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frost protection

Greens that Survive Freezing Weather

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In the first couple of very hard freezes of this fall/winter garden season, I covered my garden with spun row covers to protect the crops from the cold. However, in the most recent freeze, about a week and half back, when temperatures dropped to the low-to-mid-20s three nights in a row, I left the garden uncovered. The plan was to confirm which garden greens were most winter-hardy.

Shallow basket containing three kinds just-harvested greens, set behind a few red radishes with green leaves still attached, all set on a table.
Veggies harvested in advance of the freeze.

The afternoon before the first of those three very cold nights, I harvested a basketful of greens (and some root veggies), in case the whole garden turned into a mushy brown mess. At least I would have those pre-harvested greens to enjoy!

Why does cold-hardiness matter now, in mid-winter?

Seed catalogs are piling up in my house. If you, like me, are contemplating the coming gardening year, having information about cold-hardiness might be helpful as you choose crops for next fall.

Garden plant protection provided by spun row cover over supports that hold the cover away from the plants.
Makeshift supports hold cover over plants.

During a freeze, all of the greens in the garden will look wilted. This is normal. As the temperatures climb back above freezing, the hardiest greens perk back up and look completely unaffected. For gardeners who are short on time or energy in the winter months, keeping a garden full of very hardy greens can be a real benefit.

Some gardeners are happy to provide protection for their less cold-hardy crops and can easily manage the spun row covers and structures to support those covers. Other gardeners may not be able to cover their crops ahead of each freeze, either because they travel or have other time-restrictions, or maybe because of a more limited budget.

Regardless, the more information we have as we plan the next round of crops, the more likely it is that we can make the best choices for our gardens.

My greens crops, after exposure to the hard freeze

After the most recent series of very cold nights, all of my unprotected garden greens are still alive, but some came through better than others. I took pictures, so you can see for yourself which crops did best through the freezing weather.

  • ‘Castelfranco’ radicchio
  • ‘Palla rossa’ radicchio
  • Sugarloaf chicory
  • ‘Full Heart’ escarole
  • Frisée endive
  • Dwarf kale
  • Swiss chard ‘perpetual spinach’
  • Spinach ‘Bloomsdale’
  • Cilantro
  • Curley parsley

Cold damage shows in a couple of ways. Mushy brown areas are the most easy to spot, but thinner, silvered places are also evidence of cold damage.

The frisée, ‘Full Heart’ escarole, and ‘Perpetual spinach’ Swiss chard show the most cold damage of all the greens included here. The heading types — radicchios and the Sugarloaf, show a little cold damage on the outer leaves, but the leaves inside the heads seem to be unaffected.

Some greens show no damage at all. These include the spinach, kale, cilantro, and parsley. The best news is that even the most damaged greens look as though they will survive to resume growing.

If your garden greens look like heck

If the unprotected greens in your garden are the kind that suffered from cold damage in that last round of cold weather, you have a couple of options.

The small green leaves, purple stems, and tightly closed flower buds of chickweed growing in winter.
Chickweed

One option is to trim away the “bad leaves” to reduce the odds of a fungus taking hold and rotting away entire plants. Then, when new leaves grow in the stretches of warmer weather that we get here in the Southeastern US, you will be able to resume harvesting leaves for use in the kitchen.

Another option, that can be put into practice along with the first option, is to bring in some wild greens to supplement your garden greens.

Right now, chickweed and dandelion greens are at their peak in my lawn and garden. If you can identify those with confidence, and you know that the plants are growing in uncontaminated soil (not by a busy road or in a “treated” lawn), they are good wild greens to try, either added to salads, mixed with other cooked greens, or wilted before adding to a pizza.

Getting the Garden Ready for a Hard Freeze

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The first hard freeze in my area is expected to arrive tomorrow evening (Tuesday, Nov. 12). Over the next 24 hours, most gardeners in the path of the cold front will need to harvest the last of the summer vegetables and be ready to cover any crops that might not be ready for temperatures in the low 20s.

The last summer vegetables

View straight down into flat boxes containing red and green tomatoes in a single layer, an inch or two apart from each other.
Last tomatoes for the year.

I have harvested the last of the summer veggies in my garden — all the peppers, even the tiny ones, and the remaining tomatoes.

The tiniest peppers were chopped and sautéed along with some full-sized peppers and are in the crockpot as part of tonight’s chili.

The tomatoes will be used in salads as they ripen, since fresh tomatoes in winter can be hard to come by. Even harvested green and left to ripen slowly in the company of their pinker brethren, these home garden tomatoes will beat the flavor of most supermarket tomatoes.

Large basket containing round orange fruits of the Asian persimmon tree Ichi Ki Kei Jiro.
Small pile of Asian persimmons.

I harvested anise hyssop for my pet rabbits, Moonpie and Charlie Copper, who love that particular herb. It has regrown considerably since the last time I cut off all the dead flowers, so the bunnies have a large-enough supply of leaves to last a few days. Anise hyssop, like basil, will not survive a freeze.

The Ichi Ki kei Jiro persimmons are also ready to come in, mostly, and I brought in a basket-full this afternoon. The tree is providing enough fruits this year that I’ve already shared with one neighbor (Hi, Anthony!) and will be able to share with a few more.

If you have these or other summer vegetables still in the garden, and the cold front is headed your way, consider harvesting them all before the temperatures drop below freezing. Summer vegetables that freeze on the plants will not be good to eat after they thaw.

Crops to protect from a hard freeze

Many of the cool season crops will survive the upcoming freeze in good condition and continue to grow when the weather warms up again. However, to be safe, I will cover the tenderest of the fall crops. These include lettuces, the remaining salad radishes, and the Swiss chard.

I will also cover the escaroles and radicchios, because they are mostly new varieties for me. Their cold-hardiness is unknown.

View from above of closely spaced leafy greens in the garden.
Escaroles will be covered to protect them from extreme cold.

The good news is that I have located covers to place over the more tender crops. These include some actual, horticultural, spun row-cover and an old flannel sheet. Avoid using plastic if you can. If plastic is all you have on hand, make sure it is held above the plants and does not touch them anywhere.

The covers I use can keep the temperature of the garden underneath them a couple or three degrees higher than the outside air. This small increase can be enough to safeguard the crops.

Even the covered greens may look wilted and weird as a result of the cold weather. The key here is not to panic. Wait until warm weather returns before you make rash decisions like pulling up all the plants. Many of the cool-season greens “bounce back” to a more healthy appearance after freezing, then resume growing as the weather warms.

Crops that I won’t protect

Side view of fern-like leaves of carrots as they grow in the garden; in the background, beet leaves, with their red stems, show where the beets are growing.
Carrot patch, with beets in back.

The root vegetables will survive the cold with little trouble, especially since the soil here in north Georgia is still fairly warm.

Another crop to leave in place is the saffron. In my yard, this crop is growing in four different patches in the yard and garden, with each patch sending up its flowers at different times.

I’ve already harvested some of the saffron, but one day when I went out to harvest more, honeybees were visiting the flowers and I decided not to disturb the bees.

Purple flowers, each with six petals, three yellow pistols and red stamens, growing near rocks in a green lawn.
For the spice saffron, harvest the red parts to bring inside and dry before using.
One purple saffron flower in the lawn with two honeybees -- one inside and one on the outside of a petal.
Honeybees visiting a saffron flower, a source of nectar in late October and early November.

Something else to bring inside

Shallow terra cotta planter with densely planted small salad greens -- arugula.

I have already brought the arugula inside. This is one of the salad greens I’ve been growing in a shallow container on the back deck over the last few months. Other greens have included a “basic salad mix” for microgreens and a dense planting of cilantro.

An article about growing these other greens is on the Soil3 blog. I wrote it last summer, for gardeners working in very small gardens and as a way to grow a few more kinds of greens in summer, but the method works as an indoor garden in winter, too. I have a second container of arugula at an earlier stage of growth, that we can harvest from when this first container stops producing greens.

The containers of greens will stay by a south-facing window, and the window will provide enough light for two or three harvests of greens before the plants are worn out.

Preparing for the First Frost

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The National Weather Service posted a frost advisory for my area (north Georgia) for last Sunday night. One bit of good news is that the frost did not appear. The other bit of good news is that I know how to prepare my garden for the first frost in fall.

Most of that preparation started many weeks ago, but there are always some last minute things to consider. This is what I did to get ready:

I harvested the largest peppers in response to prepare for the first frost..
Pepper harvest before the projected frost.

The evening before the projected frost, I harvested the largest of the remaining peppers. The peppers are the last of my warm-season crops, along with a little basil still standing out there. The cucumbers are already gone from the garden.

That is pretty much all I did, because most plants in my garden are ready for colder weather. The cool-season crops will do just fine in the early freezes of autumn. Some flowers will look terrible after a frost, but that is the way it goes. Some perennials, including a few herbs (thyme, rosemary, for example), will keep green leaves through the winter, and others will die back — turning brown and crunchy — but grow back from their roots in spring. I don’t worry about any of these.

This is a more complete list of some steps I take most years to get ready for the first frost:

Garden checklist to prepare for the first frost

  1. Harvest remaining warm-season crops that are mature enough to either finish ripening indoors or use “as is” in the kitchen.
  2. Check soil moisture. If the soil is dry, water the garden. Roots in moist soil are better-protected from cold than roots in dry soil. (We have had enough rain recently that soil moisture is plentiful.)
  3. If I had frost-tender plants that I wanted to protect (like a still-healthy tomato plant), to keep them growing another few weeks, I would cover them with row-covers or other fabric. Often, the first frost is followed by a stretch of warmer weather that allows warm-season crops to keep producing, if they survived.
  4. If I hadn’t already done this, I would pinch off any flowers  and flower-buds that were on my warm-season crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc), to encourage the plants to put their remaining energy into maturing their existing fruits.
  5. Cool-season crops do not usually need protection (like row-covers) for the first frost, so I don’t cover these. An exception would be if the plants were late going into the garden and, as a result, still just seedlings. Another would be when the frost follows a stretch of very warm days (highs in the 70s, for example), which could leave the plants unprepared to withstand a sudden drop into freezing temperatures. In the South, this happens.
Carrots in the garden can withstand the first frost without being covered for protection.
Garden carrots do not need to be covered through the first frost in Autumn.

Where I live, north of Atlanta, the first frost usually shows up around the first of November, which is soon.

When the first freezes finally arrive, it will be time to remove the last of the summer crops. If you are taking a break from gardening this winter (some people who aren’t me do this), be sure to cover the soil with some kind of mulch. Mulch protects the soil, preventing erosion by rain/wind and helping to maintain its fertility.

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro persimmons ripen near the time of the first frost in my yard.
Ichi Ki Kei Jiro persimmons ripen near the time of the first frost in my yard.