The Backyard

The Backyard

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Heavy Frost, Tuesday, May 19 - Lots of Other Stuff


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
Kale
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:

DailySAHM said...

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!

Chili said...

You are SO lucky... and you have your 'mater's in too! It must have been super light -- mom nature was thinking of you!