Blackberry winter
8 pm Sunday night, I checked the weather
forecast and saw a frost warning. Mark and I rushed out and
covered up half the strawberries, the summer squash, half the okra, the
watermelons, and the first bed of sweet potatoes with row covers.
I tied plastic produce bags around several of the peaches (which are
now nearly two inches long!) The temperature was 50 F, with near
total cloud cover (a good sign since clouds hold in the heat at night.)
8 am Monday morning, the frost was beginning to melt off the
ground. Only time will tell whether we need to replant the tender
seedlings which didn't get covered --- beans, okra, canteloupe, winter
squash.
Blackberry winter! I could pretend that knowledge of this event
is why I haven't gotten my tomatoes in the ground yet, but it'd be a
bitter lie.
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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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To the best of my knowledge most people plant tomatoes regardless of blackberry winter. Most people cover them up.
What fascinates me is that a cold snap always seems to come sometime during the bloom of the blackberry. That is poetry.