Prepare, plant, water... freeze?

I'm excited about my new veggie beds, and I'm determined to make them productive this year. Mother Nature is helping... sort of. Sunday night it started raining, which is perfect for any newly-planted veggie starts or seeds. A good soaking is just what they need.

Unfortunately, that rain turned into a couple of inches of wet snow. Most seed packets and plant tags don't say "cover with snow after planting", do they?

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I'm pretty sure the three types of edibles I've planted can handle it. The Chinese cabbage looked like this yesterday:

And as you can see above, well, you can't really see much. The fact that at least one leaf is still upright is a good sign though.

As pretty as the edibles garden looked after clearing it and building the new beds, there's not much to look at right now:

Well, at least the new raised beds are full now.

The plants all seem to be okay, as small as they are. I guess the grower hardened them off pretty well:

The low temperature was right around freezing, 33ºF/1ºC or so, maybe it actually got down to freezing. These guys can handle it though. (Broccoli and cauliflower as well as the Chinese cabbage.)

This unexpected weather is one reason I put out only a dozen plants with the rest being grown from seed to be planted out later. I don't want to risk starting my whole crop too early, just to have a freak late-season freeze take everything out.

If you garden somewhere more mild, where the danger of freezes is past, you may still need to play it safe and stagger your plantings a little. Besides giving you a longer harvest period, it also ensures that any other weather-related surprises (heavy rains for instance) doesn't leave your garden bare.

Although losing a couple of weeks of growth to a late freeze or flooding rain is better than losing a mature just-before-harvest crop to a hungry woodchuck I guess. I'm hoping I experience neither this year.

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