Winter Blows Into the Garden

After my last blog, gleefully showing my thriving peas and arugula, winter moved in with temperatures in the teens at night and the twenties during the day.  What a difference a day makes!  When I heard about the Alberta Clipper blowing in from the Arctic, I had a decision to make.

The cold is unlikely to hurt the leeks, which have been very tasty.

Previously, I just assumed fall plantings of lettuce and other things would succumb to cold at some point in the winter, so I never bothered to cover them.  I briefly thought that I should just shrug off this loss as well.  Then I thought how nice it would be to have peas very early in spring from those plants that wintered over and how nice it would be to keep eating that lovely arugula.  Then there were the lettuce seedlings and an empty cold frame.

This row cover may be too light, especially with snow expected tonight, but I’ll see.

So Inauguration Day, I went to the garden early, covered it with mulch, and determined how much row cover I had.  Then I covered the arugula and peas with it.  Because it’s light row cover it may not save the plants, but I thought I’d give it a try.

Some of the transplanted lettuce seedlings; I covered others with mulch.

Then I tucked up some of the lettuce seedlings with some mulch and transplanted others to the cold frame. They’ve had sunny days since it turned cold to warm up the soil they now sit in.  Tonight there is a winter weather watch for potential snow.  I guess I’ll see how the wrapping worked this weekend when it’s supposed to go back into the forties.

You can just barely see some of the seedlings snug in the frame.