We got down into the 20’s on Saturday night, necessitating some emergency frost protection.
After weeks of weather that hit the 70s, and even touched the 80s, many plants were waking up for spring. The blueberries were blooming and setting fruit, the peaches were in bloom, the cannas were emerging from the ground, the asparagus was making shoots and many trees were leafing out.
A frost in the 20’s puts an abrupt end to the exuberance of spring.
Today we’ll take the sheets and mulch off our plants and see how everything fared. If we hadn’t taken the time to cover our fruit trees, we’d probably lose their yields completely for the entire 2022 growing season. It’s easy enough to spend an hour and cover delicate plants with sheets, in a trade for blueberries mulberries, strawberries, plums, etc.
In other news, we finished butchering all our meat birds and getting them in the freezer on Saturday. That feels good. I am not impressed with the Red Broilers and will probably do Cornish Cross again next time, or just butcher some of my dual-purpose breeds as we need meat.
This week’s main goal is to finish up The South Florida Gardening Survival Guide and get it off to the typesetter to be made ready for print. I just got a beautiful illustration for the cover from Tom Sensible yesterday and am looking forward to having this useful little book finally in print.
As for the weather, it looks like we’re in the clear for the next week, so it’s time to plant our spring gardens in earnest, while praying we don’t get a final, last freak frost.
Have a great Monday.
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
4 comments
Aha, one of those rare occasions where David prefers the modern thing over the old timey (Cornish Cross). Well hey, it makes sense to me, they were created and bred to fill a need. Can’t wait to hear more about your dual purpose flock and how they are faring.
That was definately a freaky cold spell…we were about 24 first night and 30 last night…most of my stuff wasn’t blooming yet…but our last frost average date is April 15.
I wonder if muscovy ducks might be useful meat birds for your family? I’m just getting started with them myself, but am impressed with them so far. Very effective at reproducing themselves (so much so that they are considered invasive some places, such as Florida). Very good at feeding themselves – my friend here in KY says they had them when she was growing up, and never fed them anything but a little corn, even in winter. Good pest control, too. I’m impressed at how big the drakes are. I’ve had other ducks before, but never had Muscovies; the drakes are the size of a small goose.
They live all over South Florida in the city. I would try them on the homestead for sure; however, I have not been able to get any.
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