This morning Shawn Rutherford called for a possible freeze for tonight and tomorrow night. I currently have tomatoes and peppers still growing. I was debating this morning about what to do with them due to the possibility of a light freeze. I contemplated pulling all the fruit and leaving the plants covered, just in case the flowers that are on the plants still produce (I know it is getting later in the season and they may not have a chance to produce any edible fruit) or the choice is to leave the fruit and winterize everything. Still in debate, since I am deemed to be in the Hill Country and we get colder than others when temperatures change. The first freeze that I know of is usually in December. Maybe things are changing. What would you do in this situation?
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| Average Freeze Dates For Texas |
I got home this afternoon around 6:00 and decided to pull some of the items (of course while trying to cover some of the tomato plants, vines broke so I had tomatoes from that) and bring them in and cover everything else. Took me almost 2 hours to cover everything (with watering all the plants to hopefully help them get through the freeze, I read this helps). I realized while covering the plants that I did not buy more winter row covers. The amount I had was before the extra boxes I built and the extra old sheets I had did not finish the job either. Well guess I will be buying more since a real freeze is sure to be on the way.
I also saved some Thai and Sweet Basil plants that somehow ended up growing in beds where they were not originally planted and also from the pathway of my garden.
In each pot there is enough plants to make several individual pots of basil. I will be giving some away once I get a chance to pot them in individual little pots this weekend.
Hopefully my covering of all the plants helps and I can still enjoy my vegetables.
11/07/10-The temperatures did drop on Friday night as well as Saturday night. According to the weather forecast tonight will also be around 42 degrees. So I will wrap the plants again. It shows that the rest of the week the lows will be in the 50's. So I SHOULD be okay until the weekend. Let's hope so. These are photo's from Saturday morning. I did not go out Sunday morning as I had been up since 4 am preparing roast for my Father-In-Law's birthday luncheon today. My husband was nice enough to go out and unwrap the plants. Nice sunny day today. Headed out to wrap the plants. You can see that one of the coverings blew partly off. This bed has the eggplant. I think I have lost them (never got any fruit, but tons of flowers).
