Some days you just wanna…well, wonder what the heck is going on. Last Saturday morning was one of those days…disaster had struck in the garden the night before. Well, technically in the greenhouse…but it is all part of the “garden project.” Here what happened…

We’ve had an early spring, unseasonably warm…quite beautiful. On top of that I did my calculations based on the last few years and decided to start my seedlings in February, early February to be exact. Back in mid-February I posted an article showing my seedlings starts.

Garden in mid-February.

It was an overall huge success! I wanted lots of plants this year, not just for us for the most part…I wanted plenty of plants to give to others for them to grow their own food this season. With the economy/affordability in such bad shape and food inflation running so high, we thought it would be nice to help some folks out.

The transition from seedlings in the house on a heat mat to the greenhouse went really well. The plants were doing fantastic and this year I was able to spend enough time to do it right. We had lots of tomato plants, butternut squash, couple varieties of cantaloupe, and couple varieties of watermelon. The early start to cantaloupe and watermelon was based on our short growing season…I wanted to give us a jump start on it. We had about a total of 80 plant starts in the greenhouse.

Greenhouse Plants on March 22nd…before the Big Freeze.

We watch the weather reports pretty closely when we have plants in the greenhouse. We usually run about 2 – 4 degrees cooler than the predictions for the area. Friday night it was supposed to hit 31°. That is not a problem…we just turn on our greenhouse electric heater and we are good to go. Since moving the plants to the greenhouse we had a few night in the upper 20’s with no problem. About 8pm Friday night I turned on the heat, it was 48°. Wind was blowing a bit, but not bad.

I woke up at 1am and it was 30° outside, 34° in the greenhouse…cooler ahead of schedule. I turned the heat up to high. I woke up at 3am…it was now 26° outside, 30° in the greenhouse. Nothing more I could do…the heater was on high and damage done, if there was going to be any. I woke up at 5am…22° outside, 26° in the greenhouse. All is lost…I knew the damage wouldn’t show up till late in the afternoon, so I just started doing other shores…sick to my stomach.

Long story short…I thought everything was going to be dead…all the plants were young and 26° is a hard freeze any way you look at it. By the end of Saturday it looked as if ½ of the plants were dead. All put 2 of the tomatoes a lot of the melons and cantaloupe. The butternut squash was hit the least but some of them dead as well.

Well, it is Sunday morning…Yea! I went out and culled the sheep from the goats. Okay, it was the dead plants from the living plants. It is obvious that we lost about 20 – 25% of the plants, mostly tomatoes but melon and squash as well. We do have a variety of tomatoes left and a bunch of melon and squash are still good. It looks as if we might lose another 5 – 10 plants, mostly tomatoes but that won’t be intolerable.

Greenhouse plants on the morning of April 5th. The Big Freeze survivors.

Considering that a hard freeze should have killed it all…we may have a loss totaling no more than 40% of the plants when is all is said and done…not too bad. Lucky and blessed I would say.

The Big Freeze bone pile…April 5th.

What I haven’t been talking about was the over-wintered Big Jim pepper plants. Those plants are where Hatch green chili comes from. Best green chili in the universe…period!! I was doing some research last year and found out that pepper plants are actually perennials not annuals. Well, technically they are bi-annuals. So I followed the process last fall and over the winter. I put the first two plants into one of the raised beds about 6 weeks ago and covered them anytime it looked as if it would be 38° or below. Then 3 weeks ago I put out the last two. Yeah, I was so focused on the greenhouse Friday I completely forgot about those 4 pepper plants. Oooopppppsssss…frozen dead. Fortunately I had already started 10 new plants about 4 weeks ago just in case the overwinter process didn’t work. Those little seedlings are doing just fine…about ¾” – 1” tall and safely tucked away on a heat mat in a spot with a south facing window and grow light…in the house.

Overwintered Big Jim pepper plants post-freeze. Yeah, dead.

I didn’t even think about this till Saturday afternoon…the new bare-root strawberry plants! Thursday afternoon/evening I planted my brand new 50 bare root strawberry plants…25 Albion & 25 Eversweet. That was to be the foundation of my HUGE strawberry patch that I have been dreaming about for years.

Saturday afternoon I went out to the garden to check their moisture and then it hit me…they were in the ground 1 day before the freeze. Normally strawberry plants can handle some very cold temps…really cold…but mature plants properly cared for. These were brand new little guys, fresh in the ground. Some of the plants appear to be a bit brittle on the tops, but that may be just because of the nature of bare root plants. I don’t know their actual status as of now.

Bare root strawberry plants planted on April 2nd, one day before the Big Freeze. Yes, there are plants in there…basically by each watering head.

Good thing is I had about 3” of cedar wood chip mulch around them. This one step may have saved them. I don’t think I will know for sure for weeks…when they don’t turn green and don’t show new growth. Time will tell…patience is the name of the game now. Yeah, not my strong suit.

A small blessing…I have 20 Eversweet strawberry plants (not bare root) sitting at the mailbox in town. I will pick them up Monday and get them in the ground. They should be fine. So I might not have the HUGE patch this year I had planned on, but I will have some…better than a sharp stick in the eye.

I try to find lessons learned from any experience like this…

• Never, ever fully (or partially) trust the weather reports.
• When in doubt, overkill is the best option (I could have moved them to the house).
• Always have a Plan “B” & Plan “C”.
• Think about a better way to heat the greenhouse.

I am grateful for the blessing of apparently not losing all the plants. It appears we will have plenty of plants for our own garden and still have enough plants to share with others. And we will still have a strawberry patch…albeit small…but a patch all the same. Thank you Lord !

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