What does a light frost (around 30 F minimum) do in the garden in April?  Strawberry flowers in full bloom were damaged --- notice the blackened ovary in the center of the flower on the left compared to the yellow center of the one on the right.  The former was unprotected while the latter spent the night under a row cover.  The frost-damaged bloom won't bear fruit, but the damage isn't a big deal since the plant has several other flowers waiting to open.

Newly emerged potato leaves were a bit nipped as well, but I'm not overly concerned about them either.  As you can see, only the tips of the leaves were frozen, and there's plenty more growth to come from the tubers underground.

What did I protect unnecessarily?  The broccoli and cabbage seedlings, although still small, are now well established and didn't even notice the cold.  The fruit tree flowers also seemed unphased.  Let's hope the rest of the spring temperatures don't drop below 30 and we'll be in good shape!

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.