As I learned very quickly last year, when you have a garden, you are often at the mercy of Mother Nature. This was true again in the very early morning hours of Tuesday, May 14, 2013.
On Sunday, May 12, the National Weather Service had issued a frost advisory for the area on Monday morning. My biggest concern was the tomato plants I had planted on April 27th (rolling the dice on potential frost/freeze loss) and protecting them. I quickly grab a stack of newspapers and a stapler and headed to Roseville Community Garden. I started by ‘gift-wrapping’ the lower frame of the tomato cages in four layers of newsprint and ran a 4-layer strip over the top as well. It was a crude fix that didn’t look glamorous, but the whole idea was to keep frost from settling on the plants. I also ‘tented’ a single layer of newsprint over the mounds that are home for just emerged sprouts of the four different squash varieties I planted, knowing they too would be sensitive to the cold. Here’s how that looked.
‘Gift-wrapped’ tomato cages to protect from frost. Click the image to enlarge.
It ended up not being necessary, as temperatures didn’t drop low enough and Sunday’s windy conditions persisted overnight, so no frost. Yay! But Monday nights forecast wasn’t looking too good for the garden. The NWS had issued a freeze advisory that morning that then became a freeze warning by afternoon. Ugh…what to do?
I grabbed the 15-foot long, 6-foot wide strips of landscape fabric I had covered the plot with over the winter (to keep weeds & seeds out of the bare soil) and a dozen of my yet unplanted clay flower pots, and headed over to the garden in the late afternoon. Leaving the newspaper in place for insulation on the tomatoes, I wrapped all five of the cages with the black fabric in a couple of layers. Since the gusty winds still persisted, I staked the fabric down best I could, adding some rocks on the ‘upwind’ side. I placed the pots gently over the dozen new squash sprouts, hoping the heat retained by the thick clay and trapped air withing the pots would insulate the sprouting seedlings from damage.
I left the now sprouted and rapidly growing rows of radish, lettuce, chard, beets, carrots and herbs unprotected. There was just now good way to cover that large an area and not risk having them crushed and beaten by a tarp or fabric in the wind. I resigned myself to having to reseed and start the garden over again if they were killed – a sad lesson I learned after last year’s hail storm. I then left for home, hoping for the best.
I watched the temperature drop to 33-degrees before I went to bed, and expected the worst on Tuesday morning. Woke up to a calm, bright, clear morning – not a good sign – grabbed a ‘to go’ mug of coffee and headed down to the farm. Walking in the gate, I saw that any unprotected tomatoes, and all nursery-grown peppers, eggplants, and taller veggies were wiped out, wilted piles of mush. Ugh…many folks lost almost all their plantings. I got to Plot #63, and my taller basil plants, used as ‘row-marker’ for the basil seed I planted, were a pile of mush. But all the low-sprouted seedlings looked fine. As did the radishes, beets, carrots, chard and all the herbs. Perhaps their proximity to the dark, warm soil protected them dureing the brief time temperatures fell below freezing? I removed the clay pots from the squash sprouts, and they seemed to smile at the sunlight…they were just fine as well! Unwrapping the fabric from the tomatoes (part of which had been blown loose at some point from one plant overnight) and they looked fine as well – just a few limp leaves on a section of the one plant that had been partially exposed. Here’s a picture once things got unbundled:
Surviving the freeze! Plot #63 at Roseville Community Garden on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. Click the photo to enlarge.
Oh, and some of the zinnia seedlings seem to have been lost to the freeze as well. Given the condition of other plots, I feel very fortunate. It seems the makeshift gift wrap party on Sunday and Monday evenings paid off. As it stands now, I still have a 4 week jump on my plantings in comparison to last year. Unless Mother Nature plays another trick on me, I’ll have a healthy crop of radishes ready for harvest when my parents arrive for their annual visit on May 24. That should make Mom happy…she LOVES radish sandwiches. With five varieties to choose from, she should be in radish sandwich heaven!