Cold Snap Does a Number on the Garden

Convincing vegetable plants to stay alive in 17 degree weather is a lot to ask.

Our eggplants and peppers, of course, are toast. More like frozen toast that has now thawed and sat on the table for a few days.

I thought our beets would survive. They didn’t.

The head cabbage we’re growing survived surprisingly well. The crinkly-leaves Savoy variety did better than our smooth-leaves cabbage. It seems all of the crinkly-leaved brassica plants did well. Our kale, for example, made it through the freeze with just some tinges of brown on the edge of the leaves.

The more succulent brassicas, like our Asian mizuna greens and mustard greens, froze to the ground. But now a few days after the freeze, they are sending up green growth from the roots.

The outer leaves of our bok choy and Chinese cabbage plants froze and turned brown. But the inner leaves are still green, and I expect them to recover.

The cold weather appears to have killed our rosemary plant. Rosemary can survive a light freeze, but not 17 degrees. I should have covered it with a bucket or something, but I forgot.

We’re growing a parsley plant in a pot on our porch and it survived. Go figure.

I planted some ryegrass and forage turnips in a pasture for my cattle about two weeks before the freeze. It looked like every seed sprouted just before the freeze. I can’t find a single turnip plant now. The freeze looks like it killed half or more of the ryegrass. But a lot of it survived.

Some perennials freeze to the ground and look dead but the roots might still be alive. Janessa planted some purple coneflower a few months ago, and it looks dead. But we’re going to leave it and see if they come back from the roots.

The garden looks pretty bad now. But we should get a few weeks of mild weather. Hopefully some of it will bounce back.