Worried about my warm season veggies

Good morning permies!
I am very worried about my warm season veggies.
About two weeks ago (third week of April), I sowed tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, watermelon, pumpkins, herbs, and decided to experiment with beans, peas, broccoli, and brussel sprouts even though it's a little late in the season (for my growing zone, zone 7a). I started them in expanding peat pellets.
I planted extra because I've literally never grown a single veggie or fruit, and apparently I have a green thumb because every single seed I planted absolutely exploded. Withing three days everything was pushing up through the soil, and 3 days after that the cover no longer fit over the trays. Exactly one week after sowing the seeds, the beans, zucchini, and pumpkin all had to be up potted. The sugar baby watermelon was only a few days behind that, and now pretty much everything I've planted besides the herbs have had to be up potted into 4-in cow pots. They've been inside since the beginning, I've carefully kept the soil temps between 70 and 75°, I've kept their peat/soil moist but not wet. Honestly I babyed them. Problem is, they're getting freaking huge. At night I was putting them in oven (weird I know!) To protect them from the cats but now they are too tall even for that. One of my poor zucchinis snapped at the soil line because it got so tall it pushed itself over when it hit the roof of the oven.
Apparently I'm a stereotypical plant mom, because I panicked and decided that my "green babies" needed new digs. So I built them a little....not sure if it's a greenhouse or a cold frame. I checked the forecast for the week, was supposed to be very rainy but warm (day temps in the 70's, night temps in the 60's) so I decided to build a temporary whatever-it-is. I got the trellises I had built for my future watermelons and zucchinis, and lashed them together to make an A-frame, put it up on pallets which I had covered in clear painter's drop cloth I found in the garage from an old project, and then covered it in the drop cloth too. Seedlings moved in around noon yesterday, and seemed very happy. After the sun went down, I put a couple milk jugs filled with hot water in there and figured all would be well.
This morning, I checked the weather again. Suddenly, the temperatures are very different. Instead of 70's/60's, I'm now looking at low 60's during the day and 40's at night, and still rainy so no sun to warm them up.
I am worried that, while no frost or freeze is expected, this is still to cold for everything except my experiment crops (the beans, peas, broccoli, ect, should be fine right?). I am worried that my bell peppers and tomatoes and watermelon and squash will suffer. Is there anyway for me to save the little seedlings?
They have been giving me over an inch of growth every day, and new leaves almost every day, and I don't want to have to start all over. The weather is supposed to warm considerably in a week, but what to do about this sudden unseasonable cold in the meantime?

I think you'll be just fine as long as it stays above 40.  Inside that thingie it will be a couple degrees warmer.  It's good for them to experience a little of the real world before you put them in the ground.  By me we can have 40s at a few points all summer long and I grow all those crops except watermelon.

Okay awesome, that makes me feel better!
We're in the northern Virginia area, and Virginia weather can be fickle but usually not THIS fickle.
Should I keep putting the hot water jugs in there or just let them be?
That's reassuring you're able to grow these plants in your climate :)
Thank you!

It wouldn't hurt to put warm jugs of water in there on particularly cold nights to help them get through the wee morning hours.  Putting a blanket over the tarp would also hold in much more heat (from the jugs).

I'd also be exposing them to more and more sunlight over the next two weeks.  Uncovering them on overcast days and then giving them an hour of real sun one day, two hours the next, etc.  Some wind and weather helps them get stronger.

Alright, thanks!
I can get started on that if we have gaps in the rainstorm that seems to have stalled over us
Before the storm clouds moved in, I was sitting them outside in bright shade during the day, but after it started getting cloudy I didn't think there was a point.
I am much more versed in the care of animals! They can (sort of) tell you when something is wrong
I built the cold frame greenhouse thingie with removable sides, so they can get a nice stem thickening cross breeze, but I didn't realize the cloudy days would still be beneficial for hot weather and sun loving plants
Again, thank you for your advice :)

Hi AnnaLea.  Don't worry, you are not the only one who starts things early.  I am with Mike on this one.  It looks like you will be fine as long as it does not freeze.  Last year in mid May my son planted 50 tomatoes plants!  Two days later the weather forecast changed drastically.  We put buckets on all of them.  It got down to 25 degrees and we lost them.  We are having troubles adjusting to the new 3 week shorter growing season here.  We now get hard freezes until June.  From my charts it started getting colder in 2005. We are just bull headed and don't want to change. My son started tomatoes in April this year instead of March.  We now have a sun room full of 8-10 inch tall tomato plants.  We have a long way to go until we can plant them.  Our ground is about 47 degrees right now.  We will get there soon enough.  Good luck and thank you for posting your nice greenhouse.

I guess weather is getting wonky all over the place! We had a two week period back in February where it was in the high 70's, low 80's, then immediately a hard freeze afterwards. All our perennials had started budding, thinking it was spring, and then promptly died. We still don't know if they recovered! And now this cool weather business
Sorry to hear about your tomatoes last year, but it sounds like you solved the problem this season! The sun room sounds like a nice place to be right now with all the plants!
And thank you for complimenting my plant shanty lol

Let me throw out a solution I once used.  Like you, I planted my tomatoes outside in warm spring weather but unfortunately a light freeze was predicted in 2 days.  My solution was to take large, heavy duty black plastic garbage bags (maybe 30 gallons?) and I filled them with maybe 10 gallons of water in the morning.  I rolled the bags so the open end was flopped down to the side on the bottom and the bottom was facing directly up at the sun.  It is important to make certain there are no air pockets.  The bags were arranged in between the tomatoes.

The sun beat down on the bags all day and got them nice and hot by evening.  At sunset I draped a light plastic sheet over the tomato cages but it did not actually touch ground.  By morning I went out and checked and my tomatoes survived the night just fine, the garbage bags were still lukewarm despite there being a frost covering the rest of the yard and ground.  Those bags radiated heat all night and the plastic sheet was just enough of a barrier to prevent the heat from escaping straight into the sky.  

This could have worked even better or needed fewer garbage bags if I used a larger top covering and/or used a top covering that was itself not thin, clear plastic!  I really believe in the specific heat capacity of water and its ability to temper temperatures over a long night.

Another option you could use would be to fill up a 5 gallon bucket with scalding hot water and make sure the bucket is covered and place it in between the heat-loving veggies.

I could go on and on, but these are a few options for dealing with a cold snap.

Eric

Morning Eric!
Last night I used two milk jugs that held a gallon apiece and I did not paint. I just filled them with the hottest water that would come out of the tap (too hot for me to touch, but not sure exactly how hot) do you think that's enough? The footprint of the A-frame is about 4x3
The five gallon bucket idea is a good one, but either way should I bother with the black paint since I'm filling them with hot water at night?
If I painted them black, it would definitely help during the day as well
Supposedly it's going to get up to 69* today, but it has been holding steady at 53* since this morning

AnnaLea,

The black part is only for solar heating on a sunny day.  If you are filling with hot water at night, color makes no difference so I would not bother to paint.  Same goes for the 5 gallon buckets.  One word of advice though; in order to avoid heat losses to the ground, consider placing the container on a piece of wood like a couple of 2x4’s laid side by side or a 2x6, 2x10, and you get the idea.  The cool ground will unfortunately suck heat right out of the container before it can be released to the air around and keep your veggies warm overnight.

I am not really certain how cold is too cold aside from the obvious freezing point.  I would think 50’s would be fine.  Actually it is a good idea to get plants acclimated to some cooler temperatures to harden them off.  But if you want to fill gallon jugs of water and leave them in the garden, I see no real harm either.

Eric

To answer your point more directly, I think a single 1 gallon jug filled with hot water would heat up a 4x3 A frame nicely.  Add 2 if you want, but you are covered so I don’t think you are going to loose much heat.

BTW, how warm were your jugs in the morning?  If they were still warm, that meant it was not cold enough for them to loose their heat.  That’s great!

Hey Eric, good point about the black paint being for solar warmth, I wonder if the sun that makes it through the clouds might be enough to warm it up some...if not I'll just keep adding hot water before I go bed :)
The plant shanty is set on a couple pallets, with a layer of the plastic over top of it, then the A-frame, then more plasticThis was mostly to deter pests from the bottom, but glad to know it will protect from the ground sapping the warmth from the plants!
As far as the jugs this morning, one was....let's say lukewarm. It wasn't as cold as the outside world, but it wasn't really warm either. The other jug across from it was cold, about the same as outside the shanty. I checked around it (hard to do in the rain) and found a hole I'd missed about half an inch tall all across the bottom of one of the 3' sides where the plastic didn't quite reach all the way down. Brainstorming ways to patch it, as I am out of left over drop cloth

AnnaLea,

It sounds like you are hitting things just about right if one is still lukewarm and one is cool.  If you can fix the problem with the second one I bet you will have a fairly toasty little A Frame.

This is a really impressive little experiment. Thank you for sharing! If you can get results like this, that makes me feel like I could plant out my warm weather loving plants a bit sooner and give this a try!

Jenny,

Yes, making use of latent heat is a great way to protect against cold nighttime temperatures.  There are any number of ways that you can make use of this in the garden.  One option is to leave a big, dark colored rock in the garden to serve as a heat battery.  This will work fine as long as you don't mind moving in large rocks into your garden.

Water is generally better as water holds heat better and if it gets too heavy, the water can simply be poured into the garden as long as it is not hot.  I have used the garbage bag approach for several nights in a row when the daytime was nice and bright and sunny but the evenings really cooled off.  These work best on still nights unless the garden is well-protected from winds.

The hot water jug or 5 gallon bucket will really heat up an area and eliminate frost from a nice zone.

I should mention how I got this idea.  

Growing up in Central Illinois, we always got at least 2 nights where the temperatures dropped to -20F.  I had an outdoor cat that had its own doghouse made of the cheapest, thinnest plywood that an airline would use to make a crate for shipping a dog (the crate outlived the dog).  Inside the doghouse, there was a plastic laundry basket with an old sleeping bag, but the garage was bitterly, painfully cold, and the 9-year-old that I was was convinced that my cat was going to freeze to death.  I convinced my mother to pour hot water into 3 milk jugs to serve as heat batteries and we placed a very old blanket over the doghouse that covered the opening.  I placed the jugs in the back of the doghouse, put my cat in the sleeping bag lined laundry basket and headed back inside before I got any colder.  About an hour later I checked on my cat, stuck my head into the doghouse to hear my cat purring loudly!  He was basking in the warmth of the those water jugs despite the garage being -18F!  Several hours later by bedtime I checked again and the temperatures had cooled to merely warm levels and the jugs were no longer hot but mildly warm to the touch.  We topped off the hot water again, but this time we poured boiling water into one of the jugs which went in between the other two.  My cat was warm, toasty and happy all night long.  Ever since then I learned to appreciate the ability of water to hold heat.

( peas, broccoli, ect, should be fine right?)

They will likely be ok during the cooler nights since they are cool weather crops. Like you said though, the summer heat is probably going to be too much for them to handle. I think it's good to push the limits of seasons though. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. Who knows? You might get some edible pea pods. Everything except the roots of broccoli is edible. So maybe a tasty stir fry from that!

I'm almost in the same zone. The trick to getting a spring harvest of peas is to start them as soon as hard freezes are over. They do much better in the fall. With broccoli I start successively planting them as soon as the summer heat starts to cool. That gives them time to grow big before winter. They usually produce all through winter & into spring.

Just wanted to give anyone wondering an update, as I checked on the seedlings for the first time today (our house flooded and the seedlings were abandoned to their fate, no latent heat mechanism or water jugs, no attention, no watering since my last post)
Weather: heavy rain& thunderstorms, temps as low as 41*F for several days
Plant Shanty: holding up beautifully, condensation on the inside of the plastic despite lack of water jugs or any sun
And now to the PLANTS
Pumpkins: the ones that were already sprouted are now six inches tall with huge leaves. The one that hadn't sprouted now has done so, and is about 3 inches tall, cotyledon leaves only
Beans: absolutely massive, most are 6-9" tall now with two sets of true leaves
Garden peas: (hadn't sprouted before moving into the plant shanty) sprouted, and about 4" tall with cotyledons
Snap Peas: same as the beans
Sugar Baby Water Melons: 3 had already sprouted, are now about 5" tall, no true leaves yet. Two more have sprouted since and are about 2" tall
Bell Peppers: none had sprouted before plant shanty. Three of six have sprouted and are 2-3" tall with cotyledons
Zucchini: Two of my zucchini, which were 4-5" tall already, have flopped over. They still only have cotyledons, no true leaves. They are green, but I don't think they're going to survive. However! Another sprouted, and is currently 4" tall, with teeny tiny buds that I think will be the first set of true leaves
Tomatoes: (steakhouse, Brandywine, and Cherokee purple) all the sprouts have only grown maybe an inch at best, and their stems are turning purple. Should I be concerned about this? Their leaves are massive for little sprouts, and some have true leaves, but they are short bitty things
Broccoli: the seedlings, which were maybe 1/2" tall, are now 3" tall, but I don't know what broccoli is supposed to look like at this phase. They look like leggy clover to me, not sure if this is good or bad or indifferent
Brussel sprouts got REALLY leggy and flopped over. No damp rot, just got too tall and folded in half. I don't have much hope for them.
My herbs do not appear to have changed in any way.

It is currently 45*F and heavily cloudy, so since the door was open I stuck a hot water jug (1gal) in there. Wednesday it supposed to finally be clear and warm, so hopefully they will get a few hours of much needed sun then
Thanks again, will update again in a few days!

Ladies and gentlemen, permies of all ages!
WE HAVE SUN
two days early, even! Woohoo!

I wouldn't work l worry about the tomato's purple stems. Mine do that when they aren't getting the full sunlight they love but it's nothing wrong. They turn green again when they are getting enough sun again.

I'm glad to hear most of your veggies survived. I hope your flooding wasn't too damaging to your house!

Hey Jenny!
Good to know the purple stems isn't something to worry about! I'll see how they're doing after a few days of this glorious sunshine!
And, thankfully it wasn't bad. Half our basement is unfinished storage area, so while holiday decor and old clothes got very wet, there wasn't any damage to any of the living area of the house :)
Thank you!

AnnaLea Kodiak wrote:Hey Jenny!
Good to know the purple stems isn't something to worry about! I'll see how they're doing after a few days of this glorious sunshine!
And, thankfully it wasn't bad. Half our basement is unfinished storage area, so while holiday decor and old clothes got very wet, there wasn't any damage to any of the living area of the house :)
Thank you!

Good to hear the flood wasn't worse!

Our weather here is so weird this year that I'm definitely going to use some of these tricks posted here when I plant out my seedlings the next few weeks. It was beautiful sunny yesterday and SLUSH was falling from the sky! I think it's so pretty and strange when rain sprinkles at the same time that there are no clouds and it's sunny but I've never seen any kind of icy precipitation fall while the sun in blazing down and there are no clouds. So weird! It was a cross between hail and snow, giant soggy balls falling for a good ten minutes, sparkling in the sunlight.

Wow, that sounds crazy! Whereabouts are you located? That definitely seems like something that would be cool to see, not so cool to try to garden through.
Also, while I have you here, do you think there's anything to be done for my flopped over zucchini or brussel sprouts? Or just start again with the zucchini, and hold off until fall for the Brussels

AnnaLea Kodiak wrote:Wow, that sounds crazy! Whereabouts are you located? That definitely seems like something that would be cool to see, not so cool to try to garden through.
Also, while I have you here, do you think there's anything to be done for my flopped over zucchini or brussel sprouts? Or just start again with the zucchini, and hold off until fall for the Brussels

I'm in the PNW, south of Seattle, near Mount Rainier but not high up. Usually very mild weather and I'm in a nice little microclimate.

I think you probably should start over with the zucchini and the Brussel Sprouts. Luckily neither of them need a big head start so you should be fine. My brussel sprouts just hang out all summer and then really start growing in the fall and winter. I don't know if there is a benefit to waiting until fall unless you need the space for something else during the summer.

I'm worried about my own broccoli... It got super leggy this weekend while I wasn't looking. 😜

Jenny - I'm dealing with the same. It snowed yesterday, virtually unheard of here. When we had snow in April, it had been 80 years since it had last snowed in April here. I'm waiting to hear how long it's been since it's snowed in May. Tonight is supposed to be freezing, but it supposed to be the last of it. Last year we were already in fire season by this time. Everything is so unpredictable and I suspect that's going to be the new norm. At least I have a greenhouse. Good luck to everyone.

Plant update!
Perhaps the weather got warm too fast?
Even with watering in the morning and at night to keep the soil nice and damp but not wet, and opening the sides of the shanty during sunny hours, some of my plants are starting to flop over. Again, not damp rot, just floppy stems and curled up leaves. Specifics:
My pumpkins are hit or miss. Two of them have their first true leaves growing, two of them flopped over
Beans: doing fantastic. Over a foot tall, with several pairs of true leaves, and with little grabby vines. I think I will pole them tomorrow
Peas: also doing fantastic. Grown about two inches since my last post, and several sets of new leaves. This is for both the garden peas and the snap peas
Sugar baby watermelon: all six have sprouted, the oldest ones are about 5 inches tall, with teeny little buds I assume are their first true leaves. The youngest sprouts are about 3 inches tall with big cotyledons
Zucchini: three of four have flopped over, but still green, and one appears to be budding it's first set of true leaves, even flopped over. Confusing, but hey. It isn't dead. The fourth is about 6 inches tall, and already has a fully grown true leaf
Bell peppers: the babies are about 1-2 inches tall now, with cotyledons. One looks like it has a leaf bud
Tomatoes: Four flopped over. The rest all are nice and straight, and the purple looks like it's going away. They all have at least one set of true leaves, but they are still very short, only about 3 inches, despite being sown at the same time, and sprouting at the same time, as the beans and zucchini. I was under the impression tomatoes are supposed to be fast growers, perhaps mine were stunted by the cold
Broccoli and Brussels I think are a lost cause, but I'm not too surprised by that
Still no change in my herbs. They have neither died, wilted, not grown

Weather has been fussy everywhere, I think. Our area is seeing colder than usual temps, and my warm loving plants are growing very slow, too. You will definitely be able to use at least some of those.

Cute set-up you have there:)

I think there is a lot you ca learn from this experience that you can apply to next year.  Using your trellis supplies like you did you can warm up a section of soil to prepare for early transplants directly to the soil.  The black bags of water suggested would be very effective in doing that. Inconsistent hot and cold days has been my problem for years. I made my greenhouse so the north side is an insulated blanket that I can lave completely open when there is sun. Even on cloudy cold days it will get up to 80*F when closed and 100* with sun.  With water barrels between tomato plants my goal is to keep them above 50 at night and below 80 during the day.  Potatoes overwintered in high tunnel came up in March and are well along in development.

Ho Hans!
Sorry it took me so long to get back here, it was a busy few days!
That blanket idea is a good 9ne, and when we move this summer I think our first project is going to be building a green house so the plant shanty never has to happen again haha
Today we finally had a nice, calm, partly cloudy day with gentle rain expected tomorrow, perfect for putting things in the ground.
We built the watermelon trellis, and turned the plant shanty back into it's originally intended purpose, a zucchini trellis. Also put up bean and pea teepees, and got those planted as well. The peppers and tomatoes don't have homes yet, but the herbs I gave on have grown a little! And the peppermint has sprouted!