Killing Frost
Last week we had three frosts but it was the last one that really counted. A “killing frost” is what the forecast warned and that is what we got.
Sounds creepy and it is. Our squash patch the morning after.
Here in Wisconsin an early killing frost forecast makes headlines, and in fact, on the internet weather stations it flashes up on the Severe Weather Alert band at the top of the page, just like a tornado warning. With good reason. By definition, a killing frost is when temperatures dip low enough to destroy crops that are still in their growing cycle. The average first frost date for our area is October 10, according to the USDA, and that’s for light frost. We harvested tomatoes last year past Halloween. But not this year.
Of course, our tomatoes were already finished by drought and flood, so we were not inspired by the weather alert to take any actions to save them. But we did lay floating row cover on the salad mix, which made it through, and neighbors on every side scooted outside with old blankets to lay over small plots of peppers and fragile annual flowers. A nurseryman I worked for last year swore by water sprinkled on crops late in the night when a killing frost was predicted.
Any efforts made this year were heartily rewarded by the week of 80 degree days that followed the three nights of frost. I wish now I’d thrown sheets over my trellises of beans, because they were still flowering when the frost slayed them, and they would have had a very productive week. I just forgot about them. But I guess I’m pretty much mentally finished with the drama in the gardens. Instead of a replay of the horror I felt when I saw my potatoes under water in the August flood, I merely felt resigned when I woke up to blackened basil and soggy squash.
We’ve got just 3 more CSA (community supported agriculture) box deliveries, and we’ve still got plenty of greens and parsnips and brassicas growing out there that will thrive in the colder weather. We won’t have as much hard squash as we wanted, but there’s a fair amount that had matured before the frost finished the vines. So I’m moving on. My spinning wheel is out and I’ve got wool dyeing in the studio. I’m evaluating my fleeces and the lambs to decide who’ll be bred to what ram in November and I’m spending solid time training the horses everyday. The seasons have changed and the early frost just put the nail in the coffin to the gardening year. In truth, I’m thankful to be finished with planting and weeding and watering.
And I’m thankful that in a year so full of odd weather events, we successfully completed our first season as a CSA farm. “If we can make it through our first year with a drought and a flood and an early frost, I think we can do this,” says Shannon, and I think so, too. Next year, Lord willing, we’ll grow our membership and do lots of things smarter. Now we start to put everything to bed. We’ll begin mulching the plots with a foot of composted hay and manure from the barns. Where grasses and weeds have encroached, we’ll put down multiple layers of newspaper to smother them. The perennial beds will receive a few more inches of wood chips and our precious horse poop will be rationed to top-dress trees and shrubs throughout the farm. Every inch of garden soil will be cozily tucked in for the winter.
Soon we’ll be tucked in, too, snuggled up in front of the fire reading Eliot Coleman and the seed catalogs for inspiration. I’ll try to decipher my own scrawled notes on the Farmer’s Almanac calendar for planning and I’ll progressively forget everything that was hard and hot and stressful about summer farming. By February I’ll be dying to get my hands back in the dirt and it’s a good thing, because it’ll be time to start the seedlings inside. And we’ll be off and hoeing again…
