Please Canada, Come Take Your Cold Front Back

While we had had some unseasonably warm temperatures earlier in March, we've had a number of frost and freeze warnings in late March and this week. Unfortunately all that warm weather earlier got the growing season off to a great start and now all that tender foliage is susceptible to frost and freeze damage.

Here's a shot of one evening last month, when we had a frost warning. We keep a pile of old sheets and shower curtains to cover things up when this occurs. Our temperatures often fluctuate quite a bit in late March and in April, so there's the yearly dance of sheeting and unsheeting every so often. Removing the sheets in the day is critical as the daytime temps can be high enough to cook the tender plants if they're left covered. Then it's back to covering things up again that evening.

But this week we're also experiencing lots of gusty winds. A cold front from Canada has jumped the border fence and keeps running through our region. Normally some breeze will keep the frost from settling on the plants, but this time it's so cold at night that plants are vulnerable even with the wind. I even saw several snow flakes on Wednesday. And the plants have grown another couple of inches tall so the draped sheets are hard to keep on the plants in this wind, even when weighted down with bricks and scrap lumber. 

So Steve, never one to back down from an engineering challenge, bought some tarps and tented the garden. Thankfully the daytime temps were only in the 50s on Wednesday and Thursday so we could leave the tarps in place for three nights in a row.

After three consecutive nights with frost and freeze warning, if I'm lucky enough to have peony blooms in late April it will be all because of Steve.