Trying to resist the urge ...

....to start planting my seedlings. I know if I do, come April we will have a really big freeze .. do they have a pill for this?

winter sowing...lol

I was such a permissive parent last night.....I let my seedings stay OUTSIDE on the patio ALL NIGHT LONG!!! How's that for living dangerously??

Lol .. i've been doing tough love with some of my non-hardy hibiscus, making them stay out all night.

X

X, I've been planting out like crazy -- so far mostly winter sown hardy annuals, but some perennials, as well. I will confess, though, that it always seems mean to plunge those tiny little seedlings into the soil. I splurge and use Erth Food snuggled up against the puny little stems. Amazingly, the California poppies are already looking good.

Now, would ya'll please do a rain dance?

mine are all alredy outside, but i forgot to let them get used to the sun and today with the nearly 80* weather their leaves got a tad bit of sunburn

X,

If planting your seeds will cause us to have an April freeze, then please, please, please refrain - if not for the seeds then for the rest of us.

I do have the 'pill for this' though. Next year if you let yourself get as far behind with your gardening chores as I am, where you are still struggling to do the fall stuff when spring rolls around and the daffs start blooming, THEN you won't be able to plant those spring seeds too soon, and we won't have to have a big April freeze in the low country. ; )

Lol .. I'll really try to refrain .. the thing is though .. my nasturtiums are already putting on buds and asking for bigger shoes.

X

Ooooo! How pretty, X!

But tell them to suck it up just a little bit longer - for the team.

(In an emergency, I've had good success tossing an old quilt over plants during an overnight freeze or, if the plant is small enough, as with newly planted tomatoes, just pulling the pine straw mulch up high around it and sometimes even lightly over it.)

I confess, I planted out some of my seedlings today. I kept half inside, just incase...hedging my bets.
Deb

Let's hope we don't have a repeat of last year's Easter morning freeze. I've moved 60% of my stuff out... it's too nice to keep it in any longer. I just will keep my fingers crossed for all of us who've done so. All the plants in the grounds are already well on their way back too.

I'm too chicken .. I'm gonna wait another week .. some of my nasturtiums are already blooming .. but I'm gonna wait.

X

X: You have will power! A good example to us impatient sorts. :)

Lol .. no it's ... SCARED POWER .. I lost so much last year I couldn't recover completely.

X

Ha! I know the feeling. I've resisted the temptation on some of my tender plants. Only risking a few lil seedlings. :)

I hear you Xerantheum! Succumbed to the "early spring" temptations and moved some citrus outside today, and moved a whole lot of seedlings to the little greenhouse (a.k.a., glorified coldframe). I figure I've got a 1/2 hour's worth of work shuttling them back into more friendly environs if we get the big April freeze, but I'm willing to chance it. I don't think we'll get that "big nasty" this year...

I soooo hope you're right!

I don't think we will either. We could probably go another decade or so before we see a fluke freeze like that again. Most of the 10 day forecasts looking to almost the end of the month now show really warm weather (40 is the lowest low here I've seen forecast). My DW said I better hope it doesn't freeze anyway, else I'll have to listen to her complain helping me move it all back in, LOL - and then back out again.

Granted I'm still not putting anything in the ground until April. I've just moved it all out in their pots (which was still several hours work).

If anything worries me it's these T-storms. Saturday was freakishly stormy here in the midlands. I've never seen colors like that in radar, and we just got grazed by one system. Seems like they've packed more of a punch these last few years.

I know what you mean .. remember this?

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/642164/

X

Yeck. The rain I can handle, the wind that hits at Hurricane force - no so much. The hail... definitely a no no. They said some folks had golf ball sized hail this weekend. I feel fortunate we were missed - that'd obliterate my yard. And we can't even move the cars in the garage to protect them, LOL - too many plants still in there. I guess I have weird priorities.

Lol .. not in my book .. your priorities are right! My nightmare is hail too .. I can just imagine it destroying my greenhouse.

X

I can see it hailing and me running around the yard to pull plants inside. Probably ending up with a concussion or something and DW screaming the whole time. Ah, well at least I'm not alone.

Lol .. I can see me trying to spread my body over the greenhouse trying to protect it.

X

we have 18 dents in my moms car from hail... orrs were 2 1/4'' wide.... thank goodness no damage to th GH tho

These temps keep getting lower for tomorrow night, starting to make me nervous (calling for 37 now, which for my area could mean frost since the winds will be still). I might have to pull back in a few of the really sensitive things tomorrow afternoon like my Christmas Palm. If I covered my White BOP's with a thin sheet, would that protect them well enough just in case? It would surely only be a light frost if anything.

I covered some things with polyester quilt batting the last time we had some cold weather. It was sort of a pain because it is fuzzy and it kept sticking to some leaves but it is light weight, porous and has lots of insulation properties. I also tossed a sheet over the top to keep the warmth in. I had bought this batting several years ago and remember it as being fairly inexpensive and it comes in large, bed quilt sized pieces.

keonikale, last year or year before we had a frost very late in the season I want to say around April, with new growth on all of my plants I had to try something... I threw old sheets over most of them, used some garden art (the taller on sticks) to help hold it off the plants a bit. It worked, we had freezing temps for a few nights in a row and other than a bit of damage where one sheet was touching some very very tender leaves, but nothing serious. It was actually pretty funny as each morning when I came out the sheets were frozen and I could lift them straight up and they held their shape. This was only my experience... hope it helps, as I am still a new gardener.

Well I haven't moved anything out of the greenhouse yet .. so I guess we're safe for the moment .. it's really windy outside .. I was going to pick up some fertilizer for the lawn but it's way too windy to try and put that down.

X

ps don't make yourself a home made cinnamon toast snack at 11pm .. it will keep you up. I know that for a fact because I was looking up cinnamon at 3 am this morning to see if it was a stimulant .. and it is!!!

LOL X. Duly noted on the cinnamon.

You know, may just roll everything back in... they are in pots for a reason. My DW is going to fuss, but I'd rather just be safe than sorry.

So much for the warm forecast. Now they are calling for 32 Sun/Mon night and even a chance for snow? in the upstate as a system moves through. That's all developed in the last few hours.

So I guess everything has to come back in now without question. Argh... mother nature is full of surprises.

monday only 58 here and monday night/tuesday morning only 41...... grrrrr

Uh oh, my seedlings. :0

lol.....I'm leaving some of my winter sowing containers open in freezing weather (just cause I forget)....nothing is fazed...only 58...big babies...lol

Just looked at the 10 day forecast .. looks like it's going to be in the mid 30's on Monday. I came that close to moving the large plants out of the greenhouse .. ran out of time yesterday so I couldn't ... whew!!!!

X

nice greenhouse X--is it warming up out there yet Tropic? Are Zepharanthes atamasco's blooming out that way yet?

Just a Texas lurker here....

well, hey Debbie!

what beautiful rain lilies you have :) Mine are just barely peeking out, and I haven't seen that one, very nice

It's beginning to warm up but still getting frost at night. It didn't seem that chilly last night but there was ice on the ground this morning. For some reason I still feel compelled to cover up my amarcrinum and crinum leaves despite their persistence to bust through the mulch..lol

spent Easter weekend on the coast at my folks' place...so much greener down there, what a difference a zone makes!

Geez pure torture here Debbie!! I cannot imagine a freeze in April. We were 89 degrees yesterday.

we had snow last Easter...it's made me very conservative about putting things out...I feel I just have to accept it now or insist that the plants acclimate themselves...lol

Tropic--that rain lily is native out that way. I also have Habranthus martinezii just starting to bloom. Won't be too long on the rain lilies. X amarcrinum remains evergreen here (all the other crinums freeze top foliage off every year--even with our 38-29F freezes. I just went out and cut the tops of some x amarcrinums so the fence guys could walk around in that area. figured since the bulbs were buried and under 6" of mulch the could handle a bit of foot traffic.

Its nice here 43F last night expected 74F today--wish I could get out and finish weeding my LA Iris beds, once that is done the "heavy" work is done for the season other than constant applications of mulch. Mulch decomposes really fast here in the heat and rain between June-September.

Easter at the coast, I bet that was nice. Were all their azalea's and rhododendron's at peak bloom for the holiday? Its nice when nature cooperates like that!
=)

Got a question for ya'll. A friend gave me 3 golf ball sized bulbs of Colocasia 'Black Magic' to fill in some spots I wanted something larger than a crinum but not a shrub. I know I need to get these started in some gallon pots--how deep should they be planted?