Right on cue as we get ready to welcome in spring officially next week, many of us start to think about when the right time is to get that spring garden plant started. However, if you’ve lived in Southeast Texas long enough, you know that March can be a particularly tricky month for finding a window of warm, dry days to get things in the ground.
Here’s a funny story: Some time ago, I had made a comment on the news one night that we were seeing a nice weekend coming up and it would be a good weekend to get to planting the garden. Unfortunately, we had a quick cold snap soon after that with temperatures below-freezing. I got a few emails from some gardeners that were not happy. Such is the way of weather sometimes.
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Take Wednesday for example: While some folks were seeing some sunshine, residents around Lake Jackson saw thunderstorms with hail falling! Must be the wild weather of springtime!
More importantly, March usually means gambling with Mother Nature about WHEN the last freeze of the season is. On average, our last freeze generally happens around Feb. 20. Now clearly, we can and usually do get quick cold snaps after that date (the latest last freeze date has been April 10), but a good rule of thumb is that once we get into late March, we’re generally out of the freezer.
This coming weekend, however, may be a reason why you want to hold off on dusting off those gardening gloves. Below are the forecast temperatures for Saturday morning across the area behind a strong cold front that will move through on Friday.
Thankfully, this cold snap will be short-lived as we’ll be back above-freezing by Sunday and so far, longer-range models don’t appear to show another big polar plunge going into the end of March. If that holds, that’s a great sign! The closer we can get to April, the better chance to make it out of the freeze zone. As for this weekend, if you’ve already planted some of the garden, best to cover them Friday night just to be safe!
~ Justin
Have a good story for me? Shoot me an email at jstapleton@kprc.com or drop me a DM on Facebook!
