First Frost

Woke up this morning to a light frost in the yard -- the first frost of the year for my yard. My mom texted me yesterday that a freeze warning for my area had popped up on her phone, so the frost was not a huge surprise. Also, we are at the end of October, which is a usual time for a first frost in my yard.

When I visited my mom and stepdad in Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago, I carried a lot of her tender potted plants into her sunroom, knowing that cold weather would soon be there, too. Mom used to have a lot more begonias, but now at least half of the potted plants are Bromeliads. All of hers have toothed edges like saw-blades, so the sister who would have had to carry those in was really happy that I was there to help. She had someone to share the scratches and scrapes with!

Leaves coated with a light frost in my garden. PHOTO/Amygwh

In my yard, there are no potted plants for me to carry indoors, and there are few frost-tender plants in the garden to worry about.

The leaves on the bush beans look pretty rough this morning-- darkened and wilted -- but they already had finished producing beans for the season.

Cool-season crops that had been planted with winter in mind look just fine.  Frost bowed some of the leaves early, but as the day warmed, the leaves all perked back up.

I checked the radish section of the garden closely, looking for signs that the roots are beginning to expand. All the salad radish roots are looking good and will be ready to pull over the next couple of weeks. It may be awhile before the winter radishes are big enough to pull, though. Most of them still have that thickened-stem look, instead of being round roots.

This weather also signals that the time for planting garlic and shallots is at hand. If you are not prepared, with garlic and shallots ready to plant right this second, that is ok, because the window for planting these is large.

Some years, I don't get the garlic planted until January, and the crop still comes out fine.

Colorado, and Cooler Weather on the Way

I've had several days of not thinking too much about the garden, because I've been in Colorado visiting my oldest son and his wife (and their dog).

Joe, Jake, and Kerrie, with Fox the Dog

When Jake and Kerrie were busy with work and classes, Joe and I enjoyed some amazing views while walking trails along Boulder Creek, and in Settlers Park and Chautauqua Park.

On Saturday, when we all had the whole day to spend together, we walked in the James Peak Wilderness area, mostly uphill (seemed Escher-like to me, anyway!), at an elevation above 9000 feet.

The scenery was glorious, and we had a great visit! We also got to see a train disappear into the mountain, via the Moffat Train Tunnel. Very cool.

Me, Kerrie, Jake, and Fox.

On our very first day of walking the Boulder Creek trail, Joe and I scrambled around on some rocky areas, and I learned that duct tape does a pretty good job of getting small cactus spines out of bluejeans.

When we returned home, the weather was still fairly warm for fall, but the forecast for this coming weekend includes what may be our first frost.  Sometime in the next couple of days I will need to bring in the remaining peppers and eggplants, but those are the last warm-season crops still in the yard.

All the cool-season crops will be fine, even if the temperature drops below the predicted 34 degrees F.

The geraniums will need to be brought in, the dirt shook off and the bare plants tucked into brown paper bags to store in the cool garage. Once or twice through the winter I'll soak their roots in water for a couple of hours before dropping them back into their bags, then next spring, when it warms enough to set those plants outside again, I'll trim the tops back and replant them.

Me! This is the "walk" on which I encountered a cactus.

Fox, Kerrie, and Jake, well outside the Moffat Train Tunnel.

The lemon grass will also need to be brought in, and as I look around the yard over the next couple of days I'll probably spot one or two more plants that need special care (or bringing in), but that should be just about it.

Are all the other gardens ready for winter?

Waiting, but Busy

Seedling cilantro.

Here in Cobb County, we are expecting a drop down to 26 degrees F tonight, which is a little disheartening for local gardeners. What we all are longing for is warm-enough weather that we can, at the very least, start to move our trays of seedlings out to the porch in the afternoons.

What we have, instead, is a forecast for cold-enough weather that crops of many tree-fruits in the area are at risk. In my neighborhood, many of the dwarf fruit trees are in bloom. If the weather tonight is as cold as predicted, the blossoms won't survive to set fruit.

While we wait for the weather to moderate, there is still plenty to keep me busy. I've moved more seedlings from their original flats and Jiffy Pellets to larger pots; I've planted a block of green peas where the first round of tomatoes and peppers will be planted; and I've watered (!) the garden.

After last year's nearly non-stop rain, it seemed as though there had to be enough water in the ground to last us for years, but that didn't turn out to be the case. My lettuces and assorted other seedlings were standing in pretty dry soil until I dragged out the hose on Sunday afternoon.

Tonight, though, the gardening tasks include hauling "old spikey" (my key lime tree) and my lemon seedlings back into the house and putting covers over some of the smaller cool-season plants that are in the garden. Even the crops that can take a lot of cold are more sensitive when they are young.

Also, a couple of weeks back I went to the studio in Sandy Springs for America's Web Radio and was interviewed for two episodes of the Master Gardener Hour. The first aired on March 15, and the second aired on March 22. Not too surprisingly, Cheryl Lenker (the host) and I spent the whole two hours talking about vegetable gardening!

Both episodes are online in the archives for anyone to hear. I played the first one on Sunday afternoon, so I could hear it while I was doing some housecleaning, and it turned out pretty well.

First Frost in Our Yard!

We heard that there was a frost coming, but very few of the plants currently out there needed protection. However, I was hoping to be able to help the potatoes through the night; they are very tender.

I piled leaves around the stems and draped a flannel sheet over the patch, but the freeze was deeper than just a little dip down to 32 degrees.

In the end, the measures I took weren't enough. The stems of the potato plants (and the nasturtiums) turned to mush.

The good news is that, even though most of the spuds had only pushed plants up out of the ground a month or so ago, a couple had come up earlier, and there was a little harvest to dig up today.

When I had dug up last spring's potatoes, I had saved some of the little ones in the fridge to replant in August. I was hoping to trick the little spuds into thinking that their dormancy period was over, but the trick only worked on a couple of them. I'll have to rethink the plan next summer to figure out a way to get a more abundant autumn harvest. I'm pleased enough that the couple of early-birds produced a few spuds for us, and we are looking forward to eating them.

Along with the spuds, I brought in some broccoli to serve with tonight's supper and a winter radish to have sliced thin and salted with our pre-dinner snacks. The potatoes will be for another day.

The freeze wasn't hard enough to harm the cauliflower, which is good, because they are the most tender of the brassicas out in the yard. Broccoli and cabbages can take much lower temperatures without harm.

We had one of the cabbages - the first of the season! - with our Thanksgiving Day meal. There are more that are getting close to harvest-size.

Elsewhere in the garden, the garlic are still all below ground, but the shallots are coming up.

The lettuces are still perking away - but we've had a lot less of these than my bunnies have. Moonpie and her babies are pretty big lettuce-eaters.

Overall, I'd have to say that the yard made it through this first very late frost in good shape. The weird part is that it Really Was the First Frost! I think that the official UGA weather station in Dallas, GA, recorded a frost about a week ago, but it was on a night for which the temperatures were patchy - my yard made it through that earlier "frost" without any frost at all. Last night - the night of Nov. 24 - was the first for my yard.

I'm not going to complain (I usually expect a first frost around the end of October), but I will say that it's weird.