Dawn our low was 20 this morning. And hit around 43 this afternoon. It is supposed to warm up some over the next few days. Glad it was just a one night extreme cold snap. I moved the celery back out to the lean to yesterday. The beans left in the cold frame I had laid heavy Agribon got bit hard but not completely killed. Which surprises me with it reaching 5 degrees. I will pick what is on them and see how many seeds I end up with. It is odd when we are warmer than you are. Haven't seen Carol post so hope she isn't froze up. Jay

It got down to 15 at the house and 7 at the farm this morning. It was great outside this morning until the breeze picked up. 40 degrees with sun and no wind at all was actually not bad.

I only looked at the plants briefly after we went above freezing. They looked pretty bad. In the big garden, the lettuce looks frozen back to the ground. We'll see if it resprouts. Everything else just had patchy frost damage on foliage. In the greenhouse, a couple of pepper plants survived, but most froze back at least to the soil line. Sometimes if I leave the container peppers alone after they freeze, they'll put out new growth, so we'll see.

The important thing is that all Tim's lettuce in the cattle trough survived. I arrived home first this evening after spending several hours at a structure fire, and I covered up the lettuce, and then came inside and started making dinner. At one point I wondered where Tin was because dinner was about ready and he wasn't home from the fire station yet, but then I looked out the back door and he was out there at the lettuce trough, rearranging the blankets and undoubtedly improving upon my 'cover-up' job. So, that's what we are reduced to here......the non-gardener is coming in late to dinner because he is improving upon the job the gardener did while covering up the lettuce on a cold night. I think maybe I'm going to make a gardener out of him yet!

Jay, I have had Agribon protect plants at much lower temperatures than you'd expect. It is amazing stuff. The more I use it, the more I like it.

Scott, We didn't have that kind of wind down here and I'm glad. I can handle plain old cold temps better if the wind chill isn't making it feel a whole lot worse than the thermometer says.

I know some parts of OK will be very windy tomorrow because Fire Danger is "Very High", which requires winds at a certain level in combination with other factors. Our wind here is not going to be anywhere close to that range, but I wouldn't want to be in NW OK tomorrow with that wind blowing.

Dawn

Jay and all,
No, I am not frozen yet but we have been cold for 2 nights and it isn't over for us. We are at 30 now, but on our way to 19, or so they say.

Dawn, I haven't been at any fires, but I feel like I'm putting out fires just the same. Saturday we were gone to Bartlesville all day, the on Sunday church takes up half the day and had to rush home to cover the asparagus bed with leaves before the cold weather came. Al saw our neighbor struggling with a wheelbarrow of firewood so he ran over to help her and get enough wood into her garage for the night, so I almost had the leaf job done when he got back. Monday we went to Springdale, Arkansas, and today it was my turn to feed the missionaries so I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I haven't paid much attention to the garden.

My lettuce looks kind of wimpy, but it isn't dead. I covered it again tonight. I have a few things in a low tunnel with Agribon down over the plants. I haven't even looked at them but I can see some romaine that still looks OK under there. Most of the rest I have just been feeding to the chickens anyway. I think I have picked all of the radishes and most of the lettuce. Most of what I planted was just to see how much protection a low tunnel with one layer of Agribon and one layer of greenhouse plastic would provide. Actually it has been pretty impressive.

Jay, I hated to see that you had your house up for sale, but I knew that was a possibility. Like Dawn, I hope you get to move to a place where it rains more than a couple of times a year.

Carol, This time of year is so hectic anyway, even without fires to put out. Sounds like you've been at least as busy as we have, if not busier. Yesterday's fire was a house fire, and there is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing a family's home burning a week or two before Christmas. It is tragic any time anyone's home is damaged or destroyed, but just seems worse when the holidays are near.

This morning, we awoke to 16 degrees, defying the NWS prediction of 25, and at Burneyville it was 12 degrees. It is a frosty cold morning out there, though not nearly as cold as it was yesterday morning.

This is not a week that I really have time to think about the garden, as we have three Christmas parties/gatherings to prepare for in the next six days. The good news is that after I fill up all the gift bags for the VFD party and family party, there will be more available shelf space in my pantry. Right now I've got home-canned jars of food tucked into every nook and cranny. Maybe after all the bags are filled, I'll be able to walk into the pantry again without tripping over cases of filled jars piled up on the floor.

I agree that low tunnels perform in a pretty impressive manner. I think I will be using them a lot more in the winter plantings. The issue I have is that they can get pretty warm on our occasional hot winter day, so if I am leaving for the day, I need to uncover the plants, or at least open the ends of the low tunnels to allow good air flow.

The other thing that is surprising me is how much better the greenhouse has held heat. Last year with no special measures in place, the greenhouse air was just as cold as the outside air. This year, with a lot of molasses feed tubs of water serving as solar collectors (I have big boards over the tops of the tubs and plants in containers sit right on top of those boards), and with the Aluminet shade cloth helping hold in the heat, the greenhouse has routinely stayed at least 8 degrees warmer than the outside air and often 10-12 degrees warmer. When I bought the Aluminet earlier this year, I primarily wanted it for the shade, but had read that it also helps hold in the heat in the winter (and I was skeptical about that). So, I am pleased to see it truly it a dual purpose shade cloth.

Of course, men are never satisfied. While I am perfectly happy that the greenhouse has extended our harvest season more than 2 months past our first frost back in early October, Tim's been talking with a friend of ours whose family has put up their first greenhouse this year. They have heat lamps in theirs, which has him thinking about heat lamps, heaters, etc. I was trying to keep the greenhouse simple and economical to operate but he's getting all kinds of ideas about how we can keep it warmer and keep it operating year-round (which really wasn't my intention).

I'm tired of the cold weather and it has just begun.

Dawn

Carol & Dawn: When I grew perennials and salad greens in a low tunnel, the only problems were on sunny days. On days when the air temperature was 15-20, the wind was blowing 15-20 knots out of the north, and snow was on the ground, it got hot inside the tunnel if the sun was shining. I set up my tunnel on an east-west axis so the plants inside would get more sunlight.

If I was going to be away, I opened one or both ends of the tunnel. I had a thermometer in the tunnel so I could monitor the temps from the house. When I opened the ends, I never got too cold inside on sunny days. I did need to tuck the ends in before dark. When I built the low tunnel, I put pavers on the ground to collect heat. I also had a portable electric heater that I planned to use. I didn't need either.

On the other hand, we live in an area where we rarely have single digit temps - in January, we used to go down to 9 or 6, but this hasn't happened in 10-15 years. One of the things I have mixed feelings about. I don't like bitter cold but it reduced the nuisance insect population.

I used the low tunnel from late Dec to mid-March. I did not grow seedlings of plants like tomatoes and peppers inside the tunnel. In retrospect, tomatoes would be fine. Many people wintersow tomato seeds with great success. I'm not sure about peppers.

It was a good place to sow perennial seeds too.

I'll reactivate the tunnel if it looks like we will have a normally cold winter. I haven't needed to use the tunnel during the past two winters - I start seeds inside, then move the seedlings to the screen porch where they stay until it is time to transplant.

Take care and stay warm!

Pam

Pam, I have a lot of trouble with low tunnels, the high tunnel greenhouse, the sunporch and cold frames because we get too hot too often in the winter. I kind of wish we'd stay consistently cooler and cloudier so they wouldn't overheat so much. I have Min-Max thermometers everywhere, and it shocks me sometimes how hot these confined spaces can get on a sunny warm day in the midst of otherwise cool winter weather.

We're supposed to "only" hit 32 degrees tonight but then it will be 60-something tomorrow which will be really nice. I'll be too busy with pre-Christmas tasks to really get outside and do anything, but at least I'll know the weather out there is nice. It likely will be the best weather of the whole week.

Our rainfall in the last two months is less than 20% of what we usually have during that same period at this time of year, and that is so incredibly discouraging. I keep thinking about how dry the soil will be by January (onion-planting time late in the month for me) if some significant rainfall doesn't occur. One reason I haven't posted a Grow List of all the veggies and herbs is that I cannot decide whether to pretend that it is going to be a normal spring and plant everything I want, or to go with a greatly-shortened list due to ongoing drought. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Dawn

I really don't like when it's less than 20 degrees. Love snow but bitter cold, not so much.

Me too!

We was in one of those areas that went down to 9 degrees also.