Super glad I resisted the urge to put ANYTHING in the ground, because tonight we are having a hard frost.
I made Mom vacate the garage for the night, to make room for about 10 flats of plants (flowers and veg.) I dragged the handful of heavy planters that I had planted out already in there as well.
I’ve wrapped in frost cloth any of my perennials flowering in the ground (azalea, bleeding heart, and our best peony plant which has big pink buds on it already. Really hoping they make it through the night.) It took me about an hour and a half to water all the little plants and box them up and get everything into the garage. Not super looking forward to pulling it allllll back out tomorrow!
Hopefully this is it for us… It had been nearly 90 degrees F just a few days ago, so this swing feels really dramatic.
This weather has been loopy. Our days have been in the upper 80s…but even in coastal Florida, the temps have dropped to the mid 50s F this morning.
I noticed yesterday when I escaped the house for a few minutes that the air still feels cool and springlike…really odd for us at the end of April!
However. My romaine has bolted, so Ive started the hot weather crops (papaya, amaranth, okra, Seminole pumpkin, and Malabar spinach) and direct seeded a whole bed of pigeon peas.
Got the microirrigation put into the big beds, and am working on adding to the other beds, with a dribbler line for the potatoes (which are trying to climb right out of their bags) We’re under a burn ban, so full watering is one day a week. Hand watering early or late is exempt, as are micro systems, so thats what I’m working toward.
Yes. Lawn watering is once a week (rolling depending on the house number) and only from midnight to 4 am or from 8 pm to midnight (either but not both) .
Washing cars only with a nozzle on your assigned day, and discouraged during daylight hours. Fountains can run 4 hours a day.
Hand watering and micro irrigation is more forgiving…that’s after 6 pm and before 8 am.
My general rule is that as long as it doesn’t go below 40 for an extended period, the tomatoes and peppers should be fine. My cukes are wimps about the cold, though.
Interesting! I’ve always heard that for peppers in particular you need to wait until the night temp doesn’t dip below 55. I assume a lot of this has to depend on the variety, but it seems like this sort of advice tends to be pretty generalized and probably geared to the lowest common denominator…
I grow peppers in upstate New York (not very successfully, mind you, but they don’t die), where even in summer, night temps often fall below 50 degrees. There are probably so many variables - pepper varietal, other aspects of the weather like wind and precipitation - that it would be impossible to make a hard and fast rule. I tend to go by “the danger of frost is past…”
In my garden I am often juggling most efficient to-dos, but I usually wait for nights above 55, I think because that usually translates to soil temps of around 55. I’ve gotten them in earlier, but they sulk, and later ones catch up.
We rarely get frosts, so frost dates don’t work, but it takes until May for nights above 55, and then it can be blazing hot , causing flowers to drop. Usually I am weighing what is worse. Here, once it gets to be 55 at night it usually stays there, and not much higher at night, until maybe October or November.
I’m in NorCal nearest Sacramento and the good news is we have a really long season.
Not vegetables…but Im chuffed to pieces to have a dozen different orchids blooming. I lost all of them to a blight a few years ago and have slowly been rebuilding.
Maybe 
