It is too early for snow! Now that the weather finally has cooled down I hope we get to enjoy autumn for a while before winter arrives.

We're forecast to go to 38 here and have a Frost Advisory. I didn't get real excited about it, but I spent about 5 minutes throwing a Frost Blanket over the 12 or 15 plants in large containers that still look good. I dragged 3 of the plants--a lemon tree, orange tree and George's Cooper Running Beans into the garage to ensure they stay warm. I don't even know if it was necessary to cover up the plants in the containers, but they had perked up quite a bit since it rained and I thought I'd like to keep them around a little longer. I don't know that we'll have frost, but we came really close to it the other night when we went down to 38 so I decided not to take any chances.

It sure seems early for 32 degrees, Scott, but then October is flying by really quickly and I suppose the cold weather will be here to stay before we know it.

For anyone who hasn't looked at the lovely blue colors on the NWS weather map, I've linked it below.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Freeze/Frost Watches/Warnings/Advisories

I think it possibly did. I need it to stop. Too much moisture on my garlic. Hate to complain...

Yesterday I picked a lot of Bell Peppers in yellow, red, and green and we sliced them into fajita strips and froze them. We had 2 gallon bags plus a quart. After I saw the forecast for tonight, I decided to pick the rest although only a few were showing color. I left small ones but still picked another WM bag full. I could have covered them, but just decided to let them go. I also picked a gallon of green beans yesterday.

The current temp this chilly Saturday morning is 32 F....but I managed to cover up some of my blooming Celebrity tomatoes and a few bell peppers yesterday. No doubt the 10' Arkansas Traveler (loaded with blossoms/small tomatoes) and the 7' Parks Whopper (also loaded) will be a glaring reminder of how unpredictable and cruel Oklahoma weather can be. I had really hoped the forecast was wrong.
Oh well......

32 here this morning - several low areas around have already had light frosts. My tomatoes are loaded with blooms but the nights have been way too cool to set so last night I picked all the green tomatoes of any size. The biggest and best I will put aside to ripen and make chow chow with the rest. We have been blessed with temps and moisture this season compared to the last couple of years so I'm not going to complain. I am just north of OKC

Carol, I have a lot of yellow, orange and red bell peppers in the back garden. I took a chance and left them uncovered because I was busy putting up drywall and taping and bedding it. so I didn't want to stop and go out to the snake-infested garden and cover up the peppers. I figured if they froze, they froze. Well, they didn't freeze. Maybe I'll harvest them today or tomorrow. They are about 75% colored up and I was wanting to wait for them to color up fully before harvesting them. I am just amazed they survived the heat and drought after I quit watering them. The ground near them had cracks nearly 2" wide, and yet the plants survived. Maybe whenever the scant moisture fell, it was going down into the ground via the cracks and the pepper roots were able to access it. The plants wilted badly and almost died several times, but really have revived very well in the month or so since rain started falling regularly again.

I am going to cut them and freeze them for fajitas too.

At our house the temperature only dropped to 37, although at our mesonet station in Burneyville, it fell to 34 degrees. We had very heavy dew....there were pools of it sitting on top of the floating row cover I had put over the containers of tomato plants, but I haven't seen any signs of frost damage, so I think we were lucky here. I am not sure people closer to Burneyville were as lucky. They may have had patchy frost.

Bon, I hope the moisture isn't too much for your garlic. Is is "hard" to complain about moisture when we usually are in desperate need of it, but too much moisture at the wrong time is just as bad as too little.

TouCan2, I did a lot of that "hoping" that the forecast was wrong for several years after moving here (usually with frozen plants resulting and killing my hopes), and then I just stopped hoping and bought floating row cover to throw over plants on the first few cold nights of the season. Often, If I cover them up only about once a week, I can keep plants alive and producing until December. The type of row cover I'm currently using was new to me in the spring, and it is the best row cover I've ever bought. It is rated to give 10 degrees of protection, but on some cold nights in the spring, it protected plants when we dropped more than 10 degrees below freezing.

Oklahoma weather is so cruel and unforgiving. It doesn't seem "fair" that we had late freezing and nearly-freezing nights in the spring through the first week in May, and now we have early cold freezing nights in October. It seems like if we have late cold nights in the spring, we should get a pass from having early cold nights in the fall of the same year. The cold nights this year have cut at least a good month off our frost-free growing season in 2013. Maybe 2014 will be better. (I feel like we say 'maybe next year will be better' every single year.)

I have 7 tomato plants in containers covered in blossoms and small fruit. (One of them is Celebrity. It isn't my favorite in terms of flavor or texture, but it stands up well to drought and disease.) I may or may not move the container plants into the greenhouse (they are huge containers that are really heavy) before the next freezing night or at least frosty temperatures threaten.

My experience with "winter tomatoes" is that anything harvested after the end of September (and it is doubly true of any harvested from November onward) has poor flavor compared to tomatoes that ripen in summer's hot temperatures and plentiful sunlight. Having said that, though, the flavor and texture still are better than that of grocery store tomatoes. Most years I harvest tomatoes through at least the end of December, and sometimes into early January, but there's some point at which the flavor becomes so poor and the texture gets kind of mealy and I start asking myself why I even bother.

Farmgardener, The nights here have been so cool that my current blossoms this week aren't setting fruit either, but our weather seesaws up and down so wildly here at this time of the year that it is not impossible for them set fruit despite the cool nights. I've had fruit set in November even before I have moved the plants to the greenhouse so they'll stay warmer. It is open to debate whether the flavor of the late fruits makes them worth having.

I wish we'd had the better temperatures and moisture y'all had this year. I'm green with envy when all of y'all talk about your rainfall, but am happy y'all have had that improved weather. I just wish we'd had it too. Our summer was still too hot and too dry down here and we remain in Severe Drought, but have had a lot of rain in the last 3 or 4 weeks. I am hoping we'll be able to claw our way out of Severe Drought and make it back to being only in Moderate Drought, or even (it would be a big improvement) back to being merely Abnormally Dry within the next few weeks. I have found it hard to get excited about next year's garden while still dealing with the third consecutive year of persistent drought conditions. I'd like to have a normal year in 2014, though I think I'm forgetting what normal feels like.

At least the days are gorgeous lately, even though the nights are cold.

Dawn

The mesonet shows Jay's area in the mid 20s. Looks like most of us were 32 to 34.

Scott we were on the edge of the cold air. The official low here in town was 32. I hit 29 for a few minutes. It didn't kill all of the tomato plants but bit them hard. I will go ahead and remove them. I moved two containers into the lean to yesterday and will try to keep them going up into Dec. By then the flavor will be to the point I will be ready for them to die. I've been surprised. My flavor has held better this year than most. Even the KB's I picked last weekend still had good flavor. I intended to plant garlic this afternoon but never made it. I did plant some asparagus crowns that I received this week. Will water them in tomorrow. I hadn't dug in the asparagus bed for sometime. The soil is loose, full of worms and black. The black goes down 6 inches at least in most places. I covered my sweet potatoes hoping to get another 7-10 days on them. It did bite everything uncovered hard enough that the plants were hurt. The Armenian cuke looks ok from about 6 inches up. Again no wind for a time and the cool/cold air settled in the low spots. I had already been removing some plants this week. I will remove the rest and get things ready for next year. Guymon had a low of 32 also but north of us 30 miles it was in the mid 20's and for a longer time. We were below 32 degrees less than an hour. Jay

I just looked at our forecast. You guys scared me. You are lower than we are. We are suppose to be 41 tonight, all 40's till wed then 39. Next sunday 36 so I guess I better get my crap together next week. I hate winter!

Here in our little micro-climate of NE Norman, we hit a low of 28. Yes, 28. I know this because about 4:30 AM, I got up for a "nature call" and checked the temp on our little weather gauge thingy that Hubby got me last Christmas. I went back to bed. What else could I do? Ha!

When I got up at 7, it was 30...but by 10 it was 38. I only have some squash & pumpkins left. The butternut was bit hard. Probably all lost. The Seminole and Acorn Squash got bit a little. Our pecan trees now have green hulls trying to split. All in all...I think things are shaping up for a possible really good spring 2014! (as all good gardeners say ..."there's always next year!"....)

Scott - I'm so praying and hoping your pecan trees make it thru this. I've seen the forecast and it looks like an early, messy winter season.

Paula

Just got done stuffing 200 jalapenos for freezing. All my peppers and tomatoes made it through for now. Some grass and a few plants took a hit.

I have yet to see a forecast below freezing for next weekend, but it's still pretty far away.

We had frost on top of the car this morning. I only have peppers left, every thing else has already been cleared out.