Before and after the freeze of 2011

We covered everything we could. This was a good year until a couple of days ago. Here is a beet row

Beets after the freeze

Computer is super slow today. Here is a shot of part of the garden before the freeze

Covered for frost (we were not expecting 29* and certainly not for 4 days and nights)

This morning

More ice

Potatoes before the freeze

You can see the same potatoes next to this fence. The icicles are falling to the ground. The ice that had formed on tree leaves fell and looked like glass all over the ground.

Onions

Carrots. We covered the younger carrots, but not the ones we'd planned on harvesting next week.

Owie..

Hardest hit (other than tomatoes and peppers) were the citrus trees. We won't know for a while if these are going to make it.

Just went outside again, it is finally above freezing. Had to rescue a killdeer from under a 135 ft long piece of frost cover. She's fine. The onions and carrots, broccoli and cabbage, pac choi and turnips all appear to be fine. Peas look okay, but lost their blossoms. Citrus trees and royal palms look pretty sad. Bananas are drooping and so are the papayas.

Boy, hope everything under cover comes out OK. Those peas should bounce back, by the way.

Oh no!! Two years in a row! I really hope everything survives.

Our potatoes froze this past spring. Only set the tops back & they grew out of it. Frost won't bother your carrots, onions, cabbage, broccoli. Those things freeze a number of times in the fall here & still are harvest-able.
Where did the ice come from ? Did you have rain or did your water the garden ?

Bernie, we had rain. It froze on everything because the temp was hovering around 29-30 and winds from the north at 25-30 mph gusting to 45. If we faced into the wind, we couldn't get our breath and it felt like our eyeballs were freezing!
We watered the garden heavily before it got cold, so the ground was wet. If there is no wind and the freeze is expected to last less than 8 hours we can run the sprinklers to protect, but with wind over 7mph and longer freeze, the frozen water then works against you and freezes the crop. (lesson learned last year, then talking to other growers found out what we did wrong)
Citrus trees look pretty good this morning. Temp was 37 at daybreak, but was colder during the night because we had a heavy frost. Like Bernie said, the broccoli, spinach, onions, carrots and many other crops are fine. I haven't uncovered the peppers, tomatoes and eggplants yet. We have a big market tomorrow, so will know in a little while how the whole garden looks.

Oh my, what a bummer Calalily. That's depressing. I hope you don't lose too much.

Your "before" garden pics show a beautiful garden, lots of labor and love went into those beds. I sure hope the ice/cold hasn't done too terrible much damage, maybe you'll be surprised what bounces back. I bet those hoops Bud was making will make a difference in the future.

Shoe

Wow, so sad after all that work.

I heart-felt sympathies, Calalily. Do you have any insurance? Also, ask your tax advisor as to whether or not you can get any tax relief from this "natural disaster"

What a shame! Your palms really do look sad...

I lifted some covers to harvest yesterday. Baby squash (15 beds of it) are pretty much toast. Beans are black. Tomatoes, loaded with fruit are mostly gone. Lots of hardier stuff survived. Beets, peas, bok choi weren't covered and have some leaf damage, but are fine. Carrots and onions came thru looking great. The large cauliflower took a hit, but I managed to harvest a dozen or so heads, broccoli had damaged leaves but the heads were still good. Kale was a little damaged, some leaves were wilted.
Baby cauliflower and broccoli under cover look good. Cilantro seedlings are fine even though they were not covered. Swiss chard on the other hand bit the dust. Cabbage looks great, no damage at all. Uncovered potato tops are gone, but the potato part was fine when I harvested yesterday. Golden purslane, under single or double covers did not survive. It is very tender. Orach under single cover looks great, but uncovered not so great. Mache and claytonia didn't have cover and still look untouched. Spinach uncovered did as well as the covered ones. Jalapeno peppers are toast, but bell peppers are still green. Haven't checked the eggplants yet.

I learned a few things: Agribon 70 row covers protected the tomatoes best (only was over one by accident because it was a volunteer in the middle of a row, but that one is still green). Double layers of Covertan-Pro 30 worked really well. Some varieties of tomato are hardier, now to figure out which ones they were! Floating covers protected much better than tight covers. The baby squash covers (Agribon 70) were blowing so we put purlins from the greenhouse across the covers to hold them down, big mistake. Because the covers were touching the squash, the cold was transferred to them and they died. The cauliflower, broccoli and mesclun mixes were under Covertan-Pro and one layer was sufficient on most things. Even the potatoes with a single layer of cover came thru well. Temperatures must have varied in the garden, some sections are more damaged than others.

Shoe, you are right, the hoops would have made a big difference. We just didn't have them ready. Bud is making a design change, too much tension on the top connection. He has it figured out, just need to go pick up the fittings. I will take photos and post them for you. Our plan is to re-vamp the garden, tender stuff will be in one section so it can be covered quickly and will have hoops to hold the covers off the leaves.

Now to find somewhere to store it all. It was easy to store when on the big rolls. Now it will be folded and labeled as to size and take up a lot more room! Wonder if Bud would notice if I put them in the boat? He didn't mind too much when I put my harvesting baskets in the boat house (well, he minded a little when he tried to open the door and the baskets were in the way).

Jeez, so sorry for the losses there in Tx....the life of a farmer can be a hard one. That ice looks darn mean.

I'd say that's a great report, Calalilly, and quite a learning experience. Chock it up for an education for future use, eh? I think ya'll lost some stuff last year (or year before?) to freak freezes so I bet this year is letting you fine-tune your process.

As for the row covers and storage...I think Bud could make a frame for the rolls to fit on, then place it at one end of the bed and re-roll the fabric back onto the rolls. It would go pretty quickly and storage would be minimal, plus it would make for easy re-applying when needed. (Picture two D-handle spades stuck in the ground side-by-side with the rolls resting in the handles; then you could unroll the fabric or roll it back up. A wooden frame with wide legs would work better but maybe you get the idea.)

Shoe (who hopes you can find tomato plants to replace the ones you lost)

Calalily - thank you for taking the time to write your report. I learned that one should not have row covers touching the plants during a freeze. I tried row covers during the winter of 2009/2010 and lost the plants underneath. I blamed the covers, but now I know the damage was caused by the covers touching the plants.

I had to learn that some row covers are more for "frost" protection and not so much for "freeze" protection. If you think about it a hard freeze will affect what's under a row cover given enough time, super low temp (especially with no sun out to warm up the air/soil underneath), and in Cala's case all that ice laying directly on the plants probably played a bigger role in damaging the plants than indirect temperature.

The thicker frost blankets that Cala used are more suitable for holding in the heat from the soil than the lighter weight frost covers. And some row covers are designed strictly for insect protection, very lightweight; I've used them for frost but had to double them over.

Honeybee, for your raised beds I bet you'll see a big difference with your new hoops you recently bought. You're gonna get more use out of those things than you can imagine; frost protection, freeze protection, insect protection, heck you can even put some shade cloth over them to keep your plants out of direct sunlight.
Shoe

Shoe - My crystal ball agrees with you - I see more hoops and covers in my future (but I have to get the car paid for first) LOL!

Thanks for the info on the row covers, Calalily. I will put the info to good use.

Crazy weather still continues. We were supposed to have S or SE winds for a few days, but it's coming straight out of the north, 15-20 mph. Darned weather liars!
I went out and loosened some of the covers. I checked under others. Tomatoes are not all toast, some are still green and some still have green stems up about 18" or so. Found 2 rows of squash in pretty good shape, harvested several pounds of zucchini, but the scalloped squash is frozen, even the fruits are squishy. Eggplants are alive with green leaves at the first foot of plant, but tops are gone. I can cut those back. Beet leaves are looking better, lost some sugar snap peas, weird that the middles of rows froze. One other farmer said he had areas of hard freeze and areas barely touched. I guess it was the wind.
Bud and Bruce (our MN friend who came here for warm weather, lol) are discussing building a storage rack for the rolls of fabric. I saved the big cardboard tubes, so we can reuse those. They're also going to work on the hoops.
Ice played an important role in the freezing. It weighted the frost covers down even more and clung to everything. Citrus trees still look good, palms not so good.
I'm going to plant tomato, eggplant and pepper seeds today and cover the whole seed bed with a row cover and hopefully a new hoop! Need to get more cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage seeds in the ground. I now have more planting area than I did a week ago!
Shoe, we had that bad freeze in Jan last year. We learned more this year. Hopefully we will be ready if it happens again. I use those remay row covers for all kinds of things: insect protection, shade, warmth, wind protection.........they're great!

Aren't you glad you got out of that greenhouse bizness and became a true bona-fide dirt farmer!? :>)

It adds excitement to your life, eh?

Hang on, hang in there!

Shoe

Funny thing, grew up as a dirt farmer. When I left to go to college I promised myself I'd never do it again! Before Lauren was born until she was probably 6 I had a truck farm but only grew beans, corn, melons, pumpkins and tomatoes. When I stopped that farm I swore I'd never do it again!
We expanded this fall. Sometimes I'll say to Bud "we must be crazy" and he will say "do you have a mouse in your pocket?"
One more cold front coming thru Wed and Thurs night, mid to low 30's (weather liars can't agree, one says 30 and one says 36 which is a big difference)

It's a beautiful sunny day here today, and it's supposed to be snowing! It makes it really hard to plan one's day.

It's warm and cloudy right now and NO WIND!! When the wind stops blowing it only means one thing, it's getting ready to change directions. Cold front is supposed to come in between 2 and 4 this afternoon.
Yesterday we did some clean up, I found some untouched tomatoes, perfect condition. Must have been warmer in that section of garden. Most of the eggplants are fine, just tip damage. I picked 1/2 dozen or so of nice fruit. Papaya trees aren't total loss, some fruit is still firm and even ripening.
Yesterday I worked on making sure covers are "floating" for this cold front, except if we get rain with it, they won't float! Planted 4 beds of fingerling potatoes, cleaned out frosted potatoes that were almost ready to harvest anyway and replanted that bed with pearl onions. Cleaned out frozen jalapenos and will use that bed to start more seedlings because the soil is beautiful. Took out broccoli that had been harvested once and the side shoots just weren't big enough to mess with. Don't know what I'll put back in that bed, maybe romaine lettuce.

Calalily -

If the rain doesn't freeze, yes, except for the Agribon. Rain puddles on it and weights it down.

Thermometer in the alcove says 33 this morning. Wind has been blowing since the front came thru, up to 45mph steady, no break. I am tired of winter. Yesterday morning was beautiful, in the 70's, no wind (not a good sign, when the wind stops it only means it is changing directions, usually not for the better). When the front came thru, the temps dropped 20 degrees in about 3 minutes. We were trying to get the squash covered. The wind made the cover into a sail and we couldn't hold on, it was dragging us.