Planted out today

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by newatthiskat

The county agent suggested planting out on March 15th for tomato plants.

This is my 4th year gardening here.

* March 22, 2006 we had a frost or near-frost. I had to go all out with blankets.
* April 7, 2007 we had a frost or near-frost. I actually built a box around each garden bed and covered the whole thing with plastic. Incredibly labor intensive but my plants loved the humid 70's temps inside while it was ~45 outside.
* We didn't get a frost in Spring 2008 but Suze in Elgin, TX got close I believe.

In 2008, I lagged behind and planted some plants on March 12th and the rest on March 16th.

Keep in mind that those "cold snap" days were often surrounded by temps in the 60-80's, which are prime tomato growing weather. It was mid-70's yesterday, it got down to high 30's last night, and it will reach mid-70's again today. You'd think I'd moved to the high desert! (usually the Gulf effect parks warm, moist air over us during the night)


Based on all of this, I've decided that as long as I can protect my plants with row cover (which I have subsequently purchased 2 rolls of), blankets, and/or large pots which I can put upside-down on top of the plants (with a brick to secure), I am going to plant on or around March 8th.

I do realize that protecting plants can be labor intensive, and folks have jobs that might prevent them from being so vigilant through the month of March. That's why I spend a lot of time thinking about easy ways to protect my plants that take less than 15 minutes to install.


There seems to be no benefit to waiting until March 21st or April 1st as we have had frost or near-frost AFTER those dates. And since we are getting a mixture of 70's and 80's along with these cold snaps, I might as well take advantage of all the warm weather I can and plant March 8th. That's when Suze plants in Elgin (18mi E. of Austin) and that's when Suze planted when she lived in Ft. Worth.

In a perfect world, I'd build a greenhouse with removable panels which I would partially remove on 80 degree days and completely remove in May. I've seriously considered it. Unfortunately I have nowhere that I could store such panels.