Surviving Florberia

Our deep freeze has finally broken although we had about ten minutes of a snow flurry this morning!   This time we had over 24 hours of freezing temperatures which was a first for us.    I have only been this cold twice in my lifetime.  Once in Wyoming in 1992 and Tennessee in 1993.  I hate cold weather!

Monday my almanac said it was a good day for planting so I worked in the greenhouse planting seeds of tomato, peppers and eggplants.  All of these seed need to be started about 8 to 10 weeks before you plan on planting them in your garden.  Most years we can start planting our gardens in late March.   

After I got the seeds planted, I covered them with plastic and put them on one of our propagation mats set at 80 degrees.  The seeds I have planted need warm soil to germinate. 

I had some nice tomatoes growing inside the greenhouse. Notice I said "had".

I picked one that was ripe and ate half of it and Yeti ate the other half which I thought was pretty cool.  We used to have a Bichon Frise that loved tomatoes.  He would go in the garden and pick him a ripe one from time to time by biting it off of the vine.

Papa Bear was still not feeling his best but worked on the wood-stove to try to save the few plants we had in the greenhouse. 

He finally got it put together and got a fire going in it about 9:30 PM but it was not early enough to get ahead of the freezing temperatures that was already on us.  With all of his efforts of up and down all night long to keep wood burning, our greenhouse was at 32 degrees the next morning.  It was 18 outside the greenhouse with a real feel of 6 degrees..

The tomatoes took a big hit.  This was taken the morning after the freeze.  They look even worse now.  I picked all of the large green tomatoes to fry.

The bananas froze.  I don't know how bad yet but the leaves are gonners for sure.

I don't know about the pineapple yet.  It will probably be several more days before I know if they made it or not.

What really surprised me were the bell peppers.  Just a few of the top leaves looked frostbit but the peppers and all of the blooms on the plants look fine.

I had pinched off some suckers from the tomato plants and planted them to start more tomato plants.  They are still standing up like little soldiers but they were also on the heat mat.  Guess it was just enough heat to protect them.  One little stem broke from a pepper and I planted that to see if it will root like tomato stems do.

Don't forget this summer when you pinch off the suckers to plant them.  You can usually get a second crop of tomatoes before winter hits.  They are free plants and grow much faster than those started from seed.