Garden Damage after the Freeze

The Good News - the freezing weather is over.
Even better news - we now have 10 days of warm weather.

The Bad News - the freezing weather is over
Worse news - we now have 10 days of warm weather.

Warmer weather is a mixed blessing for plants at this time of year. It gives them time to recover from the cold weather but because it is going to be warm for 10 straight days, we are going to have a huge outbreak of pests (aphids and sucking/chewing critters) and fungal disease outbreaks.

Everyone needs to come out to the garden and check their beds for damaged leaves and killed or melted plants because of the cold weather. Leaving damaged vegetation in your beds creates the perfect climate for disease and bugs to proliferate.  As you can see from the pictures there are a lot of "melted" out plants because the lows were so low.

Removing all damaged plant material now is essential!

Dead plant material just creates hiding places for insects and disease in your bed. If you wait to remove the dead plant material until just before you plant, there will be bad critters lying in wait to attack your newly planted veggies.

Be sure and inspect all your plants closely for eggs and aphid nymphs. Just before the deluge last week, I saw I had some but the rain washed all the azamax off that I had sprayed. I've since resprayed but I still need to keep an eye on the situation because it will be warm so long.

Luckily, I  don't have any cold damage on my plants. However, the frost cover trapped all the rain and high humidity inside so now I have a lot of damage to my Swiss Chard leaves. This week all the damaged leaves need to be removed and the plants that look more dead than alive need to be pulled out.

Next year I think I'll plant my Swiss chard so it will be outside the cover since the majority of the Swiss chard grown in the open is doing very well. My carrots and spinach are thriving under the cover but the Swiss chard, not so much.

               VickiBed41