Casualties of Cold

We lost a few plants over the weekend. The temperature dropped too low on Friday night and the little tomato starts froze and, as they thawed out, shriveled.

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In all, we had 10 casualties–all tomatoes.

Two were injured, but we hope they will perk up over the next few days.

They are fighters with strong roots and thick stems.

There is hope.

A few survived, although they look glum, as if saddened by the loss.

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The lesson here? Place the trays near water when the temperature is going to drop and create a mini greenhouse by wrapping the trays in plastic and putting a heat mat underneath.

Why water? The sun will warm the water, the water will hold the heat and transfer that warmth to the plants in the greenhouse. This method is used in solar greenhouses.

The temperature may dip to 30 at the end of the week. I’ll be placing my seedling trays close to the water tanks and covering them with plastic.

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Tomorrow, I’ll drop new seeds into the decay. What nutrients left in the roots will go to the new seeds.

It’s never too late to start again.

Frozen tomatoes
The sun could not save these starts
More will carry on

4 responses to “Casualties of Cold

  1. We’re supposed to get up to almost 70 degrees on Thursday, and then have snow on Saturday sigh…. got to love spring 🙂

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