November 19, 2018

Sunday was not a good day to venture out into the garden. A bit of a cool start today. Had to let the rocks break loose of the fabric.

As noted it was a extra hard first freeze Monday a week ago. Once the dust settled the thermometer was setting at 17. Uncovered plants at that temp do not survive. I had a bed of chard / kale that fit this category and it is dead 100%

Everything else was covered. There were well established seedlings and not so established. In the not so established, most of these guys are has beens too. With the well established seedlings everything got leaf burn. It does not look like any of these will die but they are set back or even possibly stunted. If we do not get any more mornings in the teens for awhile all of these may come out of it.

It does look like the broccoli and cauliflower is a total crop failure. The jury is out on the cabbage and kohlrabi. We will have to take a wait and see posture. My older bed of chard had developed stalks and even though it was covered there does seem to be some mortality in this bed too. Once again that time thingy. My sugar pod peas look to have come through fine. The strawberries are unscathed in fact they look the best of everything. The older carrots were uncovered and the foliage is fried but I suspect the roots are fine. They are mature. The young carrots were covered and look quite happy. The Brussels sprouts, boc choi, spinach, Asian greens and the lettuce trans plants look good. Leaf burn but will all comeback nicely.

I had gotten the cabbage, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts all in what I consider late and with them all getting older leaves burned I am not sure if these crops will make. I have nothing for a long time to go into these beds so we can just see what happens.

Save for sowing peas in the next couple of weeks I find any other sown veggie (sown between Nov and Feb 15) just sits and I feel they get stunted. Seed sown after February 15 out performs all of these winter sown veggies except the peas.

I think  these real strong temperature swings has become the new normal. It is because I use floating row covers that I still have a garden. It is taking a little bit for me to get used to the fact that the fabric instead of preventing a growth slow down that it is now preventing plants from being frozen to death. With out fabric the garden would be finished.