I'm pretty stressed out by the change of weather also. We hadn't even frosted yet till this cold blast from Canada came through with 60mph winds and low 20's overnight. Yesterday produce was freezing on the market tables and I didn't even try to set up the canopy for fear of killing someone if it blew away. Surprising, market was good because I think people feared armageddon was here.
Today is snow and freezing rain and i've got to harvest wholesale in it.

I think most of the winter veggies are ok, but it's almost impossible to keep row cover on in this kind of wind.

-Mark

Knowing this blast was coming, I bush hogged everything down and pulled up all the plastic, so I guess I'm done except for selling a couple tons of winter squash. Now I guess I'll till everything under this weekend. Mice look to be pretty bad, and I don't want winter cover for the stinkbugs. We're supposed to get up to 1 1/2 inches Saturday. I've never tilled snow before, but this might be the first time.

Yet again, another strange year. From mid April to Aug, we had a grand total of one inch of rain. From Aug to now over 25. We never had a chance to dig all of our sweet potatoes because of the slop. We dug them Tuesday after they had been frosted. I know that is a terrible scenario, but we had no choice. Are they any good? They look beautiful and appear perfect in every way.

I dug mine sweet potatoes after several light frosts. I think the ground was warm enough, they should be fine. Most all my outside plots have cover crops planted in them or they had fall root crops which will be the cover crop.

I am going to work up one of my movable tunnel spots and plant spinach. Yes it is late, but I will be moving my movable building over this spot in a month or so after I have harvested all the carrots. My hopes is it will start to grow prior to moving it or it will start to grow after I move the building and it will be ready in really early spring. If it works, happy farmer, if it doesn't I am out $5-10.

I am most concerned about my crops as they weren't very hardened off. It has been so nice, but there is nothing I can do about it. I also wish I could have gotten more of my winter root crops picked. I only harvested about 25% of them and just ran out of time. Looking back now, I should have just started pulling and thrown them in tubs and stacked in the cooler, instead of cutting the greens off and carefully putting them in the tubs.

Live and learn!

Jay

i've read that if the sweet potato vines and leaves turn black from the frost/freeze you should cut them off. the potatoes themselves should be fine in the ground as long as the ground doesn't freeze.

I've had several nights below 0 F and overcast days that struggled to get into the teens. I haven't seen a sunny day in over a week. Tonight is forecast to be the coldest of all, with a low of 10 below. Even for here, this cold snap is unusually long-lived for mid-November. I am unable to harvest any of the hardy greens in my high tunnel because they remain frozen underneath the row covers. So far, temperatures under the cover have stayed in the range of 25 to 30 degrees F. I hope it gets sunny next week for the plants to thaw and recover.

November here is actually worse than January in Maine where Eliot Coleman farms. The sun here is much weaker and we can't depend on thaws or marine air to bring a window of good harvesting temperatures. I think trying to grow anything between mid-November and mid-March is impossible in most years. But I can still try!

This post was edited by Slimy_Okra on Thu, Nov 13, 14 at 21:42

I have been just angry about this weather so early. We had 12 inches of snow Monday which was freakish. Tonight will be a record low -3. I had finally gotten all my cover and tunnels just right and had to remove some last weekend and for other things I quick harvested and for other things I just left low tunnels and hoped for a melt this month. I have market next Saturday then 7 CSA shares. I had totally figured on picking one more time before market and now I don't think I will even be able to get to the sage. I have tons of veggies in storage, including the entire bed of carrots I dug and washed last weekend and 5 banana boxes of onions, 3 of sweet potatoes and 3 of potatoes along with squash. I just hate to have the green things be wasted and wanted one more picking. I overall had way too much produce but luckily just picked up two more shareholders.

It looks like we have one more cold night tonight, 8 degrees forecasted, then warm up for the rest of the week.

Most of the lettuce looks fine, but I am really disappointed in the kale. Picked some yesterday, some is fine and some is limp and shriviling up. They had plenty of water. I am thinking that the plants were too big to survive in sudden cold snap. They had leaves the size of a dinner plate and larger. I harvest as much as I could, but they just kept growing. I am hopeful that they will come back. This is inside my high tunnel, under row cover.

It was really nice to dig carrots over the weekend and bring them to the walk in cooler and just slide them in and shut the door. It was sunny and warmed up the high tunnels, but too cold outside to wash them.

Jay

yes, its too cold for this time of the year, I think it's 7 degrees here today with 20 mph wind. I picked all the kale before it hit, stripped it all the way down because I can't cover it. It's just too windy out there. They combined the corn field and it's just a wind tunnel...Luckily we had a winter market and I managed to sell most of the 5 bushels I picked via market and facebook. I have about 1/2 bushel left for the freezer or I might can it. we could really use the humidity in here! The winter market we had was really strange, still sold a couple hundred, but the houseplants that usually sell just didn't. maybe because there were still veggies available?
couldn't put the straw over the garlic until the night before the snow hit because it was too windy. The one row I'd put down was mostly blown away already. Hopefully the snow and then the wet from the melted snow will hold it on the ground. when I speared accidentally in the ground with the pitchfork, I pulled up an elephant garlic clove and it had 6" roots already. So that was good, except that I speared it...I put it back, do you think it will grow again?

Despite the cold temps and not getting anything planted in the high tunnel until October, the crops are really coming along. The winter market starts next week.Cilantro is a new crop for me, hopefully the customers at the market will accept it. Last night the temps dipped down in the 20's and I had not rolled down the high tunnel. Everything was froze this morning which had me worried but after everything thawed out it looked perfectly normal, even the lettuce.

Cilantro

Radishes and Turnips covered outside

Tomatoes and Things:

Looking good, we usually have lows in the 20's this time of the year. Not this year, we bottomed out at 8 last night. We have not been above freezing since 11/11/14 and it looks like it will have to wait another day. Maybe 50 by this weekend!

Leeks, beets and chard under row cover and greenhouse plastic.As of yesterday all of this is under 5"of snow

Outdoor kale crop under 2 layers of row cover.

greens and broccoli in the high tunnel a couple of days ago. The bag is full of composting grass clippings and adding heat to the tunnel. We also put 5 gallon buckets of water under the covers, one bucket every 10' or so.

Lettuce is still looking good. Had this one for supper on Monday. We broke a 123 year old record for low temps this morning with 8 degrees. Should be in the 20's and 50's. Looking at 61 by Saturday. Strange!

The weather has begun it's winter roller coaster here. We had frost the first week of Nov. Earliest I've seen it since we moved here 8 years ago.It was 79 degrees here yesterday. I love the unexpected shorts and T- shirt weather. 39 this morning and then 24 tonight. All the sweet potatoes are harvested, I think... I found about a dozen small ones I missed when I planted my broccoli, kale, tatsoi and salsify. Just a few of each. Nothing like y'all plant. Would you think of letting food bank volunteers come in and picking what you can't get to? They are trying to get the farmers to do that here. More people sign up for food every time I work at the food bank. We had 2 green houses we had to cover when we lived in Vero Beach. It was always the windiest day. One green house was 90ftX 30Ft. That was always the big challenge. The little one was 20 ft by 8 ft.

I still have broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and kale in the field. I cut broccoli and cabbage today that was frozen solid. Broccoli I just stuck in the freezer, but I'm wondering if I should have waited for warmer weather to let that cabbage thaw out on the plant?

This is a stupid question, but will this sustained cold kill the plants in the field? It's been mostly 20's, but colder last night, 12 degrees. I left a few broccoli plants to see if they'd bounce back. I should have covered them, but too late now.

I'm also curious to see what happens to my kale. It's normally fine in our winters, but the plants are 4 feet tall, and as someone else pointed out, they haven't had time to harden off. Looking pretty droopy and frozen now. JB

MDFarmer, how are the plants looking today?

Not pretty at all. This was yesterday. It was 40 outside and a nice 70 inside the high tunnel. This was the siberian and red russian kale. The problem with the recent artic cold was it came suddenly and the plants hadn't "Tuffened" up to it. Also, the leaves were way to big. With the warmer fall, the plants grew very fast. The smaller leaves are fine, but I will be going through and cutting out the dead and damaged leaves. I am guessing 75% of the leaves are a total loss.

Time to move on!

Jay

This post was edited by jrslick on Fri, Nov 21, 14 at 9:22

Looking better Scarlet Kale and the Dinosaur kale looks good too. The Collard greens weren't too bad either. I have 4 beds of Kale in the high tunnel, running north to south. The north end is the roughest looking and the southend looks better. The Scarlet Kale here is on the South end. It was also smaller and slower growing. Glad I over planted, because I wouldn't have anything left if I would have just planted 2 beds.

Jay

This post was edited by jrslick on Fri, Nov 21, 14 at 9:26

I've been really impressed with how my plants have been handling the cold. I haven't used any covers inside the high tunnel yet. I took the following picture a little earlier.

Jay, have you tried putting your row covers closer to the plants instead of hanging them over the top? Directly on the plants? There was a recent article in the growing for market magazine discussing this. This is what part of it said: "After a lengthy discussion it was generally agreed that the closer a cover is to the crops, the better. The principle is simple: an inner cover is essentially a thin layer of insulation trapping heat released from the soil close to your plants. The less air space to keep warm, the better. One grower put it this way: Would you be warmer with a blanket directly on top of you or suspended a foot over your body?"

Yes I have had them closer, actually when we put the low tunnels up, they were just a few inches above the tops of the plants. After many years of doing this winter growing, we have settled on this method. We use to cover every row with a low tunnel, that got time consuming and hard to put up on by yourself. Then we just laid the row cover on the tops of the plants, that didn't work because the row cover caught the evaporation, then would freeze at night and damage the plants.

Then we started to do it this way. Much easier and quicker to cover and easier to work in during harvest time.

The north wind at 30-40mph didn't help much either with temps in the single digits. I couldn't keep what little heat was given off in the building. I am just sad that I lost so much sellable product. They will regrow and all will be right with the world. it will just take time. It will be nice to talk to another grower near me this weekend and see how theirs fared.

Jay

I know what you mean, Jay. I lost a good portion of tatsoi planted at the north end of my high tunnel because it never thawed out throughout the cold wave (thick layer of frost on the high tunnel roof blocked all the sun). Plants at the south end did much better because the sunshine came in through the door.

I know this post is old, but at what outside temperatures do you cover winter crops in the high tunnel with row cover? I've got tatsoi, bok choy, arugula, spinach, kale, chard and collards.