After the Freeze

 The pre-Christmas freeze did not do too much damage in my yard. The parts of the garden that weren't covered looked pretty rough, and I've had to trim away dead leaves from the collards and kale, but all of the covered plants look mostly ok.

Cold-burn on leaves of two of my broccoli plants

However, one of my brothers sent me a picture of damage to his veggie garden.

His broccoli plants must have totally frozen, despite being covered to protect them, because after the thaw, they basically liquified. I am sure that cleaning up the soggy mess was not fun.

My gardening brother is in South Texas, and his garden did not get much colder than mine, maybe a degree or two. I do know, though, that I used pretty much every bit of lightweight fabric in the house out in the yard over those four freezing days.

Covering my Southern Garden in a Freeze

So sorry that I did not document this in photos, but what follows is how I covered my garden beds:

• Pushed wood stakes into the beds, with upside-down flower pots on the tops, to keep the covering material from weighing down on the plants
• Used sheets -- yes, the ones that normally go on beds in the house -- draped over the garden beds
• Covered the sheet layer with thin plastic sheeting
• Pinned the edges of both layers down to the ground with anything I could find -- rocks, bricks, logs, boards. The coverings had to withstand 30 mph winds, so the weights needed to be heavy.

After the freeze was over, I had a lot of laundry to do. All of those sheets needed to be washed, and I do not have a clothes dryer. It took a couple of days to get everything washed and then dried out on my clothesline!

A lot of moisture condensed onto the plastic sheeting, which meant it all needed to be dried, too. The huge plastic sheeting looked pretty odd out on the clothesline, but it did get dry.

All of that effort was totally worthwhile. The garden bed pictured below shows very little cold damage. The Bok Choy sent up flowers immediately, which is slightly annoying, but everything else just shows a little cold damage on some of the leaves. 

Garden bed with broccoli, carrots, cabbages, and more.

Cold damage on most of the covered plants looks like bleached areas on the leaves. Mostly, those bleached areas are where the sheets touched the plants.

Elsewhere in the garden, the radicchio, lettuces, escaroles and endives, arugula, sugar snap peas, and other plants under the double layer of sheets (fabric plus plastic) look unfazed by the freezing weather.

Winter is not over; odds are good that more freezing weather will arrive over the next couple of months. 

Professionals use heavy-weight row covers to protect their crops, but not all gardeners have them on hand. At my house, we tend to improvise to use the resources that are already here. Thus, the sheets.

Hope that your gardens are all recovering nicely and providing good food for your families!

-Amy