re: 2023 Fall Garden Thread

I still have a ton of tomatoes that are taking forever to ripen. Going to harvest the broccoli and a few cabbages, cover the others. Also going to dig up my 3 best jalapeño plants and put them in containers until it warms up again. Too pretty to let the freeze get them.

Garden check before arctic death '24...

Harvested a few carrots, but most aren't ready yet, not worth picturing. I guess the late start I got means shorter days and slower to maturity.

Also not worth picturing is spinach. Really disappointing how slow it's going. Maybe I needed to give them more nitrogen?

Got a broccoli head. I'll be covering these Sunday. Still no cauliflower head. Harvested some beautiful kale.



I'll be sad to see the flowers get zapped. Marigolds, borage, and sweet alyssum looking great. But I guess they've been on borrowed time now that it's mid January.




Onions looking ok. Seeing conflicting information on what temps they can handle. I'll throw some chopped leaves over them just to be safe.

Everything got covered except the sweet peas and parsley.
Strawberries, onions, garlic, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower are all under doubled over frost blankets and mulched in to seal.

i have another hard freeze tonight with 26 degrees projected. stuff has stayed covered.

i can see the green pea plants have melted.

Will check on Sunday when i come back from Dallas.

Broccoli looks a little damaged. Cauliflower looks better. Carrots look great. Onions look good. Spinach looks like shite but not because of the freeze; it's always looked that way.

I uncovered and am rolling the dice with tonight's freeze. Should only be 27-28 and short duration. Only really worried about damaging the broccoli more than it already is.

When did you seed your carrots? I did my first batch mid October, and they're taking longer than I expected. The ones I seeded mid November seem much further behind too, I'm guessing because of the shorter days and more nights below 40.

Looking good!

quote:

---

Onions and garlic look good but can use the rain coming this week.

---

My onions were a bust this year. I have maybe about 10 or 12 onions out of about 60 that are actually growing. Oh well. Better luck next year.

I know strawberries can tolerate some really cold temps, but I was a little worried about mine. We got as low as 15 here, but it didn’t seem to bother them at all. I never covered them and they look just fine.

Everything I read suggested I harvest broccoli before that freeze. I didn't have enough to worry about. Turns out, it all looks fine.

quote:

---

Everything I read suggested I harvest broccoli before that freeze. I didn't have enough to worry about. Turns out, it all looks fine.

---

A friend had some Green Magic broccoli plants. He picked nice-sized central heads (from two of about thirty plants) on the evening before the first of the couple days of hard freezes. When he picked the two central heads, a couple of his other broccoli plants had tiny central heads with the rest of the plants not yet showing any sign of central heads.

Anyway, even though he left his broccoli completely uncovered during the hard freezes (down to at least 15 degrees one night), his broccoli appear to have made it through the freezes pretty much unscathed with perhaps what appears to be only very minor freeze damage. As a matter of fact, the two plants from which he harvested central heads have started making side shoots subsequent to the hard freezes.

Like you, I was surprised by how well my friend's broccoli appear to have fared, based on everything I'd read that indicated that around twenty-six degree temperatures broccoli won't survive.