Preparing for the Frost
When I recorded the daily maximum and minimum
temperatures before going to bed last night, I was shocked to notice
that it had gotten down to 33 F outdoors the night before. So I
scurried around in the dark to bring in my most sensitive plants, just
in case it got one degree colder that night.
Top of the list was the dwarf Meyers lemon tree. Mark's mom gave
me this tree as an infant at Christmas last year (the best Christmas
present I've ever received!) and already it's sporting four baby
lemons. No way I was going to give it any chance of getting
nipped by the frost!
Luckily, we didn't get our first frost last night, but I know that it's
time to start making serious decisions. Like --- should I try to
bring in one of the unblighted tomato plants even though that
experiment didn't work well last year? Should I move the row
covers which are currently protecting my strawberries from being
munched onto the bell peppers which are just starting to ripen so that
they'll have time to give us more than the three fruits we've currently
eaten? Or should I give up the ghost and pick the dozens of
peppers as green instead of red?
Unfortunately, I took last week off, so this week I'm scurrying around
to catch up with work for my nonprofit and may have no time to do any
of that! I may have to leave it all in Mark's capable hands.
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About us:
Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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