Last weeks snow was really quite a surprise. The precipitation percents were sky high too. In the back of my mind I was thinking "yea right". So many of the times when they have been so sure, these events go to the north or south of us.
It was the last time that such an event was predicted ( during art walk a few years back), I did not make any accommodations in the garden for that event. It was because of that mistake that my bulb onion seed bed was destroyed with dampening off disease. The ice had chilled down the soil and conditions were perfect for this to happen.
This year I covered my onion bed with greenhouse film. I did this as a way to prevent the ice melt from chilling the soil. I had made one mistake already this fall by not taking extra precautions for the harvester ants and had to re-sow because of that.It is my hope that the film saves the day and prevents a "do over" of that icy Art Walk Weekend. For added insurance I watered the onion beds with a natural fungicide. With luck this will all work and there will be no need to order onion plants in February.
Once again time will tell whether my precautions have worked.
Folks were asking how well the garden fared with this event. Everything was covered in preparation. It was even more of a surprise on Friday to discover the mercury at ground level had dropped to 11.5. At this writing there was still enough ice on the covers so that I could not pull back most of them to look inside. The 2 beds I could, everything looked great. the boc choy which is tender at those temps looked great and the broccoli heads that were forming do not appear to be effected either. Ah yes another wait and see thingy.
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