Some of you might be wondering how we fared from our extreme late frost we discussed a few days ago. So, let’s do an accounting and we’ll lay it out straight to you!
In case you didn’t catch that post, we recently experienced an exceptionally late frost over three mornings, Saturday through Monday. All of these occurred almost a week after our “supposed” last frost date. We laid out some budget level frost protection, which we described in a previous post. This isn’t our first rodeo with frost, but figured it’d be helpful to some of you if we demonstrate the carnage.
We’ve explored the creation and contributing factors to frost in depth in the past, but the gist is frost is absolutely devastating to any frost sensitive plant. Frost can occur anytime when the ambient air temperature is lower than the dew point and both those temperatures are around or below freezing.
We had some casualties! Frosts are some serious business. This stuff might be embarrassing to most growers, but we try to show you how it really is. Frosts come in and break your stuff.
We are generally good cold climate growers and we know how to navigate frosts reasonably well. Nonetheless, a frost that rolls in a week past your “safe” planting date can cause issues for anyone.
For the most part, the majority of our squash survived and will live fruitful lives. Thanks to our protections! We’re seeing healthy, green leaves and that’s what we want to see! We also lost two squash plants, maybe three, and have a lot of burned leaf. The photos demonstrate the damage and devastation, plus our squash we’re all ready looking a bit rough being planted into cool weather trends.
We always grow “just a little bit more” than we need, for issues exactly like this. So, we do have spare plants to put in their place if we need to. We are first trying to resurrect these plants through some much needed TLC, if we can. But, I think at least two are legitimately beyond our reach.
Perhaps surprisingly, we also lost a radicchio that we had recently transplanted. We think this one might be “user error” and that we didn’t get a good physical transplant and the frost pushed it over the edge. The rest of our radicchio plants are 100% solid. We move a thousand+ seedlings, small plants and transplants every year. We accept the fact they can’t all be winners.
The amazing news is we lean heavily into cold climate crops. Our brassicas and leafy greens are getting big, fast. They love this stuff! We always say that being a cold climate gardener gives you an edge. The overwhelming majority of “desirable” garden grown plants are tolerant of the cold and often even excel in the cold!
We’ll have more damage to show you, soon. This spring has been a rough one, especially since we’re known to be early planters. But, we’re finally at the precipice where it’s going to turn around. Summer is near! And our garden will turn around, too, but sometimes you’ve gotta roll with the punches.
