Tuesday, May 20, 2008

I started too early!

The start

Finish


My beautiful Costco tomato plant


The planted garden


My now dead tomato plant


One of my projects I've been working on over the past few weeks has been digging and planting a garden. Last Tuesday, after watching the weather faithfully and seeing the future nighttime temps. I decided to put my plants/seeds in the ground. I was sure the danger of frost was over. Sigh. No. Two nights ago we had a frost. I learned about it when it was too late at night to go cover up the plants. I think my chive plants and cilantro starts survived but my tomato starts (one a lovely big one from Costco) did not. I don't know if my seeds will come up now or not. I should have waited.

2 comments:

Kara S. said...

Oh I hate frost! This is the first year we've haven't lost anything to the frost. Usually our fruit trees, which are obviously too big to cover, pay the price. Did you know that springtime frost actually occurs in the early morning hours (like 3 a.m. or later) so you're better off covering even if it is after dark? (We've covered as late as 11:30 p.m. - after the late news.) The plants won't have as much warmth as if you've covered them at sunset but they'll still be better off than with no cover at all. =)

Anonymous said...

Sorry about your tomato plants, We had planted ours about the same time but ours were a lot smaller. I save up milk jugs and cut the bottoms out (and the caps removed)to use as mini greenhouses until Memorial day. I go out and take them off if its a warm sunny day. I have planted a few times plants of your size but not until after the 30th to be safe. I still have the plants outside but I create a greenhouse for them each night (bad nights I will actually light a long burning candle in the greenhouse).