This text is part of the special Plaisirs booklet
The cool nights are now well established and herald an important milestone in the gardening season: the first fall frost. Impossible to escape it! Here are some tips to prepare for it.
Know your microclimate
A good habit to develop when growing vegetable crops is to stay on top of the weather forecast. Without making it an obsession, knowing the major trends allows us to better guide our plants towards their development, and therefore towards better harvests. At this time, I suggest that you compare the predicted temperature at night with the actual temperature in the vegetable garden. Depending on where you live, the forecast may be based on weather stations quite far from you and therefore may be different from your reality. Also, you could live in a place where the microclimate differs from that of the forecasts, such as in the hollow of a valley or on the edge of the woods. At home, the actual temperature is often 1 to 2 degrees below the weather forecast. So as soon as the forecast is 2 degrees at night, I am assuming that there will be a light frost and I am preparing accordingly.
Harvest the fruit vegetables
When a freeze is announced, get ready for action! On the one hand, all the fruits on your plants that cannot tolerate the cold will have to be harvested: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, beans, etc. You should even harvest tomatoes that have not yet reached maturity, they will be excellent in green sauce ! Otherwise, they will reach maturity indoors, aided in passing by the presence of a few apples nearby. The ethylene in apples speeds up the ripening process, plus it’s the season!
Protect your plants
On the other hand, several vegetable plants tolerate light frost well. Among them, we find carrots, spinach, fennels, beets, kale, radishes, turnips, arugula, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. For the latter, there is no need to hurry to harvest them. On the contrary, low temperatures concentrate the sugars they contain and their flavor is improved.
When the temperature is above -2 ° C, it can be considered a light frost. Below this threshold, it is best to cover our frost tolerant plants with a floating cover sold in the nursery or with a light sheet. These blankets preserve some of the heat of the day and increase the temperature by a few precious degrees. If it’s sunny the next day, remove them so your plants get the most out of that light.
Several beautiful weeks are still to come, and with them the promise of autumn harvests. Take a tour of your vegetable garden to assess the fruits that are still on your plants and the materials available to protect them. You are never prepared enough!
Farmers’ markets at their peak
Watch video
Reference-feedproxy.google.com