Oh, How I Hate Spring Frosts

Our weather has been a bit bipolar this spring.  We had 10+ days of really warm weather – as in gardening in shorts, tank top and sandals type weather – to temps plummeting to 28 degrees last night with another light frost in the forecast for this evening.  The warm sunny days interspersed with light rain provided the much awaited cue to the winter-weary perennials; almost all of them have inches of gorgeous green growth – ripe for frost devastation.  I was so confident that warm weather was here to stay that I stupidly transplanted two of my dahlias outside last weekend.  Thankfully, I exercised some caution and only planted two; I still have another 8 in the mud room.

I was still in denial Monday evening when I got home from work, but Nora patiently reminded me again that she would be willing to help cover any delicate outside plants in preparation for the coming frost that evening.  So we pulled all sizeable buckets and pots, old sheets, burlap, and landscaping fabric we could find out of the barn and went to work.  We covered all of the roses, including some newly obtained David Austin varieties, hydrangeas, a surviving rhodie and the dahlias. 

All pulled through smashingly, except for the dahlias. They were slightly wilted looking Tuesday morning when I removed the coverings, but Nora emailed around 10:30am to report that they had blackened and crumpled.  I cut them back that evening, covered them, and will fertilize them on the next non-rain day (today), and hope for the best.  If we’re lucky, we’ll see recovery by mid-summer.  So sad, but lesson learned. 

On a bright note, the pea and lettuce seedlings are thoroughly enjoying this break in warm weather.

On a completely unrelated topic, we received our first straw load!  We'll use it for bedding for the sheep, as well as some extensive mulching out in the vegetable garden and berry areas.  Our storage barn is almost looking like a real barn...