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soonergrandmom

Frost/Freeze Tolerance of Veggie Plants

9 years ago

A good little chart showing Frost/Freeze Tolerance


Chart

Comments (10)

  • 9 years ago

    Great Chart! Just FYI to those that may click on the link - be logged in to Pinterest first. Otherwise - it will probably take you to your own "pins". Just the voice of experience here...but if you go back and click the link again - BAM. Takes you right to it. And trust me...this chart is going to make me rest easier during this cold snap. Thanks so much, Carol!!!!

  • 9 years ago

    Way awesome! I definitely pinned that to my garden board! I was so worried about all that I planted and didn't have the chance to cover. Much thanks!

  • 9 years ago

    It is a great chart, but just remember (a) plants don't read charts and actual performance in your garden may vary, and (b) pre-conditioning is everything (as noted at the bottom of the chart). Plants that have sprouted and grown in warm weather and never experienced freezing or sub-freezing temperatures lack pre-conditioning to the cold and sometimes are affected by it because they haven't been conditioned to it by exposure.

    It is only 37 degrees here so far this morning but may drop a bit colder and I'm not worried about my plants because I covered up everything, dragged things into the greenhouse or put flats of plants in the mudroom. Tonight we'll be right around freezing. I hope this weekend is the last of the cold, but realize that it probably is not.

  • 9 years ago

    Thanks Mike. I thought that was where I originally copied it, but when I went looking for it again, I didn't find it, but found the copy on Pinterest. We were below freezing last night and I covered a few things, but even those not covered were OK. I still have two more nights to deal with though. I don't have any warm season crops planted, so the cool season ones should be fine.

  • 9 years ago

    It isn't even the few warm-season crops that I have planted that I am worried about. I have hoops up and can cover them up pretty quickly. It is all the random perennials scattered around the garden that have popped up early and are flowering early. I am sure some will freeze back tonight or at least suffer frost damage as I did not run around the garden with little pieces of row cover in my hand, covering up random early bird plants. Even four o'clocks are popping up. It is just too early but apparently they don't care.

  • 9 years ago

    I have a lot of flowers up also and had already cleaned up the leaf debris that had blown in around them. They made it through last night, but I have 2 nights left and we are already at 36 (at 11:30) with a forecast of 29. We have very little wind and are mostly clear. I could see a couple of banana stalks a couple of days ago and I didn't even think of covering those.

    I passed a house today that looked like it had a yard filled with ghosts. It had shrubs all over the yard and each one was wrapped in row cover or other fabric.

    I have a few potato plants that were just a couple of inches tall and they looked fine this morning and so did the peas, and neither of those had cover last night. There was no question that we were in the freeze area last night, but being by a large body of water sometimes helps. It always helps in the Fall. Luckily most of what I have in the ground is frost tolerant.

  • 9 years ago

    Carol, I wonder what sort of shrubs they were wrapping

    I threw leaves over my potato plants and covered most things, but didn't cover the cannas (too many), the catnip, the dill or the comfrey and not the poppies, larkspur, chamomile or verbena bonariensis. Even if they suffered freeze burn, they'll leaf right back out.

    Our Min-Max thermometer shows we only dropped to 32 and I went and looked at our Mesonet station meteogram to see how many hours it was below freezing, and it was a relatively brief time period there. Of course, that's miles away and we might have been cold longer here, but I don't think we were. I was awake beginning around 5 a.m. and was watching my thermometer and it stayed mostly above 32 the whole time, and in fact, mostly at 33 or 34 with only a couple of short dips down to 32.

    Dawn

  • 9 years ago

    Dawn, I don't know, but I think there are a lot of blooming bushes in that yard. They were still wrapped when I went to church this morning. I think they had to be ornamental since they were bushy and too small to be fruit trees.

    We haven't had as much warmth as you have had and my cannas have not come up yet. I have chamomile, daisy, and hollyhocks that are up, and had a couple of banana plants that had started to grow. The bananas have a little brown around them today. They are in a very protected area and may be getting a little heat from the walls of the house. The comfrey is in an open part of the garden, but it looks fine. I threw a box over the rosemary the last couple of nights because it looked like it had new growth. Lisa gave me a new echinacea plant last year and I was a little worried about it, but it was just barely above ground and appeared to be alright. I put a box over it tonight just in case we go even lower tonight. Our forecast for tonight is 29 again.

    My sage had started to get new leaves, and 2 types of oregano were up and all look OK. I have one little lavender plant that had a few new leaves, but already looked poor before the cold weather hit, so it may have trouble with the added cold. If so, it will not be my first fail with lavender. I am lavender challenged.

    The Mesonet shows that we have had 8 hours below freezing in the last week, but our low temp was 28. We have another low forecast for Thursday night, so it is still winter. I still have the 7 tomato plants that I bought for early planting and haven't been brave enough to put them in the ground yet. I just hope tomorrow is nice enough to work outside because I really need to pot-up my tomato plants that I grew from seed. They still fit on the light shelf, but those 7 that I bought don't fit there and are large enough to be planted. My grandson wanted to know how I got 7 plants out of a 6 pack. HaHa One of them just happened to have two in it and it separated easily. Old 'gonefishin' trick.

  • 9 years ago

    It is an old gonefishin' trick. He'd be proud that his methods live on in some of us, wouldn't he? On the rare occasions I purchase tomato plants, I always look for one that has more than the specified number. One of the early plants I bought this year had 4 plants in a 3" peat pot.

    I am lavender challenged too, and have had better (but not great) luck with it in pots than in the ground.

    I hope you get nice weather tomorrow. Working in the garden is the cure for anything and everything, and I really miss it when I'm not out there doing something. To some extent, it doesn't even matter what I'm doing as long as I am out there in the garden.

    We currently have a forecast low of 38 for Thursday and I expect it will get colder than that. A week ago, our forecast for Friday morning was around 42 and then every day it dropped a little each day. Our forecast for tonight has been fluctuating between 30 and 31 all day, so I'm thinking we'll hit the 20s, especially since temperatures started plunging at sunset.

    Before all of us even make it to Thursday night and the next round of cold temperatures, we have to make it through tonight, and then some strong wind and high to possibly extreme fire danger for several days and then more cold weather....oh and rain for some. March is turning into a real weather roller coaster. We are greening up more and more every day, but that doesn't mean fire season is over by any means. My average last frost date is a week away, and I've learned how little that actually means too. I keep waiting for our weather to settle down, but it seems like it is getting a bit wilder and crazier every day instead of calming down.

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