I'm sure you're all itching to hear what came of the forecast hard freeze last week.  When I woke up Thursday morning, the frost was so thick, the leaves of the kitchen peach were bowed down under the weight, but I'm a bit confused about how cold it actually got.

I love to record daily highs and lows, but I've been operating without a good thermometer for a year now.  The problem is that the cheap ones we'd been buying at Wal-mart die in a year or less, and I just couldn't talk myself into purchasing another throwaway product.  (If you can recommend a high quality thermometer that records highs and lows, can handle outdoor conditions, and lasts several years, I'll snap it right up!)

Mark had a little interior thermometer, so I set that out on the golf cart for the night since there was no chance of rain.  At 7:30 am, I checked the thermometer, and it read 14 degrees Fahrenheit!  Since the forecast low was 26 and the air didn't fell all that frigid, I just didn't believe it --- surely the reading was a sensor malfunction.  So I pulled out a mercury thermometer and set it on the golf cart as well.  My analog backup also read in the teens (19 this time, probably because the sun was already beginning to warm the yard by the time I read it half an hour later).

If we really had a low of 14, everything should have died.  I would have expected the lettuce I left uncovered to be nipped at around 25, and the uncovered onion seedlings to die soon thereafter...but they all looked untouched.  My peaches also seem to have come through virtually unscathed, if these pretty fuzzy ovaries are any indication.

On the other hand, strawberries (even under row covers) were severely nipped, with lots of blackened centers.  Any kiwi leaves that survived the previous frost were completely decimated, as were mulberry and grape leaves.  In the woods, spicebush leaves were moderately damaged and the Japanese stiltgrass seedlings turned brown (yay!), but everything else looked okay.

My best guess is that the cold temperatures were very spotty.  They probably rolled down the holler toward us, sticking to the low points (where the strawberries live) and passing by the peaches (which are on more of a slope).  Maybe cold air pooled just uphill of the trailer, leading to the remarkably low reading on the golf cart outside our front door.

I'm just glad the damage wasn't more extreme.  The strawberries that had grown into little fruits look like they're going to make it, and the plants are already opening up new flowers.  Even the badly nipped kiwi has green buds.  Looks like we survived dogwood winter nearly unscathed.

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.