First frost

Hope you all got a chance to look at your frosty plants this morning. Andrew and I went out to the woods with a camera to see what we could find. The frost was really thick in the field at Callahan.
Here is my buddy, Andrew, waiting for me...

Frosty leaves...

A view of the frosty field....

26 degrees this morning. This was our vegetable garden taken from the back porch.

Bebop,
You got hit much harder than we did. Is that spinach in your garden? Doesn't it like colder temps? My nasturiums were the only plants seriously ko-ed by the frost.
The roses are still trying to pushing to get the last blooms of the year open.

Since I took it the sun has taken the frost away. The big stuff at the front is Brussels sprouts and they will be fine as will the broccoli. We don't grow spinach, we grow chard instead and that can also take it. Carrots, parsnips and rutabaga will just get sweeter. My nasturtiums, and most of the annuals except for the brave, cheerful calendulas, are gone.

We barely made it to frost here - 31 or 32. Too early for me to go out and look - I was sleeping! Kids are off today for some reason.

Hi all,

I'm new to the website. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I love growing and experimenting with "useful" stuff, like vegetables and dye plants. One year I grew a luffa sponge. Amazingly my garden is still going strong. Even the tomatoes, basil and the zuchini, of which I picked 2 small ones yesterday. Usually we have a light frost at the end of September, and then a killing frost around Nov 1st. I seem to have missed the September one, but I figure we're due for the big one any day now.

I really enjoy the frost hardy crops I can pick after the frost, so I don't feel my garden is done till it's covered in snow. I should have arugula (makes a fantastic salad with pears), and kale until December at least.

Tomatoes, basil and zucchini that far north! Wow.

Lost my MoonFlowers! But there is something magical about a frosty morning as the sun comes up!

Looks chilly Tamb. Some good pics there. Could be anytime here - although November is always cloudy with less frost.

welcome indigo!
On our trip to PEI this august, DH and i took a brief detour into Nova Scotia in order to have visited another province. I don't think we got to do much there though. We went to Magnetic Hill, but that is New Brunswick...
O wait - is Pugwash in NS or NB? We drove by signs for it, and it is now my favorite town name ever.

amy
*

Hi Indigo!
Your name reminds me of my attempt to grow the indigo plant. I was planning to dye my own wool, etc. Do you do that? I've used native plants for dying and it's fun to scout out things to use.
My veg garden is kaput for this year. Not that we really paid that much attention to it. I think the green beans out there are a foot long.
Hi Al - thanks for the compliments. I'm not usually a photographer, but the first frost merits a try. I've got my husband's hand-me-down Canon 10D camera.

Tamberlin, interesting frosty closeup.

Welcome Indigo!

Great pics, tamberlin!

Thanks LoraB!

Nice frosty pics. Not heavy enough here to last very long except on windshields. Welcome Indigo, we have been lucky here too, right up till the end of october and still no killing frost.

Hi all, Thanks for the welcome. Yes I am growing indigo and using it to dye wool and cotton. I'm still working on perfecting the process, but so far the technique I'm using is working out. The stuff I'm growing is Japanese Indigo, which grows really well in a temperate climate. It's not very well known in North America, but it should be. It is an annual and if you can grow tomatoes, you can grow it. It's easy to grow. The complicated part is actually getting the blue colour out of it. I'll try to post a picture of the plant (but last time I tried that it didn't work-it just logged me off Daves garder!)

Terrific frost photos and Andrew is exceptionally handsome in that setting.

Welcome to DG, Indigo. We, too, still have produce coming in and just picked the last of the tomatoes yesterday but still have lettuce (just recently planted - maybe two weeks ago), carrots, scallions, chard and many more pepper plants still producing.

Amy - Pugwash is cute but Schubenacadie (NS) is our favorite name and, yes, we did visit it after hearing the name on our radio gardening show. It means, "where the wild potato grows".

but has a good beat and you can dance to it!

Pirl, What a beautiful photo. I wish I could grow peppers like that. They never do well here.

Very colorful Pirl. Shades of nightshades.

Thanks, all. There are many more peppers out there waiting for neighbors to come and pick them.

Bebop - they seem to like it a tad more dry than the rest of the veggies, and the hot ones like it very sunny and dry as opposed to damp.

Indigo, how do you then use the dye?

not exactly on topic anymore, but how much do you know about indigo or dyes?
The short version: indigo is not like other dyes. First you have to extract it from the leaves (easy) then you have to add oxygen and change the pH to make it alkaline (easy) then you have to take the oxygen out again (harder) , put in the fiber without getting air into the pot, and take it out again very carefully. When it comes out it is yellow or yellowish green. When it is exposed to the air it turns blue. It's very magical, but somewhat time consuming to do. Can be done with chemicals or "natural" but i haven't managed the "natural" version yet. Here is a picture of some of my results

Very pretty. Nice shade of blue.

Wow Indigo! I'm really impressed! I've had some luck with natural dying, and even better luck with easter egg dyes.
My last batch of Queen Anne's Lace dye did not come out as expected - which was supposed to be green and instead was gold - so I haven't tried in a while. However, we have a bumper crop of pokeberries around here at the moment, and I've read that they can be used for dye....Hmmm. Now I just need to find some wool....

Bebop,
Nova Scotia is mostly EAST of New England, not North! It surprised me too. When there used to be a ferry from Portsmouth to Halifax, it went East almost the whole way! (can't remember if it's Portland ME or Portland NH - probably the latter.) I visited NS once 20 years ago and loved it.

Welcome, Indigo!

xx, Carrie

Halifax is about the same latitude as Burlington Vermont, but because of the ocean and the gulf stream, the climate is milder. Warmer winters, cooler summers. In fact we're zoned 6a, for whatever that's worth, and seem to have weather pretty much like the rest of you. Gardening here is not much different from gardening in Vermont, where I lived as a teen.
I'm impressed so many of you have been to the province. Yeah we do have some pretty interesting place names here.

It's gorgeous! We stayed outside of Peggy's Cove at Lover's Lane Cottages and paid less for our cottage (facing the water) than it cost us to board the dogs back at home! Lunenburg is very picturesque!

Hello all - I have a stupid newbie question. When should I start cutting back the plants in my garden? Most of my plants have lost their blooms (canna, phlox, hostas, astibles, turtle heads) and even my ferns are looking a little wilted.

tamberlin, I laugh at your foot-long green beans because that's what happened to mine! About mid-summer (or mid-growing season) they got really stringy, which turned me off, so I stopped picking them. I wonder if it had anything to do with the drought? The stringyness, not the non-picking!

Michael - some people don't cut back and leave plants like astilbe for winter interest, while others cut back the hosta, astilbe and the others. It's a matter of personal taste. You'll be digging the canna to bring them inside anyhow so it will be easier to cut them back first.

Thanks pirl!

If you have sedum 'Autumn Joy' it really does look beautiful with a nice light snowfall.

I don;t have any sedum, but some of my neighbors do. I'll have to check it out. My mother use to grow that in her garden when I was a kid -- think she called it "never die".

Send me a note in April and I'll send you some to welcome you to DG.

Thanks Pirl, that so sweet..

:-) Just remind me!