Tuesday, October 22, 2013

First Freeze/Frost of the Year

Freeze Warning! Freeze Warning!
If you have baby plants, just put out tender transplants, or even not so tender plants....this post is for YOU!  Time to start checking the weather every day for low temperatures.

Be sure and water well Friday to give your plants as much help as you can before the cold weather. Actually, give them a good drink on Wednesday as well since the low is supposed to be 37 on Thursday morning. The more open and exposed a garden area is, the higher chance of frost. In fact, frost typically occurs when the temperature reaches 34 or 35 degrees at Green Meadows.

Saturday morning the low is predicted to be 29 degrees. Your peppers and tomatoes will definitely freeze to a pulp with no protection so be sure and harvest what you can even if they are green so they will ripen slowly in the house. Lettuce won't hold up well without protection. Neither will your sugar/snow peas which definitely need frost protection. You can try to cover the tomatoes/peppers but it depends on how long it is cold as to whether it will work.

If you have brand new seedlings you definitely need to cover and fix the cover so it doesn't blow off and expose the tender growth. If those tender plants are exposed they will get frost bite or even get killed.

This picture shows several different kind of frost covers that were used Fall of 2012
Below are links to several blog posts explaining how to use different methods of creating/using frost covers.

Vicki's Frost Cover Method

Denise Frost Cover Method

Simplest Type of Frost Cover