on our last video we were preparing for our first frost of the fall slash winter not
really sure when fall ends here winter starts but we just kind of group them together we were
preparing for that first frost and we had two nights of frost and we were telling you
about which crops we were going to try to save which we were just going to let the frost kill
some we were worried about some we weren't worried about and today i want to take you around and kind
of show you the aftermath what happened and it's not really that great it didn't get that cold here
i think the first night it got down to 30 and the second night we hit 27 and i've certainly
had plants survive those temperatures before with no issues i don't i don't really know what it was
after the first day of frost after the first uh night of frost there didn't see seemed to be that
much damage but that second time when when it got down to 27 man that really put a licket on some
stuff and i'm going to show you that today and i don't really know what it was there was a lot of
ice on the plants after that second morning of frost more than i've really ever seen
since i've been living here and gardening in this particular spot so i don't know if the first night
we were still having a lot of wind that day and maybe the wind kind of kept some of the
moisture on the plants and i guess that second day maybe there's just a lot of moisture in the air
but a lot of ice on the plants and i'll try to throw up some pictures here
that i took that morning kind of show you but that's my best guess as to why we suffered so much
damage um there were a couple things we covered and even though we covered them we still got a
little bit of damage so let me take you around and show you what we're working with now
and there's some stuff i don't know if it's gonna make it it it just looks pretty pitiful but we'll
just have to see so let's start off right here in this plot where i wasn't really worried about
a whole lot um carrots usually take frost pretty good as you can see there those are still looking
pretty good that there's a few little burnt ends on some of those leaves maybe right there
but no damage on the carrots at all and these things had ice all over them so
we're good on the carrots our kale is pretty good a few of the leaves did get burnt which is
unusual like i said i've never seen it get cold enough to burn kale back like that right there
that dang sure happened didn't kill the plants but those leaves right there aren't really going
to be worth harvesting so i'll probably come in here and just kind of chop and drop those
affected leaves there it's weird like let's look at this plant right here you can see
it got hit pretty hard and this plant right beside it looks as healthy as can be just
doesn't make any sense to me it's not like the moisture was any different one foot over there
so i don't really get it um some of the lacinato kale took a little bit of a hit
you can see that leaf right there that's kind of pale and transparent most of this is fine
collards spared okay which they should collards are really cold tolerant but still see a little
bit of damage there on that leaf and right there so that's something i've never seen before kale
and collards get bit down here and then another kind of crazy thing is the brussels sprouts now
i've got two different varieties here this row is jade cross and this row is catskill
and i will tell you the jade cross seems to be a good bit more cold tolerant than the catskill
the catskill suffered a little damage there so we can see most of the jade cross brussels sprouts
are just fine but we got a few leaves here on these catskill brussels sprouts that
look damaged they should be fine not really worried about them but still one thing i've
never seen before is brussels sprouts taking damage like that i guess it was all that ice
on those plants and then this row of herbs here is one that we were trying to protect
one that we covered and my little covering setup is not that fancy but it seems to work
most of the time i just put a piece of rebar in the ground on both sides of the row there
bend a piece of pvc pipe over it and kind of onto that rebar holds them in place and we just pull
the plastic tight over the top of this now i was it was getting close to getting dark and i
was kind of short on time went to the store to get some more plastic a little short piece for
this row right here and they didn't have any six meal which is what i normally like to use
all they had was three meal and so some of this stuff did get affected the cilantro as you can see
there is fine those garlic chives over there are just fine but my basil got bit back a little bit
not completely i think the plants will be just fine just some burnt ends there on that thai
basil you can see but there's still some good green growth at the bottom they should survive
same thing with this italian basil here some of it took a little harder hit that one there's
probably toast but i think some of these others may make it and i'll know in the future that three
meal plastic ain't enough i need to be using six meal here but all i could find was three mil and
just kind of work with what we had but a lesson learned there on these all top tournaments which
we didn't cover we took some damage as expected we can see some yellowing there on those leaves
another one right there that took some damage but it didn't kill them
hopefully they'll grow out of it will be just fine and then these little tiny rutabaga sprouts here
they're still there but uh i don't know if if they're gonna do anything
we'll just have to see not really really hopeful on those but like i said they're still there
but i hadn't really done anything in the last few days so those might have be or might have gotten
burnt and might just have to go to plan b on this road our allium plot fared okay as expected
these onions that we planted first these plethora onions here did better than the
ones that we planted later aren't quite as big so the larger onions the ones that were further along
did a good bit better than the small ones some of the small ones look a little pitiful here like
that guy right there but they should come back but hindsight kind of less than learning getting
them onions in the ground even earlier than we did get them up nice and big and they seem to be
a little more frost tolerant there are no issues with the garlic or leeks over there those guys are
champions of the frost now this plot here where we're doing this no-till gardening
suffered the most unexpected damage and man i've just i've had cauliflower and broccoli
plants survive temps way colder than this but for some reason all that icing implants just
nailed them i mean look at them they just look pitiful almost to the point where i'm not sure
they're going to recover i mean they've looked like this for three or four days now
we've not had a frost and i'm just waiting on them to turn around and just doesn't look like they're
gonna do it that guy right there looks completely toast see all that browning on them leaves
the broccoli looks a little better than the cauliflower this guy here might turn around
and come back but i don't know i'm not super hopeful about this kind of pretty sad about it
like i said never felt the need to cover any broccoli and cauliflower down here
never seen this much damage from a frost i've seen them take temperatures much colder than 27 and not
show this kind of damage so that's quite unusual and uh it stinks but it is what it is and we'll
just keep our fingers crossed that some of them will come back same thing with the cabbage here
cabbage usually takes it pretty good down here but man these look terrible that looks rough a
lot of those down the road there look rough i will say this cheers cabbage right here
seems to take it a little better than some of those other varieties the early dutch
stonehead and bobcat so kind of make a mental note of that that the cheer seems to be a little more
cold tolerant but we still got damage there you can see that there so cabbage took a hit
there's a red cabbage there the red cabbage maybe looks better than the green cabbage
does still a lot of leaves brown in there our full-grown heads of lettuce here did really
really well i don't really see i mean there's a little bit of discoloration at the tips there
but for the most part the lettuce was fine and this stuff was just covered with ice but still
lots of good harvestable lettuce there no issues with that but just disappointed in them cabbage
broccoli and cauliflower plants here as far as our cover crops go our cocktail of tillage radish
and kodiak brown mustard here we got a little damage there in the middle which we expected
frost will bite back those radishes pretty hard this kodiak brown mustard seems to be pretty frost
tolerant though we weren't sure of that but uh now we know it can take it pretty well and uh probably
on the next video we're gonna be cutting this and tilling it into the soil as a part of our
biofumigation plan here but good to know about the kodiak mustard seems like it can take it
pretty well and then no issues at all with our frosty bracing clover we didn't expect any issues
and saw no issues it looks as healthy as can be that frost did zap those few sprigs of sorghum
sedan grass that were still in there so killed those guys which is fine just part of the natural
progression of things with the clovers looking good ain't no issues with these marvel chickpeas
here they didn't take any damage at all they're looking good getting nice and thick
in that plot there and our ultimate cover crop cocktail here which is just starting to fill in
seemed like it handled it pretty well winter rye austrian winter pea hairy vetch impact
forage collard african forage cabbage and some tillage radish all that seemed to do pretty well
some of those radish sprigs there got a little burnt which is expected but everything else is
planted out here looks pretty good just kind of slowed the growth a little bit but if we can get
a few warm days it's just this stuff should take off pretty quick and just completely cover this
ground right here back to the vegetables here our english peas are still alive they did take
some damage let me show you here see those leaves all those brown leaves there so they
did take some damage it didn't kill them we still got blooms at the top still got nice
green foliage at the top so i think they'll be okay just took a little bit of a hit and uh
i felt some of these pods and uh they seemed to be okay there's one right there not in too bad of
shape so hopefully that is all salvageable there just a little bit of burn but not a complete loss
by any means and hopefully we'll still get us a good little english pea harvest
coming up pretty soon and now for some more pretty sad news with my christmas poll lima beans here so
i showed you that little structure i used to cover that row of herbs
and my fault there was that i didn't have a thick enough plastic in this case i had a six
mil plastic that i put over here but i didn't really have that great of a structure in place
i had a hoop structure that i used last year for some english peas with these little tea connectors
but as i was trying to hook this up and i was in a hurry my t-connectors i guess they
had just gotten brittle over time all started breaking on me and i couldn't find any locally
so i just kind of had them had a mess and i was rushing at the last second so i just kind of
threw the plastic over the top of these guys and tried to stretch it out on both sides so it wasn't
touching the plants that much but as you can see i did a pretty terrible job with that so we got
a lot of burn up top here a lot of crispy leaves it didn't completely kill them i mean we've got
nice green vines down in here and lots of viable pods still so they're not completely
dead we just got quite a bit of burn and death at the top here where that plastic was touching
um the plant material but i think they're going to survive and i just got to be better prepared
when our next freeze comes probably will happen in the next few weeks i would imagine
and just put me a better hoop structure it can be tough with these pole beans
because they're so tall and we have to you know make a much taller structure there which can get
a little wobbly when you're using pvc and stuff so uh if you got any good ideas out there on a better
way to do this for pole beans let me know i'm all ears because um i don't know that they'll survive
that right there happening one more time i think they'll survive that first one just
they'll just kind of you know these old dead leaves will fall off and hopefully
this green growth down here will kind of take over everything but uh definitely going to have
to reevaluate how i cover these guys the next time it freezes so as you can see there we took
a lot more damage than we were planning to take if you watch the video i did right before the frost
i was pretty confident that most of this stuff was gonna be okay and i'd say half of it was okay but
just you know some unforeseen damage that we took that i'm not sure we're gonna recover from and
learn some lessons you know we learned that three meal plastic isn't there thick enough
and um we also learned that we need a better hoop structure for our pole beans so the plastic is
not touching the plants and just to be honest you know down here we don't deal with this a
whole lot so we're not that prepared for it and the frost itself that you know series of
cold nights just kind of snuck up on me all of a sudden i wasn't ready for it wasn't prepared
and hopefully i'll be better prepared next time i know some of you guys that live further up north
are a lot more accustomed to dealing with this type thing uh we're not down here so usually um we
get caught with our pants down sometimes for lack of a better phrase and we're just gonna have to um
roll with the punches this year as i said before it has gotten much colder here before i've seen
it get down to 17 before and not give the damage that we got here guess it was just the perfect
recipe of elements in the air and cold weather that put all that ice on them plants that caused
that much damage but you know what are you gonna do nothing you can do but just uh roll with it
save what you can save and try better next time so let me know in the comments below how your garden
fair did you see some of this significant damage like we did here or were you spared a little bit
and everything is still looking okay i'd like to compare you know different temperatures if some
people had broccoli survive colder temperatures than that then that would certainly suggest that
it was all the ice on there that did the damage so let me know in the comments below so we can kind
of compare and i'll learn from one another here if you enjoyed this video give me a big thumbs up
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