more prone than others. I had 7 ft tall tomato plants that are gone and the one next to it is fine. I think it has a lot to do with air flow, ect. The probe for my outdoor thermometer is set at 2 ft. I had a thermometer laying on top of the ground in the garden and it read 34 when I went out. I had tomato plants under the heavy Agribon floating row cover that the leaves were nipped. The same for one pepper plant I put a heavy blanket over. And then there were pepper plants not hit any harder that I didn't cover. This has been the most bizarre year I've experienced. The one area that is the lowest and usually always hit the hardest is where the container plants were. Again about half of them are fine and the other half are gone. Jay

Dawn, Well there goes all my frost theories out the window. Maybe frosty the snowman took the car and truck with frost out for a joyride and not the others?

This has been a really weird year, but hey this is Oklahoma. What is really weird here is a normal year where everything happens like it is supposed to. We seem to always have a few "weird" weather events each year.

Josh

The last time it got cold I had a lot of things covered and I did more damage with the covers that the weather did. LOL I think the wind flow has a lot to do with what survives and what doesn't. Most of my garden has a wind break, but there is one small part where the wind whips through without anything to slow it down. After the last cold night I could see some curly leaves on one pole bean plant, but in two other locations there was no damage at all to pole beans.

They are still holding with 41 and windy for us tonight, so maybe we will be OK again.

Mother nature can do strange things. I can remember when I was a kid see a layer of thin ice in a small ditch, the problem is, that the thin ice may be 4 to 6 inches above the bottom of the ditch, which may or may not have water in it. I have seen this many times after that but have no idea how that can happen.

I have not covered any thing in a couple of weeks. I will try to protect the cold weather stuff but the peppers and tomatoes can go. I have picked and mowed the last of my cow peas.

Larry

Jason, All my weather and gardening theories have flown out the window since we moved here in 1999. I now garden in what I call "the new normal", which includes 90-degree days occasionally in winter and late frosts and killing freezes in May, going a month or longer with no rain, having 8 or 10 or 12" of rain in one day, and having hail in every size from pea-sized to softball sized. Let's not forget thundersnow, which I never experienced until moving here, wildfires in almost any month of the year when the conditions merit, ice storms and derecho wind storms. Nothing here seems to happen as logically or as easily as it should. I guess that's what keeps gardening here so interesting.

Carol, It got down to 42 here this morning, and I was a little concerned it might drop lower than forecast and give us patchy frost, but it didn't. If our forecast doesn't change, the next 7 days will be picture-perfect weatherwise. I love October weather.

Larry, One of the strangest things that has happened here in terms of ice is that the lily pond froze over really heavily and two of the cats were playing on the ice. The ice broke into pieces and was floating around the pond like little icebergs, and two of the cats (named Lewis and Clark because they are such big explorers/adventurers) were floating around the pond on little miniature iceberg-like chunks of ice. Also visible in the pond under the ice? Water lilies in bloom!

Did y'all see the news stories about the Dust Storm in Kay County? The photos of that dust storm were really something. Without good rainfall up there in north-central OK, I expect they'll have a dusty winter. Those bare wheat fields are going to blow and blow if there's not enough moisture to make the wheat sprout.

El Nino looks like it is going to let us down, as NOAA's Winter 2012 Outlook suggests.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NOAA's Winter 2012 Weather Outlook

Dawn they had dust issues in the Wichita area yesterday. When I read it this morning I found it odd they are experiencing what we did the last two years. Fortunately with the recent rains most of our ground is still holding. Hopefully the young wheat will receive the needed warm days to get big enough to hold the ground.
We were just a degree or so warmer this morning that yesterday. But not a sign of frost anywhere. I heard an explanation for the very patchy frost/freeze damage. The person said basically what Dawn alluded to. That there was an almost perfect combination of light winds/air movement at different levels along with the air conditions which created what they termed many cold air pockets. He said literally just a short distance away the temp could vary a degree or two. Which is enough to create the spotty frost and freeze damage. The other odd part and it happened again this morning is the coldest temps were 2-3 hours before sunrise. This morning they occurred around 5. By 7 they had rebounded to 39 from just under 34 degrees at 5. Many times our low will be around sunrise. The last two mornings the temps were rising well before sunrise. Jay

Here is a link that might be useful: Wichita Dust Storm

Josh, Oops, I called you Jason. Sorry.

Jay, How strange is it that the ground is blowing away? Of course, these are minor compared to the Dirty Thirties and the Fifties, but I still don't like seeing it. All the dust in the air reminds me of west Texas, where dust storms are more common. We'll even have a dust storm here in Love County once every 4 or 5 years, but usually is it dust blowing here from western Texas or western Oklahoma.

And....just so none of us forget. The Ken Burns' documentary about The Dust Bowl airs this November. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I hope they do justice to the story and to the people who endured so much back then with such courage and tenacity.

Jay, Our weather was odd last night. Because it was forecast for the low 40s, I was worried about it dipping into the upper 30s and giving us patchy frost. I woke up and checked the mesonet sometime after 2 a.m. and we were at 42. Since we usually hit our low near sunrise, that worried me. After that though, the temperature rose through the rest of the early morning hours. I don't remember that happening very often. Usually we hit our low around sunrise. The way it usually works on a cold night when warm-season plants are at risk is that I'll wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. and check the weather and we'll be fairly warm. I'll breathe a sigh of relief and go back to sleep, only to awaken a few hours later and find that the temperature plunged down into freezing or frost range after I thought it wasn't going to. I've stopped trying to figure out the weather because when I think I have it all figured out, it goes bonkers and behaves entirely the opposite of what I expect.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: The Dust Bowl Documentary by Ken Burns

Our son and DIL live in far eastern Osage County and she said she could hardly breath last night, so the dust must have traveled quite a distance.