Things To Read

Friday, October 31, 2014

The Frost Cometh

Well, it's our turn to have our first frost tonight. The nice piece of trivia about having a frost tonight is October 31st is our first average frost date. This year, we are hitting it right on the nose.


We have had a faucet trying to leak on the north side of the house for some time now. Yesterday it decided to become a small, constant little stream. So, this afternoon, Frank replaced it. I thought it would be more difficult and take more time than it did. Having a husband that is able to fix just about anything is a blessing indeed. 



Since the frost is coming tonight, I picked the last of the peppers and tomatoes this afternoon. It' kind of sad it's going to frost because the okra, tomatoes, peppers and purple hull peas are all just blooming away right now. We have had some warm days in the last couple of weeks and these plants just don't seem to be ready to shut down yet. I was surprised to find that even though the okra has been blooming, and still has a number of buds, I didn't find one pod of okra to pick this afternoon. It has been about a week since I picked the last few pods, so I expected to find some today. The only reason I can think of is that we have been having cool nights in the 50's for a while and okra does not like cool weather.



I am very curious to see how the turnips, kale, swiss chard, broccoli, carrots, mangel beets, brussel sprouts and potatoes do with this cold snap tonight. You can see from the weather forcast that we are not expecting anymore freezing weather very soon. I've read that the flavor of turnips actually improves with a frost, and the same is true for brussel sprouts. But I'm curious if the turnip leaves will die with the frost. If they do the chickens will miss them since I feed them the greens every morning.

The turnip patch

Kale, swiss chard, broccoli and one lonely cabbage

Carrots and Mangel beets
 
I know the potatoes will die back with the frost. Since I am not quite up to digging them up yet, and we have had some come up here and there from the ones we missed during the spring, we wanted a way to find them after the plants died back. Frank had a great recommendation. We have some of that bright orange spray paint that is used to mark the ground for construction sites and such. It worked great and made it easy to mark each plant. The potato plants haven't grown as big as I would like. They were very, very slow to
come up and get going. I can only speculate why. It was still pretty hot when I planted them, so I wondered if that affected their growth rate. After they finally came up and the weather cooled off, the growth rate increased quite a bit, but the resulting plants are about half the size of the springtime plants. I don't expect to have near the harvest we had in June, but I know the potatoes will keep better, stay crisper and be slower to sprout, so I can use some of them for seed potatoes come spring. That makes the effort to grow this second crop worthwhile.

Even though autumn has arrived, I look forward to being able to continue our harvest for a little longer. The more we can learn about extending our growing season, while we still have time to practice and it is not a life and death situation, the better we off we are in the long run. It also gives us the opportunity to increase our harvest, and have more food to eat. You just can't beat that.

Until next time - Fern

6 comments:

  1. When we lived in CT we had great luck with swiss chard after a light frost, even after several frosts. Carrots and brussel sprouts survived even after several frosts and light snow. I usually picked the red tomatoes but left the green ones if a light frost was coming. Then, if the plant died I'd pick the green tomatoes - wrapped the larger ones in newspaper and stored in a single layer in a cool place to ripen and made green tomato chutney from the smaller ones.

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    1. It turned out that our low temperature last night was 31 degrees instead of the forecast 25, and I was happy about that. Most everything was bowed down under a layer of frost this morning, but the cool weather crops stood right back up after a touch of the sun. The poor potatoes look awful, but that was to be expected. I am going to try wrapping up some of the green tomatoes to see if they will ripen. I've known several people that have done that before, including my mom. I've just never tried it....yet. We tried a green tomato and pepper relish last summer with the final harvest, but we didn't care for it at all. I think I'll freeze the sweet peppers and see if I can get the jalapenos pickled. Thanks for sharing, Bellen.

      Fern

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  2. Since we are close to you we also experienced the freeze last night. Yesterday we picked the last of the red tomatoes, peppers, pulled onions and leeks and took them to the Senior Citizen feeding center as there is no room at the inn for them here. Director was glad to get them. Made a salad from my late planting of lettuce last night. We did pull a ton of green tomatoes which I'll wrap in newspapers like Momma used to do and put them in a closed cardboard box. They'll slowly ripen and we're liable to have fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving. ~Sassafras

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    1. I hope we both have ripen tomatoes for Thanksgiving, Sassafras. That would be really neat. Thank you for sharing your experience with sharing. It's nice to be blessed with an abundance.

      Fern

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  3. I thought I was ready for old Mr. Frost because this summer/fall has been such a super busy time for me and I am always busy putting up food....but I, too, went out yesterday and picked the last of my peppers, tomatoes, green beans, and some swiss chard. As you said, the greens actually do fine and taste sweeter with a good frost or two. They will last unless they truly get frozen through and through. I felt rather sad. The peppers were blooming their little hearts out and I had so many tiny ones. Last night did a job on the garden. We had 25 degrees. So...even though it is sad...On with the fall/winter chores! Now for clean-up and composting and getting ready for the Spring! I love the seasons!! God teaches us so much through His creation. Glad to see that you are feeling better and getting back out there!

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    1. It was sad to see all of those blooms die, Lorraine, I agree. But, time moves on, as it is meant to do. I'm glad we have some cool weather crops growing this year. It does give me more opportunities to learn. Thank you for the kind words, I am feeling much better, and it really is good to be back outside. I missed it!

      Fern

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