Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

Watering your garden when there might be a frost seems a little backward, but it will protect your plants.

A healthy well-watered plant will do better than a weaker, drier plant will in cooler night time temperatures. You don’t want the plant to be wet, but you want the Earth to be nice and damp when nightfall comes.

All of the processes that the plant uses to take in water and create food for it’s self take energy. When the plant uses it’s energy to take water and create food it releases a small amount of heat. So a plant that is undergoing this process is slightly warmer inside than a plant that is sitting there doing nothing but drying out.

So water your garden early in the day, and allow the plant’s leaves to be dry by nightfall and you should have some added protection against cooler nighttime temperatures.

Happy Autumn!

Sara

When a frost is coming it is important to know which vegetables to harvest first and how to get the most out of your garden at the end of the season, or try to extend it further into the season.

Warm-weather vegetables should be considered first. If frost is a “maybe” you can harvest all the food, and then try covering the plant to save it. If frost is “for sure” you can harvest the food and then in certain cases there are things you can do to still get the vegetables to ripen on the vine, or to get the seeds from the plant even though the vegetables are still immature.

Here is a list of vegetables that will go very quickly in even a light frost:

• Basil (especially sensitive)
• Cilantro
• Tomatoes
• Squash
• Peppers

For each of these you want to harvest ALL the usable plant and vegetables.

If you have all green tomatoes and you were hoping to save seed (which should be taken from 100% ripe fruit) uproot the entire plant and find somewhere to hang it. The plant will die but the tomatoes should still ripen (better and faster than on your counter but that will work too) and you can gather the seeds after they turn red.

To save seed from cilantro and basil if it isn’t ready yet: If there are seeds but they are still green uproot the entire plant and hang upside down until the seeds turn brown and very dry for cilantro and black for basil. You can then save the seeds for next year.

Vegetable plants that might survive, or at least do a little better in a light frost:

• Peas
• Lettuces and Cabbages including Broccoli
• Carrots
• Onions, and other leeks like Fennel
• Certain kinds of green beans/beans

Carrots and onions can even be left for next season and will just start right up growing again next year if you simply leave them in the ground.

Happy Harvesting!!!

-Sara

For more helpful information about all kinds of vegetables check out my Seed-To-Seed Book Club. Get a free gardening book in your email each month for a year!

Parts of Minnesota are under a frost warning tonight.

Here’s what you can do to protect your plants:

• Cover warm weather plants like tomatoes, peppers and squash with bed sheets.
• Water your garden early in the day. You want the plant to be dry when night comes, but you also want the ground to be moist and the plant to be well watered.
• Build a PVC structure and put clear plastic sheeting over it making a greenhouse right over your plants!
• Pot up plants and put inside or in your greenhouse.
• If all other options are not possible harvest every vegetable you can and hope for the best!

I have done 4 of the above. I watered early this morning and all my plants are now dry, and well watered. I spent most of the day making pesto from my basil and freezing it. Basil is especially vulnerable to frost damage. I also harvested every descent sized tomato regardless of color. I make 2 quarts of salsa and froze that too. I potted 2 tomato plants and put them in the greenhouse. I also covered another tomato plant, my eggplant, and one bell pepper plant with bed sheets.

Now all we do is wait and see. It is QUITE cold out there compared to 4 days ago when it was in the 90’s!!

Talk to you in the morning. I would love to hear how everything looked in the morning for you all! Post something in the forum for it.

Sara Murray

Hi everyone,

It’s almost time to start using our greenhouses again. Now is the time to clean it out and gather supplies for the coming winter.

• Wash down the sides carefully and make sure you dry with a fan after.
• Sort all your containers, and see if you need to get more. I usually ask for seedling and small plastic containers from my local free market online.
• Wipe down your shelves
• Gather any new supplies you will need in the coming year, lights, light fixtures, seed bed warmer pads, shade cloths, fans, space heaters, vents, thermometers, humidifiers etc etc etc…
• Repair any tears or small holes
• Make a plan to get your electricity and make it water proof.
• Make sure tie-downs are still good, or repair them.

Happy greenhousing!

Sara

How to harvest and what to do with all those vegetables when your area gets a frost warning.

We have our first frost warning of the season tonight in Minnesota. It’s supposed to get down to 35 degrees Fahrenheit with scattered frost. Some vegetables can withstand a light frost; beans, peas, onions, and carrots will all be fine. However, there are plenty of plants that will turn to mush at the first sign of frost; basil, tomatoes, and squash probably won’t survive.

One thing you can do is build a structure around the plants you want to save and cover it with greenhouse plastic, or buy some frost cloth and cover the plants overnight when it gets down to the coldest temperature of the day.

The other chore to do when frost is on the horizon is harvest the vegetables from the garden and start cooking, canning and freezing.

Here is my chore list for today: Harvesting all Tomatoes, Peppers, Cilantro and Basil and how I cook or freeze it for the winter.

• Harvest ALL Basil and make pesto, freeze in batches for later.
• Harvest all Tomatoes except super green ones to ripen on the counter top.
• Harvest all ripe Tomatoes and Cilantro and make into salsa and freeze.
• With extra Tomatoes cut off stems, place on cookie sheet and put in the oven at 375 for 10 minutes, let cool and peel. Then you can place the entire peeled tomato(es) in freezer bags and freeze for later.
• Harvest all green beans, cook lightly and freeze.
• Harvest all peppers and either peel like the tomatoes and freeze or freeze whole. Red bell peppers I peel and freeze, green bell and jalapeno I just put in freezer bags raw and whole.

Happy harvesting, cooking and freezing.

So, the time has come to discuss the issue of frost and how we (in the North) are going to extend this season and try to get our tomatoes to ripen on the vine!!

Last year I tried to create a greenhouse with greenhouse plastic, PVC pipe and packing tape around my entire garden. It was working great until a wind storm in early October when it all came crashing down and had to be taken down and off of the garden.

This year I plant to eventually pot up the tomato plants that are doing well and put them in the greenhouse! (The actual greenhouse that I bought in the early Spring.) But before I need to do that there are plenty of warm days left. When day-time temps get below 55 I will move them to the greenhouse. Over night temps are sometimes dipping into the 40’s now though.

So, I am going to go to my local hardware store and get some frost cloth. I have my tomatoes on very tall stakes, and I am going to get a few more that are even taller. I will drape the frost cloth over the stakes and hope for the best!! (Pictures coming soon.)

Wish me luck – I still have several dozen tomatoes in the garden, as well as jalapeno and bell peppers, and 4 lovely eggplants I need to save!

The only difference between gardening in the early Spring and gardening in the Fall are the mosquitoes!!

So I cleaned out my raised beds and planted the cold weather vegetables again. The warmer vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, squashes will all need a frost blanket. But the salad greens like spinach, kale, and arugula will all do really well again! Even radishes will get another batch once it gets really cold.

So in May I took the plastic that I had over my raised beds and rolled it off and stored in on the side of each bed. I am guessing I will get another few weeks and then I might have to put it over during the night time hours. I want to keep those salad greens above 45 degrees Fahrenheit. We had one night time temp of 55 last week already!! It went back up, but Minnesota is known for it’s temperature swings.

So, backward we go into Fall and Winter. Thinking about greenhouse, and plastic and frost blankets. 🙂

Tell us what you’re doing this Fall to prepare your garden for the winter in the forum!

Thanks for stopping by,

Sara

Hi everyone,

The fall plans are in effect! First order of business is building PVC pipe supports for the plastic sheeting that will become the temporary greenhouse I will be using to extend my seasons! The over night low yesterday was 45 degrees Fahrenheit so I better get this thing up. Last year we had one early frost mid-September. Never mind the unseasonably warm October we had, or the subsequent 80 degree days. Everything had died in the frost and I lost a good 1.5 months of natural growing season.

I am going to purchase 20′ sections of 1″ or smaller tubing and make some large hoops. I am not quite certain how to secure the plastic to the tubes. So far my ideas are zip-ties (which will rip the plastic over time)  or packing tape (which may not hold up in the freezing and wet of winter and spring. Ideally maybe I don’t have to secure it that well. I have enough to cover a very large area, so maybe draping and securing to the ground with rocks will be enough.

The other project that needs to get done is to move what used to be a nice border of small purple mums. These mums are on the outside, front edge of my veggie garden. They started out the size of a basketball, and are now over 2 feet across! They take up so much room in the front of the garden I am missing out on about 3″ by 10″ section of good soil. So they are being moved to the outside corners of the garden. I have a Victorian fence around the veggie garden with rose bushes in the corners on the inside. The mums will be opposite them on the outside of the garden.

This picture was taken last year. The rabbits has eaten every thing right to the ground. So I went to my local super store and bought this Victorian fencing and lined it with rabbit fencing on the inside. It is the Fort Knox of veggie gardens!

So the roses are on the inside and the mums will be on the outside corners 🙂

When I get it a bit cleaned up and moved around I’ll post more pictures. This year’s garden is 100 times better than this poor sad eaten over one.

Welcome to Minnesota!

We’ve already had an 80 degree day and what is in the forecast for the next two days?? Snow! For the past 2 nights it has been getting very close to 38/39 degrees Fahrenheit. I have 1 hanging flower pot and one standing that I have been bringing inside overnight just in case.

I also have onions, radishes, peas and carrots in the garden that I will need to protect the next two nights. I plan on using bed sheets and mini shepherd’s hooks to secure a little shelter for the garden plants. I will also use pillow cases for my rose bushes.

If by chance my greenhouse plastic comes I might try to construct my roll-back greenhouse and use that instead! 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara

SO!

Last fall because of an early frost and my frustration with losing just about everything in my wonderful outdoor garden I completely forgot about my carrots!! I never harvested them and they are still alive out there!!! And, THEY LOOK GREAT!

I am curious to see how they taste but they look awesome.

I will post pictures in a future post. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara