What I've Learned This Winter: Cold Sensitivity in my Crops

This year was really the first real Winter i've had the pleasure to experience in Austin. The past 4 years have been uber mild. Even last year with it's 'NEAR RECORD LOWS' days were nothing to compare with the actual deep, hard freeze we experienced this year for several days. Bitter winds, cold days, even snow! This was a great year for me to sit back and watch the few veggie plants remaining from my Fall/Winter planting to see who would survive the freeze, and who'd wilt in defeat. Last year i covered everything with an insane amount of sheet, tarp and even heat lamps and christmas lights. I had harvested most my goodies this year, though and decided to see what happened to the remaining few. My future homestead will involve easily assembled floating row cover, some cold frames, and maybe even a green house. I need to know which veggies need to be protected, and which can be left on their own. This is what i observed this year:

Broccoli:
Broccoli can take a frost, even a hard one. But it needs to thaw out the next day. Several days of frozen to the bone was more than it could handle. First frost: still perked up. Second frost: frozen, but still edible. After a few days of frozen: wilty, burned, suitable only for compost and chicken feed (the eggs have been SO GOOD lately, btw)

Kale: Kale did great. I have some in raised planters that totally died a sad and uneccessary death. The plants that were in the main bed in the ground are still growing, with some frost burn on the outer leaves. I've read that a frost will make them sweeter. My plants are still oddly tiny, so not much has been harvested for report on that matter. First frost: just fine. Second frost: frozen, and perked back up. After a few days of frozen: plants in the ground: badly frost burned, plants in raised beds: dead and sent to the compost heap.

Cabbage: This one makes me sad. I've never grown a successful cabbage. The snails or aphids always get them. I had one beautiful cabbage head that is no longer beautiful. The chickens were sure stoked. First frost: perked back up. Second frost: wilty and upset, but still alive. After a few days of frost: total mush and frost burned.

Onions and Garlic: The real troopers of the bunch! They're still a bit wind burned, and some of the garlics are still droopy and displeased, but most will be making it through to June. I lost a few little onions, but most are just fine. The multiplying onions are frost burned, but just as vigorous as before and the bulbing onions seem to be back on their way to making bulbs. First frost: fine. Second frost: knocked over and frozen in the wind, but thawable. After several days: frost burned, wind burned, a few melted, most A. OK.

Flowers: Violas rock. Calendula not so much. The violas got some frost bite, but they're well on their way to filling in the gaps. The Calendula, very unfortunately, totally melted. The ones in the ground might spring back, but the planter housed ones are a loss. My soaps and lotions are sad to hear that.

Herbs: Most appear to be coming back. The lemon balm is singed, but has some greenery at the base. The sorrel is filling back in. Both of these were surrounded by multiplying onions that may have helped to insulate. Not sure about the thyme, they were tiny to begin with. My large sage is a little droopy and the rosemary even got some frost bitten leaves. The margoram is a loss, but it was recently planted and pathetic to start with. I think if there had been more snow insulating the plants, more would have survived.

Xeric: The Agave Marginata is not pleased. Frost bitten and stunted. It's had some strange set backs in growth this past year and we may pull it out and replace with the pups it's happy to clone. Smaller pups that had been transplanted melted with the freeze. All the native yuccas and agaves are totally fine (we harvested them a few lots over a while back). Prickly pear: no good, but will probably come back with new pads.

So, that's my report. It's good to know your plants: who can survive and who needs babying. Research and guidelines are great, but first hand evidence is the best. What were your losses and successes this year?

Rolling Blackouts Across Texas

Due to the cold weather, our normally too-warm-for-me state is having rolling power outages statewide. I love the cold weather, and don't mind power outages, but my house is awfully dark this time of year. Wholesome Wednesday will be delayed until i'm sure the power will stay on for more than 15 minutes.
In the meantime - here's how my garden looks this morning, not sure if they'll be bouncing back after this hard freeze, especially if it sticks in the 20s for the next foreseeable future.

Wish 'em luck.

Yip Yip: NIP NIP

It's getting chilly tonight!
Have you been wondering why the veggies in your garden aren't doing so great? Can you blame them?! It was nearly 80 degrees this weekend, and tonight it's forecasted for 19 degrees! My husband may repeatedly remind me that flukey weather is indeed 'normal' for around here, but i have a feeling the plants disagree with him as much as i do. Fluctuation is one thing, but these drastic changes can't be good for plant souls.

I've pretty much harvested everything but some cabbages. I have a lot of little germinating things that are bound to get frost bitten, and there are tons of volunteer herbs coming up as well as early wildflowers. The volunteers will have to stick it out by themselves, but i plan on 'covering' the germinating seedlings and other small greens that i'd like succeed. No more 'tent city' for me, though. Last year saw some 'near record lows' in early January. I went a little overboard.

A simple scattering of a layer of leaves from my backyard will be all the covering the plants get from me this year. My neighbor has a leaf blower that i'll borrow to uncover the plants once it warms back up, and the chicken poop left behind will be a little pick me up for the veggies. I'll also be sure and water the gardens well to fill the plants' vascular systems with water. If you have a mister and the freeze is imminent, you can mist your plants all night to keep them from freezing to death. This is a good strategy for keeping citrus alive, as well.

I may not be harvesting the bushels of salad that i was this time last year, sigh: but i have the very first cabbage success growing out there and some other lovely veggies doing their very best to grow despite the weather.

Gearing up for Low Twenties!

Here in Austin Tx it is customary to garden through the Winter. It is often our best season.
Until the Winter i try to perennialize jalapeno plants and plant my broccoli and lettuce a little late.
My Texas gardening books say things like "garlic will be happy in the winter, unless we get one of those cold as heck winters that happened in the early nineties." Uh huh.  It's 2010 and I have sad garlic.

I've given up on the poblanos. Mostly given up on the jalapeno: no more light assistance but still covered in some layers of freeze cloth: you never know. Most the veggies seem to spring back somewhat once the morning light FINAally hits them, at 11 am. I would live on the low point of the street with my house blocking am light during winter hours. And it's only been a start. This week/weekend is calling for temps in the low twenties that could feel like the TEENS with the wind. This is some of the coldest weather we've had in Austin for 15 years.

I'm not giving in though: i fight the frost! Tent City has been resurrected. Christmas lights border the edges and the heat lamp has been stolen from The Ladies' coop and inserted under the sheets to hopefully provide yummy warmth to the broccoli, kale, and mesclun greens through the coolest of nights (and hopefully not a brush fire.) What about The Ladies though: they're not used to cold-as-heck weather either. I plan on wrapping their coop with a tarp today to seal out the wind. Hopefully they'll get by with their down covered bodies adn no heat lamp.  I'm also strolling through the various raised beds I've been ignoring and piling up old leaves (thank you, leaf filled back yard) to cover some of the green garlic tips - we'll see if that helps AT all or if the leaves all blow off and i'm left with no harvest from a rather spendy garlic crop.

So wish me luck. I want to eat those broccolis, not watch them feed the compost.

Do you garden down here in the south? Are you trying to save your Winter plantings or letting them frost like "normal" gardens do in the Winter?

It Happened. It Froze.

8:30 am. Right now i'm seriously wishing these darned trees had lost all their darned leaves and would let the morning sun shine through to resuscitate the frozen babies in my vegetable garden. Everything is frozen.
The peppers in their securely covered patch with lamp seem to be okay ... but not thrilled. Their onions cohabitants look stunned, and the garlics in the bed nearby look positively displeased with life.

The main vegetable patch under its tent city construction? I peer under the sheets and see a sorry sorry sight. A touch to a baby spinach leaf reveals stiff rigor mortis of plant body.  I have never tried to garden in an actual winter before, so this state of frozen garden inhabitants is quite unsettling, frustrating, and fear inducing. Will I fail in my winter crop as well as my summer? Will my hard work and love be repaid with dead plants, stunted and non-producing? Was i fooling myself thinking that "cool weather plants" really didn't mind getting a touch of a freeze?  This will be a learning experience for me - hopefully we'll get something to eat this winter (since i missed all my tomatoes this summer on a wedding vacation) and not just a whole lot of chicken snacks and compost.
Sigh.
9:30 am Hurry up, sun! The babies want to feel your warm embrace. If only the garden were on the other side of the house..... but then it would only get am sun, and that is insufficient.
 I'm noticing that i piled some leaves here and there as mulch. I was afraid to smother the plants underneath so i mushed them around exposing the tops of the lettuces etc to the air- but i think i should have just covered it all with leaves and maybe spared the plants underneath them. This freeze just caught me unprepared.

Have to keep reminding myself: gardening is learning. you do not know everything. you will make mistakes and kill plants occasionally.... i just wish they weren't plants i was counting on for food!
I live in zone 8 and have plans on moving to a northern version of zone 8 (yamhill valley in oregon). This is the first year i have seen a hard enough freeze to fill a bucket with more than an inch of ice.

9:45 am. Need to walk to the gym now, cooolld walk.... but i'm feeling hopeful. I pulled back a little bit of tent city to let the sunshine in, will leave the rest covered and light on peppers until i get back from yoga.... it looks like the peas are becoming happily pliable again, the little kales seem unphased, the broccolis thawing out.

12:30. Hope is in sight! I've pulled back some of the sheets and uncovered the peppers and turned their light off. Peppers have just a bit of frost bite on their edges, not bad. All the winter crops in the main garden seem to have sproinged back to life, great. Eggplants have bit the dust, but that was to be expected.

Looks like I may not be a failure after all.

So far so good!

What zone do you live and garden in?
What do you do as a gardener in winter time? When do you call it quits? What precautions do you take before freezes? What crops do you expect to survive and produce throughout the winter in your area?