Tuesday, December 6, 2011

First Freeze

Rarely do really hard freezes hit our area. If they do, the citrus growers scramble with smudge pots and gardeners cover up delicate plants. A few years ago, it was easy to see which plants came from tropical places -- black, slimy heaps marked what had been Datura and other softies.

Not until the dogs and I rounded the shady side of the dog park at 7:00 this morning did I realize that we were in for cold weather. Of course, I hadn't taken cuttings from the Padron pepper as I'd planned to. Fortunately, upon inspection it looked okay.

The strawberries should know that blooming in December is a bad idea. Maybe this will convince them?


Hardy parseley, kale, and the other cole crops just looked pretty but not overly put-upon. Garden stalwarts.


Everything else looked pretty okay, and today marked the first time I used warm bath water to water the seedling beds. It's so much easier on my hands than pumping cold rainwater from the barrels. Because of  the hole in the pipe, I'm going to be doing some hand watering until I get my act together to fix the irrigation!

5 comments:

michelle said...

I'm surprised you got frost, we just barely escaped it last night. That will teach those strawberries a lesson. Now I have to go out and rescue the last of the peppers before the frost hits here as well.

Ottawa Gardener said...

Strawberries seem to think fall weather is just spring lite here and always throw out a few flowers, even some fruit, at least the day nuetral ones do. Glad to hear your padron is okay!

kitsapFG said...

Something very beautiful about a hard frost on plants. We had one hard freeze almost two weeks ago and have been above (but close to) freezing at night ever since. I am not complaining though - as I would really like to enjoy a mild winter this year if fortune would be so kind to me.

Curbstone Valley Farm said...

Our strawberries were still blooming too...not now though! ;) I actually got caught off guard with the first freeze, as our power was out from the recent storms, and I didn't hear a forecast. Waking up to 28.6 F was a bit of a surprise! The garden seemed unscathed though. Fortunately, hard freezes are relatively rare most years.

Mr. H. said...

You need some of those transgenic strawberries wherein coldwater fish genes are inserted into a strawberry to make it frost-resistant...nah.:) Lovely pictures.