Saturday, September 19, 2009

Gardener at Midnight

row cover 1
Like many of you out there, I like to stay up late sometimes and catch up on my blog reading. I stopped by Skippy's Vegetable Garden and read Kathy's post about tonight's frost warnings for certain areas of New England. I scurried back to my own blog, looked at the sidebar and noticed that the low for tonight was expected to be 39 degrees in my area. Panic or paranoia - whatever you want to call it set in and I soon found myself (at 11:30 pm to be precise) putting floating row cover over my entire garden, which I'm happy to say only took about 15 minutes. The star fruit and citrus trees also came inside. Luckily, we have a huge spotlight in the backyard so I was able to see what I was doing. (I'm sure the neighbors were thrilled.) Call it being overly dramatic but I REFUSE to underestimate mother nature this year.

row cover 2

10 comments:

  1. I'm hoping my frost is a long way off. It did get pretty cold last night, but I think it didn't get lower then 40 here. I think I'm lucky that my garden has a nice micro climate that isn't very frosty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We had a frost warning here as well. I put any of the tender plants in a cheap little greenhouse. I'm kind of disheartened that we've already had a frost warning.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I can't believe you are already having frost warnings when our low was 73 degrees today. However, when we do have a freeze later in the year, I know from experience that I will be outside covering plants up after dark. It seems at least once during the winter, I am caught at the last second scrambling to get things protected. I hope all your plants are okay.

    Jan
    Always Growing

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here in Nova Scotia, we had a frost warning for last night, also, but it stayed just above the frost mark and everything looks fine in my area this morning. Have heart: this coming week is supposed to be very summery here in Eastern Canada. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Not a bad call, your plants certainly will not mind your insanity!

    ReplyDelete
  6. 39? At what temp does it frost? 32 or warmer?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Jain, I researched that very question today. From what I've read, it is possible to get frost even though the official recorded low is above freezing, though I'm sure it's only matter of a degree or two. I think I just got paranoid last night when noticed that the projected low temp began with a number 3. lol.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thomas, you are preternaturally organized :-)

    I can't wait for your turnips to be ready, either.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm jealous ! I want to hear "Frost Warning" on my local weather station...

    Out here in California we hear it very rarely....and I get so excited when we do. Love a cold frosty night...why is the grass always greener?

    ReplyDelete