Showing posts with label Ruby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ruby. Show all posts

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Frost Damage Report

Passion Flower Frost Damage
On Monday the low was 49 degrees, Tuesday's low was 38 and on Wednesday the low was 35 degrees. Not too scary for a Northern Girl. I was very close to not really covering anything at all, but boy, am I glad that I did! Look at the poor passion flower! This is the first frost that the passion flower has felt and it did suffer some damage but it was minimal overall and the vine will have no trouble bouncing back as it warms up this weekend. We didn't cover it all, so I'm pretty pleased with how it held up.
Marigold Frost Damage
 I thought for sure that the marigolds would hold their own against the frosty temperatures, but alas, they show signs of serious freezer burn. All of the green foliage has turned a dark green/black color and the flower heads are all shriveled and wilted. I'd be very surprised if these bounce back, since they took a pretty heavy hit. Oddly, all of the marigolds have the same frost damage whether they were covered or not.
Marigold Frost Damage

 Tomato Frost Damage



 The tomatoes held up better than I expected. I mean, we're growing tomatoes in JANUARY, for crying out loud!  The parts that were exposed to the air had the typical frost damage with wilted leaves and stems. But the hubby did a great job of covering mostly everything so there are only a few sections affected.  I took a peek under the sheets and the main parts of the plants all look great. I think the Christmas lights helped out, I really do. Some parts of the tomato plants that were covered with only the sheet had some damage,  but every section covered by both lights and sheets was perfect!  Yeah! Christmas lights saved the day!
Ruby survived the frost just fine but the green grass did not.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Big Build

Inspected by Ruby the Bullmastiff



There are literally 89,435,768 ways to build raised beds. Google it if you don't believe me. I'll wait. See, told ya. Everybody has an opinion. My "expert" (you remember youtube) has all sorts of great ideas, from $300 for a 4x8 bed right down to using free scrap pallets to get 'er done. Cedar looks like it's the way to go but I can't see my bed costing more than my yearly produce grocery bill, so regular old wood it is for this girl. We decided on untreated wood even though we know it won't last as long as the treated version. The new treated wood is supposed to be safe, but I don't fully trust any wood that doesn't rot. Not around my edibles anyway.

We're going with 2 raised beds, each one 4x8 with some trellis sections for climbers. We'll use untreated wood, some screws, weed fabric and cardboard boxes. Total for wood, screws, trellis and irrigation at a big box hardware store was $130.00 for both boxes.  Here's how it looked coming together.

One down, one to go!
Sides built with weed fabric and cardboard liner
Ta da!