Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Garden Update 5 - The freezinging


I want a gold star for gardening. I just spent twenty five minutes in the cold and rain in shorts and sandles running around trying to find cover for my plants so they don't die on me when the temps drop over night.

Also, I will never plant early again. The old wives tale is to not plant before Good Friday and I see that as sound advice. Planting "late" is not going to negatively affect the harvest or the health of the plants. I jumped the gun so I ended up wading through puddles and getting soaked and cold to the bone. I could have just as easily planted in two weeks - but I got sucked in by on sale plants at Home Depot and now here I am. In their favor they are nicer and few weeks older than the infant plants I have worked with in years past, and so I think they should be okay... and if they aren't, its still early enough in the season that if I have to replace one here or there its not going to be too traumatic.

The potatoes have come along nicely, and I can't just replace them if they freeze so I made sure that they were fully covered and I hope its enough to offer the protection they need. It was reveled to me why I have so many flower pots around - they make excellent shelters for young plants! They are exactly the right size and I can just pop them back into the basement when it warms up again. They are a hearty plant though so I think even if they really froze they would maybe be okay. All the plants are going to be annoyed because I'm not going to be able to uncover them before at least lunch time.  I'm  choosing to see the time spent as "quality time in a terrarium" and not so much like "stuffed in the dark under a  plastic pot".

.I also used some old sheets and those are going to be harder to deal with post-cold snap. I came up with the pot idea after I covered the tomato cages with the sheets and my that time they were all ready sodden and the idea of taking them off and getting even more wet and cold and gross was not attractive or in the cards. I think it will be okay and I can just throw the whole mess in the laundry after work.

I would have taken pictures of all this but I didn't want to take the camera out in the rain. Not  because I thought I should protect myself from further cold and wet and gross but because I  wanted to protect the camera  from the cold and wet and gross. #priorities

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