Jack Frost Nipping

[tjg911]

Originally Posted by Wi-sunflower

There were a whole lot of jokes about "global warming" at the market yesterday. With our late cool spring, non-existant summer and now early cold, no one around here thinks our part of the world is getting warmer.

Carol

well the planet has actually been cooling for the past 8 years but that's a whole different subject that may generate a lot of heat!

it was 30 degrees at 7 am here and a heavy wide spread frost. due to the very important college football games last evening, there was no local news but 1 channel did run it at 7pm when it was totally DARK out. i had no idea it was going to be so cold so i had to go out in the dark (when i could have done it in the light had there been news at 6 pm) and put heavy covers on my pepper plants. i forgot my last butternut squash since IT WAS DARK so i'm not sure how they'll fare from the frost and 30 degrees but that's just the last 7 - 5 of them are unripe and the other 2 so so ripe, all the good ones are in the basement. after all, college football is so important, especially from all over the country not even local, so why have the news on?

tonight they are calling for a hard freeze in litchfield county as low as 24 degrees and a frost thru out the rest of the state. i picked all my peppers as i doubt i can protect against that low a temperature. i'm going to cover the pole bean trellis tonight. it is amazing the cold pole beans can tolerate! it usually takes a good hard freeze to kill the plants, a frost does not seem to effect them and beans are really a summer crop! i picked quite a lot today, far more than i expected to, and there's a lot of small beans and even some flowers! i hope they survive 24 degrees if covered.

tom

[Wi-sunflower]

I know what you mean about lack of important info in the news or weather.

Around here, we will usually get good warning for the FIRST widespread frost.

But if you somehow manage to protect against it, you are on your own trying to figure out when the next bad weather is coming. It's like they haven't figured out that not everyone will get hurt with that first frost. Or no one has the brains to protect against it so no one will need the info any more.

It can be especially dificult to figure out if we only get a marginal frost just 1 nite and then it gets nice for a while. Then we have to really watch out for the low temps as the TV won't tell us.

Of course this year is no problem. We've had 2 marginal frosts a week ago, 1 widespread frost and a hard freeze frost and another frost all in a row and tonite will probably be below 32* too. In fact we have snow flurries in the forecast for the next few days.

We DID have about a 1/2 hour of snow pellets at the Sat market. That's the earliest I can remember snow at the market. Along with the NW winds it was not a pleasant place to be that day.

One of the surprise crops we had this year of no heat, was the few hot peppers I put in. I usually do a couple of acres of hot peppers but this year just put in about 5 rows. While they were late getting going, once they started producing, they really pumped out a lot of nice peppers. We have over 20 bu of a mix of Hungarian Wax, large Cayenne, Jalapeno, Serrano and Habanero in the barn. We also had too much to pick on Serrano, Super Chile, and Habanero, so just pulled the plants and put them in a couple of fertilizer spreader boxes for picking later. They should keep OK for quite a while. The Habanero was the real surprise as often they don't do much at all in a cool summer.

Carol

[dokutaaguriin]

-16 C (3.2 F) here this morning. My tomato season has been over for a week now. There are a few tomatoes left on the vine frozen solid. I may just transfer thos ones directly to the freezer.
I am just hoping that my fall greens can survive in the greenhouse.
On the bright side a Chinook is going to blow in on THursday.....+16C ( 61 F). Can't wait.
Jeff

[svalli]

We have had some good freezes for two weeks now. I lost a lot of ripened tomatoes to frost at MIL's greenhouse. They had become mushy before we got there during a weekend, I had told her to pick and use the toms, but she had not even picked her ripe tomatoes before the freeze. I picked all green ones from our yard couple of weeks ago and they have been ripening indoors. I do still have a plastic tent GH at our yard with a heater with some hot peppers in there, but if the weather does not get any warmer I have to pick the peppers green and prune and spray the plants before moving them indoors. I have ten indoor pepper plants, so I can not bring the outside ones indoors without spraying them first.

Yesterday I made pickled winter squash, because my squash vines were killed by frost before the fruits ripened. The unripe squash and pumpkin can be pickled since the flesh does not get mushy when it is cooked. Most pumpkins do not get ripe here, so pickling them is quite popular.

Summer here was relatively warm and so far fall has been quite dry compared to last year, so I am not complaining about the early cool down.

[Marko]

What a crazy weather, yesterday we had 22C/72F, today hailstorm with rapid temperature drop and for next four days frost warning. My maters are dead already, so I dont care.
Svalli, I've always admired you northerners growing heat loving plants

[barkeater]

The season has mercifully ended as of yesterday morning's 27 degree low. I picked everything that looked like it would ripen, and have about 75# of nice green tomatoes. There would be double that, but the cold rains last week cracked a lot of them, so they would have rotted as they ripened.

And today I left for work at 6am in heavy snow, with an inch on the ground and another 1-2" forecast. Luckily the roads were too warm for it to stick yet. When I got over east of the Green Mtns. it changed to rain.

Clean up begins next weekend so I can burn leaves in a couple weeks, then plant my garlic.

[tjg911]

forget jack frost, yesterday his brother john snow visited. it snowed from noon to 2 am and when i got up this morning it was snowing again. very early for snow, i got 1 1/2".

tom

[Wi-sunflower]

It looks like this is going to be my second Sat market in a row where it will be below 32* when I start setting up. OH JOY !!! Not.

Today may even be colder longer than last week. It's hard to do a market when your stuff is sitting there getting froze/ruined just by taking it out of the truck. Not to mention the customers tend to "sleep in" and don't come out as early as when it's nice out. It's forecast to be as low as 28* when I get to Madison and not get above 32* til after 8 AM.

At least it's supposed to be sunny today. It's been cloudy, dreary, drippy for just about the whole week. Hard to get motivated in that weather.

Carol