Preparing for the first frost
Our first frost
technically came early Thursday morning, when a thin skin of frozen dew
formed on top of the woodshed roof. Luckily, it only hit 34 at garden
level, so I gained an extra couple of days to get things done. I was
glad that I'd picked the best of the basil to dry Wednesday, though, since this tender herb tends to get nipped around 40 Fahrenheit.
When
I thought we were going to get an ultra-early frost at the end of
August, I was scurrying like crazy to cover things up. But our average
first-frost date is now gone by, and I'm actually ready for the summer
veggies to perish (and the cabbage worms along with them). So rather
than covering things like peppers and tomatoes, we just picked the
plants hard, planning to move on to fall edibles once the freeze makes
the summer garden a thing of the past.
That said, I did cover our youngest lettuce bed. No need for a freeze to set back one of our most dependable autumn vegetables!
Maybe I'll even break down and light Huckleberry a fire?
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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.
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Ha! I was doing exactly the same thing today... mad scramble to pick anything left, and quick hoops to cover the autumn edibles.... i am having a bit of a space crunch in the frig though... the cellar isnt quite cold enough for storing yet. What to do with 40 MORE pounds of carrots and pounds of chard, and a five gallon bucket overflowing with celery? And speaking of green peppers, we cut into one of the green ones i had picked for supper, and I think the bell must have cross pollinated with one of the hot peppers-it had a bite!