Frost Victims

 

"A gardener learns more in the mistakes than in the successes." --Barbara Dodge Borland

It is said that if you're not loosing part of your crop to the weather, you are not planting early or late enough in the season.

This was the case for my garden this year unfortunately. Read on to see what a frost can do.

 

Last night got cold. Very cold. Frost/freezing cold. The temperatures in my area reached a low of about 29° F. The night before it only dropped to 34° F. That night, after getting home from work, I rushed out to cover my tomato rows as best as I could. My arsenal is a large garbage bag full of miscellaneous bed sheets that I have been collecting from garage sales and a bag full of 'hot caps' made from gallon jugs of juice with the bottoms cut off.

 

 

My challenge, as ever this spring, as been my tomato plants though. This year they out grew their seed starting shelf and I was forced to harden them off outside earlier than I normally would and then with the warm month we had been having I planted them out at least a week earlier than I have ever done.

 

Normally I would be using the hot caps for covering the tomato plants, but given that they were so much larger this year than previous years- I could not use my usual method or frost protection and instead had to use the bed sheets (which is what I resort to for fall frosts).

 

This morning the first plant I uncovered looked like this.

 

And then others like this.

 

But some looked like this.

 

It seemed very hit and miss, some plants were OK and others... well, they were totally fried.

 

Here for example the sheet covering seemed to do its job well.

 

When I began uncovering this row, the first plant (below) on the end was fine. But others in the same row didn't fare as well. 

 

Here is an example of the hot caps I mentioned earlier. They are really just old gallon juice containers with the bottoms cut off. You can use them as mini green houses, but help provide frost protection as well. When I went out to double check everything last night, I noticed that the wind had knocked the hot cap off the basil plant on the right. It was only about midnight, so I thought it would still be OK since the lowest temperatures were still hours away. I replaced the hot cap, but apparently I was too late, as you can see below.

 

I think this is a really great demonstration of the same plants of the same size being covered by the same material... with that one variable (hot cap not in place before a certain time at night) and the huge difference of one now being dead.

 

This basil plant (above) shows a perfect example of why you shouldn't let the stuff your covering your plants with- touch the plants. Everyplace where the sheets touched the plants there was a lot of localized damage. This plant will be fine in the end, but it is still a major set back when you suddenly loose so much of your foliage.

 

My hope with the sheets was, as much as possible, to create a tent like effect. An air space between the covering and the plant is supposed to be the best thing, because as you saw with the basil example- it's not good that the covering material contacts the plants. I don't remember the science behind it exactly, but it had something to do with the transfer of heat or along those lines, so that the contact points actually got colder and would be most likely to be damaged. The tomato above was in one of the better 'tents' and I think the adequate air space helped protect it better.

 

I thought I did an OK job, not perfect, but it was as good as I could muddle together with what I had and it took me a good amount of time to do. Some plants will be fine, but others were so burnt from the frost... I really don't know if they will make it. It's a huge bummer, but strangely I am not more devastated. I think it is because I knew I was taking a huge risk by transplanting them so early. In fact, months in advance I had scheduled to take a mini vacation from work this very week so that I would have plenty of time to sort through all the transplanting I had to do.

 

The basil plant in the first picture of this post is from this group. It was the most burnt probably because the sheets touched it, I had propped up various sticks and stakes to keep the sheets away from the plants as much as possible. Thankfully the bulk of the other basil plants turned out much better. I wanted to plant a lot of extra basil this year since I felt that I didn't grow enough last year. I decided to start the basil indoors instead of direct sowing as last year all the basil that germinated in the garden was almost as quickly devoured by insects. Every year it's something different!

 

It may be noted that I've only spoken of damage done to basil and tomato plants. That's because everything else I've planted and which is now growing in the garden... didn't care. The peas didn't care. The kale, collards, radishes and chard didn't care. The lettuce, carrots and leeks didn't care. The cilantro and dill (which last years plants planted for me) certainly didn't care that it was 29° last night. All those plants are and will be fine in these lower temperatures and frost conditions in the spring.

 

Hopefully this was the LAST frost until fall. I have a lot of hope that many of my tomatoes can be nursed back to health, but last nights cold snap definitely was very devastating for my garden.

 

 

Typical frost damaged tomato plant.