Ending and Beginning

We had a frost last night, we’re hoping it’s the last of the season. It’s been a harsh weather week for the plants recently set out — lots of wind and hard rain, a strong, dry wind all day yesterday, and then a frost.

Here’s the garden all bundled up last night:

Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. It was approximately 30°F before the sun came up. I uncovered everything a little after 9am. The tomato under the orange bucket in the foreground had some frost damage where it was touching the inside of the bucket, and some under the white dropcloths were damaged as well. We did not cover the potatoes at all (for some reason I thought they wouldn’t be bothered by some frost, and there are a lot to cover), and they took a lot of damage. They’re not going to die or anything, but they’ll definitely be set back. It’s kind of a bummer, but I understand that we’ve been pushing the dates a bit.

And yet they say that potatoes can be planted a month before the last frost. Maybe getting frosted doesn’t hurt them much, and it’s worth it to get started on the underground structure of the plant? I’ll have to look into that.

The onion sets are looking good. They were uncovered last night and don’t seem affected. Need to get some fish emulsion on them.

DW and I planted 12 more tomatoes and all 8 peppers in the garden this evening. Finished just before dark. It’s supposed to be quite stormy in the next 24 hours — welcome to the real world, little plants!

Planted the first nine tomatoes out in the garden today. Put half a shovelful of compost in each hole and planted them pretty deep. Here are the first three (all with blossoms):

DW planted seeds: pole beans, lettuce mix, two kinds of beets, and radishes.

She also harvested some spinach that came up from last year, which I had for supper (just cooked in a covered pan in 1/2″ of water and some butter). It was excellent. I didn’t know that spinach would overwinter like that. I wonder if you can plant it in the Fall.

The forecast low for tonight in Madison is 35°F, and we can be easily 5 degrees colder than the forecast low, so it looks like I’m not setting any tomato plants out today after all. Sigh. I will plant something.

I planted onion sets in the raised bed:

and Hopi Orange Winter squash in the other raised bed (4 seeds per hill):

and another 30′ row of mostly red potatoes (with a few white ones I found growing in a cupboard). That makes 120′ of potatoes.

At 7pm, yes, it does feel like a frost tonight, so I covered the herb bed outside the back door:

All four apple trees are blooming now, including the one I just pruned a few months ago. Sure hope the blooms don’t get frosted. Last year, the one I pruned in late winter did not have one blossom on it.

Also:

• dug a trench where I’m going to plant corn just north of the raised bed, filled it with compost, and shovelled the soil back on top of the compost.
• raked up grass clippings from yesterday’s mowing, used some for mulch, threw some in the garden, and reserved a couple of buckets for future use.

[Update 5/11: it clouded over and so got nowhere near freezing last night.]