Spring comeuppance
We
reveled in spring. We watched the flowers with joy, started crops
way too early, and basked in the warm sunshine.
And now it's time for
our comeuppance. As you can see from this webcam shot, the chicks weren't
pleased when Friday morning temperatures were in the mid to high
20s. I wasn't either --- the weather forecast had promised me a
low of 36 and I'd only half-heartedly covered a few strawberry beds.
I don't even want to
start telling you everything that got nipped last weekend, because I
suspect more kicked the bucket last night. We went ahead and covered the rest of the strawberries
Wednesday, along with broccoli, cabbage, Swiss chard, and carrot
seedlings. 
In some cases, this equates
to closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, but I figured we
were better off safe than sorry.
I'm more concerned about
a fruitless summer than spring setbacks, though. The kiwi leaves
turned black after Friday's freeze and some of our new grape leaves
were slightly nipped. Only time will tell whether last night's
(and tonight's) cold hit the tree fruits.
And then there are the
wild trees. No, it doesn't make any difference to our livelihood,
but I remember how depressing it was to walk around in the woods all
summer six years ago when a late frost nipped back the young buckeye
leaves. Here's hoping the woodland microclimate will prevent at
least that!
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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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grapes: leaves have already died, including the tiny bunches of grapes they already had
pears: soft and wrinkley with tinges of black cannot bode well for their fruit
Our grape leaves got nipped back on Friday, but they were so small I'm not sure it'll make a huge difference.
This morning, my outdoor thermometer said 14, but even though I tested with another thermometer and got the same answer, I don't believe it. I didn't even cover our lettuce and it wasn't nipped at all. So, maybe my thermometer was in a frost pocket?
Not sure how cold it actually got or how it will affect the peaches. They looked okay this morning, but I haven't peered at them more recently.