The Old Timers Were Right

On Monday, just before the cold front blew in, I ran into famous local well-digger Leo Wick, Sr.

He told me, “You better cover your garden tonight, boy.”

At the time, the weather app on my phone said it was only going to get down to 34 degrees that next morning. I shrugged off his advice. Then later that afternoon, my dad, Kenneth Behlen of Schulenburg, called and mentioned that he was covering up some plants in his garden.

“It’s the middle of March,” I thought to myself. “Why is everyone freaking out? It’s going to warm up right away.”

I should have listened to the old timers.

When I left for work Tuesday morning, I noticed a little patch of frost on some grass. But out in the garden, everything looked lush and green. When I came home at lunchtime, most of my potatoes plants were drooping to the ground.

I’m not too worried about them. I hilled them up a week before. The frost seemed to only have damaged the outer leaves. The stems still look bright green. Many of the lower leaves survived as well. I’m quite sure the damaged plants will spring back to life in a week or so.

Strangely, though, some of the potato plants were completely unaffected by the frost. I noticed one plant with two stalks coming out of the ground from the same seed potato. The stem on the north side of the hill burned almost to the ground. The stem on the south side of the hill remains lush and bright green.

It was a very strange frost in other ways as well. Quite a bit of volunteer basil has been popping up around my garden. They seem unaffected. But somehow, the frost damaged a few outer leaves on some of my cabbage plants.

Last Saturday, my wife Janessa and I visited the herb sale at Festival Hill in Round Top. I managed to spend only about $120. Among the plants we bought was papalo, an herb that tastes much like cilantro. But unlike cilantro, it grows well during the summer.

Cilantro grows well here only in the cooler months of the year. Some of the cilantro in my garden was already starting to bolt and go to seed last week before the cold front arrived. I love using cilantro in salsas and pico de gallo. But by the time tomatoes and peppers come into season, it is usually long past the season for cilantro. So I was hoping to grow some papalo this year to use as a cilantro substitute. I stupidly planted the papalo I bought on Sunday. The frost on Tuesday morning burned all of the leaves. I can see some green tissue around the stem, so I’m hoping it comes back.

Lessons learned, I suppose.