So, yesterday was a bit rough for a lot of us northern gardeners. We received yet another rather sudden, unwelcome and rather “out of season” frost!
Fortunately, we survived it just fine. The damage to our squash plants was fairly light, only taking out a few leaves across a handful of plants. The frost came without any warning, no one was talking about the possibility until people woke up to freezing temperatures!
Some areas of town fared quite a bit worse, experiencing nose dives down into the mid-20’s! If you lost some of your plants, we feel for you! If your plants are looking devastated, it’s time to harvest what you can as there’s no hope for regrowth or further recovery at this point. With only two “typical” weeks to our “normal” frosts, there’s just not enough time to do anything meaningful at this point.
Particularly with squash, we usually wait until after the first frost to harvest anyway. While the plant may be looking quite terrible, the fruit itself is usually just fine. This is true across a lot of plants that are frost sensitive. If it looks good, it is good! But, leaving fruit on the plant will ensure it will get worse.
This season has definitely been an incredibly odd one. We experienced a frost a couple weeks after our typical last frost, now again another one a couple weeks before or first average frost! But, despite those dramatic bookends, we’ve had a considerably warm summer season! But, this effectively means we had only about 90 frost free growing days this year!
Stuff like this might “seem” odd or unfair, but these early and late frost outliers are hardly setting all time records. Those first and last frost dates are always averages, subject to the whims of the weather each season. Sure, we usually don’t see them this early or late. And definitely not twice in the same season. But, obviously it can happen!
We’re going to continue growing out our squash as our plants are still mostly healthy. We’re definitely seeing some late season signs on our plants. The squash we do have are mighty fine looking, but they can benefit a little bit in maturity by keeping them on the vine, when possible.
