After the Frost: Garden Pics from January 22nd, 2022

We had a night down in the low 20s, and the gardens are showing it.

So far, the $239 greenhouse has kept alive the tropicals inside it.

I took these pictures when the weather was still in the low 20s and the frost was on the ground. The mixed-up garden area was frosty:

And the ice crystals sparkled on the edges of the winter rye.

The strawberries have been trying to bloom, but the frosts keep ending that idea.Before this hard freeze, we harvested all we could from the row gardens – and it was a good thing, too.

The cabbages can take some cold, but not this much.

We’re likely just to get rotten heads from these. Fortunately, we did get a decent harvest already, considering the season.

I expected a long, cool winter. When I planted in fall, I didn’t really think we would get much during the winter; instead, I expected most everything to carry through and really start bearing in March like it did last year. Instead, we got a long stretch of warm weather, followed by this brutal (for the region) overnight low.

I expected to lose the warm-weather stuff, so I chopped and dropped and mulched a few weeks ago.

I don’t know how the Brussels sprouts will do.

They take a long time and I am rarely successful with them.

The rutabagas, on the other hand, look much better – it appears the frost didn’t even touch them, as of this morning. They were covered with frost on Sunday morning!

This is my first time growing rutabagas. Other than terrible germination rates, they’ve grown very well.

Maybe this frost will finally make the apples drop their leaves.

The Grocery Row Gardens are well and truly done for the year.

That’s a far cry from back in summer, when they looked like this:

It’ll be back, though. We just need to be patient.

My older neighbor down the road told me that when we get a long, warm fall and the cold doesn’t get started until January or so, we can expect a cold, late spring. “Some of the worst freezes have been in March,” he told me.

So we’ll wait. Last year I started planting potatoes at the end of January. Judging by the weather right now, we should probably wait until February this year.

Live and learn. I am joyfully watching the changing seasons and learning to roll with them again.

While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And day and night
Shall not cease.

-Genesis 8:22

Share this post!