Frosts

The wild ramp season has past, and the greens are yellowing and dying back. We sold a few bunches, though. 🙂

The frost I was worried about before did hit us for 2 days in a row. One was a freeze, dipping to around 26-27. We protected our tomatoes with cardboard boxes mounded with dirt, or some were under plastic nursery pots lined with rowcover. We lost 4 plants completely, and 5 more experienced some damage. I removed and replaced 8 total, as though I probably could’ve saved a few of them, they would’ve needed some babying and production would’ve been set back. Better than I thought, though. With how cold it was I imagined losing them all.

Our corn stayed underground until the day or 2 after the frost passed, popping up safely.

Our young fruit trees lost their buds and will not fruit this year. Our adult ones, though, and our adult wild gooseberries, are peppered with fruit still. A couple of the young gooseberries have some spotty fruit, but it won’t be enough for any kind of sales – just for a sample.

We resumed planting, and almost everything is in the ground now.

Unfortunately, weather forecasters are calling for another round of low-to-mid 30s temperatures this weekend. This is a very late cold spell for our area. If the nights are calm, this could lead to more frost that would kill our corn and every other warm-weather crop we have planted.

We do not have anywhere near enough coverings for all of them, so we’re just going to have to take it as it comes. Hopefully it skirts us, because if it doesn’t it will be hundreds of dollars in losses and we might have to cut back or cancel many of our plans for the year.

We have started building a shed (out of an old machinery shipping crate) to sell out produce out of, if the weather allows us to have any produce this year.