Yup... its kinda late for a frost, but we had a dandy on Tuesday morning. I'm calling it a test and I got an A- only losing potatoes. The romaine lettuce looks as though it actually liked the frosty coating and is thriving. I purposely waited to plant my tender annuals 'cause of surprise late spring frosts and I'm SO glad I did 'cause I'd be crying about now. These things survived the heavy frost and some of them I'm already harvesting:
Broccoli
Turnips
Spinach
Radishes
carrots
Beets
Sugar Peas
Snap Peas
Parsley
Onions
Strawberry flowers
Rhubarb
The photo here is the dead potatoes. But you know how everything happens for a reason? Before I surveyed the damage on Tuesday and didn't know I had dead taters, I stopped at a local greenhouse to get a couple herbs, and they had sweet potato plants sitting at the checkout. I was thinking about trying sweet potatoes (too), and decided earlier this year I had enough potatoes with the fingerlings and red potatoes (now history!). Since the sweet tates were only $3.75 for 25 plants, I thought what the heck -- I have the time and space I'll stick these in also and see what happens. Low and behold when I got home and saw the dead taters, I was thanking my intuition that made me buy the sweet tates.
Photo: sweet potato plants awaiting planting.
Other happenings -- every one of my 100 newly planted strawberry plants is flowering. It killed me, but I had to pinch every one of those 100 flowers off to give the plant the energy to grow a good root system, rather than producing berries. This is a common practice for 1st year berries. Boy did it hurt.
Everything else is just magnificent. Next up...drying rhubarb.
I signed-up for a food storage class and there's no freezing, but lots of dehydrating and canning. So I'm testing the rhubarb drying technique.
2 comments:
I was panicking the night of the frost. I decided to not cover anything and luckily I didn't lose any vegetables, just a few coleus plants in my window boxes. So much for global warming!
You are SO lucky... and you have your 'mater's in too! It must have been super light -- mom nature was thinking of you!
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