can fall be far behind?

48 degrees when I arose this morning...pull out some fleece to join the garden! high today: 77... tomorrow 67...nice respite before the heat returns.

I am loving the cooler weather! I'm not a hot summer lover to begin with but it's nice not to sweat for a couple of days every time I venture outdoors.

Amen! The last two days have been heavenly. It was wonderful to sleep last night with the windows open. I'm with you, Cindy, about not being a hot weather lover. How I long for Autumn, but 70's with cool nights will do just fine for now!

Yep - had the windows open last night also. Last week I was thinking how much I missed spring. I can handle the rest of the summer if it's like these past two days.

We turned off the air conditioner yesterday for the first time in what feels like forever!

And it's going to be another great sleeping night tonight with windows open...yay!!

And indeed it was!

Just checked the long term forecast - 30 day and 90 day: Warmer than normal and dry. Yes, this cool spell is a nice break but we do not really need an early frost.

Yeah - no early frost allowed.
Hoping for a little rain today and tomorrow - can't ever get enough at this point. Cool enough that I finally finished planting foxglove and money plant seedlings from spring. It's been too hot and dry to plant them out any earlier.

I think this cool weather is just a teaser. Just enough of it so that we get used to it, then...BAM!...high temps again. Well, at least we're supposed to have more rain tomorrow.

Noooooooo! No more high temps! I'm moving to the North Pole . . .

I guess we'll just have to make the most of the lower temps this week and keep reminding ourselves that's it's mid-August - supposed to be hot. Light rain here and hoping for more. Are any other areas in upper midwest suffering high mold counts? It was reported last week in the Chicago area that readings were off the charts. Just curious.

Don't know about our area with the mold counts, but it was just GORGEOUS today! I'm am so loving these 70's temps. Supposedly down to 48 deg. tonight...YAY!!

I'm rather hesitant to do any "real" gardening other than dispense worm tea or trim ugly stuff in case it gets hot and dry again. I want to feed my Astilbes for next year and move some plants around. Sigh... maybe I'll have to wait another month. But am liking the cool weather. Windows were open all day today.

41F this morning here. But, long term forecast (30 day and 90 day) are still showing warmer than normal temps. I'm bringing all my Citrus trees today.

At what temps do you normally bring in citrus trees? It's probably been a little warmer here at night than where you are. I'm growing an Improved Meyer Lemon for the first time this year and have it in a pot outdoors. I know (at least from reading) that it can take temps cooler than what we've had so far.

Your IML might be able to take mid 30's or lower but why risk it? Keep an eye on the forecast and bring it in before you should. Remember summering outside is not normal, just a luxury. Given you have a nice place indoors for it, how much better will it be, more will it grow inside than outside at 40?

If I may ask a question - when I purchased the IML back in the spring, it was in one of those tall and narrow pots, never grown in the ground. I did put it into a clay pot, size appropriate for its age. It has put on some new leaves, had a great flush of flowers a couple of months ago resulting in a new lemon. I'm assuming the plant spent a lot of energy on growing new roots this year. When would I need to move it up in pot size? I do keep an eye on the temps and it'll be easy to whisk it indoors since it's still small (about 3 1/2 ft including pot).
DH keeps insisting that fall is coming early based on the number of tree leaves fluttering to the ground. I'm of the opinion that those falling leaves are more a result of stress with the summer we've had.

Yes, stress - dry weather can make leaves yellow and fall early. OOps, might be a pun - fall. If you are wondering about your plant, take it out of the pot and look it over. Won't hurt it at all. If the roots are starting to circle, getting crowded, time to repot. Can be a large debate here at Dave's about when to repot, do plants really need a larger pot, etc.

I guess the debate about larger pots would involve root-pruning. Which forum is the best for questions on citrus trees?
Went for a 20-mile bike ride today and there is a smell of fall in the air but I think it's due to the stress-induced leaf fall since the trees haven't started turning yet here.

When re-potting, I always root prune.

Well the warm temperatures are on they way back here.I was looking for a ticket to Greenland earlier this summer only there is no camping or renting there.lol
I had an orange tree in high school I always heard 50 degrees for those and most house plants,was when to bring them in. Things have changed with the plants since then.

I generally start bringing in the houseplants when nighttime temps start hovering in the 50's. I usually line them up for a good rinsing and drying before bringing them in.
I guess I've automatically thought that repotting meant moving the plants up to the next-sized pot. I may have to reconsider that practice and do some reading up on that.

Please don't "blindly" repot to a larger size pot. Not often necessary. Re-potting can mean a little root pruning, pot cleaning, shaking all the old soil out and then re-potting using the same pot but with a new soil mix.

I think I've been a little afraid of root pruning. I can do it with ease to spider plants and plectranthus and lemon grass but have shied away from it with other plants. I think my blue sky vine needs that as it wilts in the strong sun and the soil returns quickly to dry after watering. I'm guessing I'd want to wait until spring to do any of the root-pruning?

I WILL RE POT A TROPICAL PEACH HIBISCUS only as far root pruning and few things I have white willow cuttings and pussy willow (salix discolor) to practice from the beginning as far as root pruning
Those are about the easiest thing to get to root in any form, and they are great for practice. As some here are aware of I am not good with potted plants.

juhur - It's great that you are not afraid to try growing in pots! It was a lousy year though with the heat and drought which made pot gardening a challenge. Beyond the drought, I wonder if the high temps didn't also raise the pot soil temps higher, further stressing the plants.

As I look at each plant I am bringing inside, I see a lot of poor growth due to lack of water. My fault really.

gasrocks - Was looking up the root pruning thing today and I think that as I bring some plants in for the winter, they'll get a root pruning with some new soil so that they're ready to bounce back in the spring. If I wait until spring to do it, it might take a while for the plants to recover and not do well the first half of our short growing season. Have a bale and a half of ProMix and enough leaf compost to sift to mix in so I'm set for this next week.

"...short growing season...." is a very relative term. Guess I need to Google where you are in IND but it seems to me you have a longer season than we do here. I remember reading about a place (part of Alaska??) where their growing seaosn was 40 days. Gulp. OK - 34 in the forecast. Everything but the Agaves and Cactus are indoors as of now.

Seems to me a growing season like that would call for a cellar with a greenhouse cage, Yeeeesh!!!.

My 16th T5 light fixture is on the way.

Wow - that's a lot of light fixtures. Several of the big plants will come back into the house, a few into the heated garage where it's cooler than the house and some into the heated GH. Seems like I just took the insulation down in the GH and now getting ready to put it back up in a couple of weeks. Supposed to get chilly tonight - around 50. Hoping for more rain today as we didn't get much a few days ago and things are still pretty dry.

OK, now the forecast for Tues night, tomorrow night is 30.

Drizzle here today and brrr that's cold.!! Tues low is forecast for 40 degrees.

30? Ouch! Saw that there are frost/freeze warnings up north. We missed out on the rain last night - only a short, light shower. As usual for this year, everything's dry again. Rain systems just do weird things when they hit Lake Michigan and the IL/IN border. Breezy, sunny and cool this morning so it'll be a fine afternoon to start working on moving pots.

28 this morning here.

That's still to cold!!!

gasrocks - guess that temp marks the end of outdoor gardening for you?
48 in the hobby GH last night. Got the nat gas heater fired up today to make sure everything is operating correctly. Saw that we're supposed to see 40 Sunday night. Got some big houseplants root-pruned and repotted yesterday and they got moved indoors. Moved some more stuff into the little GH today but have more to wash down and bring in tomorrow. Guess I might as well get some annual cuttings tomorrow as well. Did have to water the lawn today, mainly for the grass seed we sowed a month ago.

Just for the record - I always found this interesting - the end of the growing season is offically over when one has 2 nights in a row of 28. More of a farmer thing than house plant relavant.