Which Veggies can handle a Light Frost

I don’t think I have a complete answer to this question, but we had a light frost last night and I can now report what did and didn’t survive.

Reportedly, the low last night was 37. I didn’t figure this to be a frost, but there was a frost advisory out, so I should have listened. Anyhow, I didn’t protect any of my plants. Not much I could have done anyway. I went out first thing in the morning and there was a very light frost on all of the plants, but no noticeable damage to any of them.

I came out later after it had warmed up and this is what I found:

Beans
The damage is quite clear. The top leaves are dropping and a dark brown color. The second level and lower leaves are still green and healthy looking. I can also report that the individual bean pods survived just fine.



Tomatoes
The tomatoes suffered similar to the beans. The highest leaves were black and drooping and the lowest leaves were still nice and green.


The actual fruit suffered no damage.



Basil
Same story here. We went ahead and harvested these.



Peppers
Same exact story again. You can see the blackish leaves in these pictures and you can see that the fruit itself is a-ok.
More pictures of the injured peppers



Gourds
The gourd vines died. So I assume this would be true for any squash family plant. The dark colored leaves you see are all the gourd vine, but you can see a birdhouse gourd and a luffa gourd hanging from the trellis having survived the frost.



All of the typical fall crops came through without missing a beat; they show no damage whatsoever. This includes: broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, collards, 6” garlic that just sprouted, turnips, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach.

A few things also came away without harm that I was a little surprised at: a celery seedling (what under tulle), a celery plant (growing under the tomatoes), all of my herbs – none suffered at all. The artichoke also show no damage.

I know that not many of you are shocked that a frost could do this to the summer plants. But this is just to show – those of us who are new to this – just what the damage looks like at a temperature of 37. Even with the damage, I decided not to pull anything other than the basil. I wanted the basil, so I saved what was left of it. I know I won’t get much of anything from what was damaged, but warmer weather is just around the corner and I want to see if any of the plants bounce back and actually ripen some of the undamaged fruit. I guess you can call it an experiment….after all, I have nothing to lose.

Herb Garden Update

It has been a while since I updated you on my herb garden.
An herb garden is so easy to maintain. I forget to water it most of the time, but most herbs can handle low watering conditions. My plan was to allow them to grow throughout the summer; only harvesting what I needed for fresh use.  Before the first frost, I plan to severely cut them all back; harvesting quite a bit to dry or freeze.
 
My rosemary hasn’t gotten as big as expected and the sage is much larger than expected. Next to the sage (bottom right); you can see the chives. There are three of them.




The lemon balm is really large. I honestly have no idea why I planted lemon balm. I think I had extra room. In front is the thyme. The little plant in front of the lemon balm is parsley; just starting out.




The top plant is french tarragon. It’s quite small, so I may not harvest much of it. Just below it (spreading along the ground) is the oregano. The brown stem in front of the oregano is the remains of the stevia. I chopped it down quite a bit. Note sure if it will come back or not. The small plant to the bottom left is the sweet marjoram….useful for making sausage.




The chocolate mint is beautiful and smells great too.





The rosemary has grown nicely. The gap between the two plants does have a smaller rosemary in there….it’s just been stuck behind a rather large zinna that has been pulled.



Missing from my herb garden pics is the cilantro; you saw that earlier this week. And I still have spots reserved for cumin and chamomile. I can’t get either to germinate. If I do; then I can’t get it to live beyond the seedling stage. As soon as I find one of those in a planted form; I will be buying it.

Green Beans Perhaps

The DH and I were discussing what we should eat for lunch. The kids were with Nana, so we could have anything we wanted. We decided on shrimp but still needed a veggie.

I decided to go walk around the garden to see how things were growing and I came back like this:



It’s nice when that happens…go out for a quick look and come back with a shirt full of something. I guess we’ll have some green beans sautéed with onions with our shrimp.

See what other gardeners are harvesting at Daphne’s Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Not done with the Okra Plants Yet

I promise you, this is our last post about okra plants. They are gone now; nothing is left. But we did manage to find one more use for those mini trees…….


We used them in a school project: ‘Build a Farm’. Now, the walls and fence aren’t all okra plants, but they are in there. How’s that for reuse, recycle, and reuse again….lol….smh…..