by Leslie Cox; Thursday, April 28, 2016

I wrote about weather and planting tomatoes seedlings in today’s Duchess of Dirt column in the Comox Valley Record.

As promised at the end of the article, I have added a chart listing most of the commonly grown vegetables with the preferred air temperatures and minimum soil temperatures for seeding and transplanting seedlings outside. (Link here for the chart in “Gardening Info & Tips” under the “In the Garden” menu button.)

While it is nice to have such glorious weather early in the season, Mother Nature has a way of dropping a few surprises on us. Case in point…after I had submitted my article to my editor, we had an overnight low of -0.5 °C (31.1 °F) here in Black Creek.

I had mentioned in my article March 18th is way too early for a last frost date (LFD) in our region, and especially here in Black Creek. One year we had a hailstorm on April 30th that filled the wheelbarrow. Another year we had hail towards the end of the first week in May.

And do not forget about the 50 year record we broke on May 17th, 2011 when we dropped to 1.5 °C (34.7 °F) overnight. That year, the average overnight low was only 5.4 °C (41.7 °F) for the week leading up to the typical May 21st planting out date.

So consider yourselves forewarned…it is not always wise to push the envelope with tender plants in the garden when low overnight temperatures are still very “iffy”.