The average first frost date in Grande Prairie is September 13. So far we’ve had “damaging” frost three times this year. I say damaging frost because excluding these occurrences, there were signs of frost but the garden was not affected.
The first damaging frost occurred on the evening of September 1. Because of the warmer days it was hard to imagine having a frosty evening so I reluctantly threw some burlap over the spaghetti squash. The next morning the spaghetti squash was warm and cozy and the zucchini, tomatoes, and beans all had their top leaves burnt and killed by the frost. Thankfully it was not a hard frost, but it was enough to do damage; it saw to the end to most of our zucchini plants.
The second occurrence was a few days ago (11th) and was a hard frost, it fact, it actually froze. This time we had the tomato plants, squash, zucs and beans covered and they survived reasonably well. Instead of fighting with poly and small pieces of burlap, we dug out a huge tarp and covered just about everything in one sweep. Surprisingly, the potato plants got hit extremely hard; they now are all brown and withered and will have to be harvested soon.
The past week has seen frost on several occasions: I am beginning to see trend. I was planning on picking everything that is above ground this weekend but ended up starting to pick the tomatoes mid week. With the weather being cooler and the days shorter things are not going to ripen outside so it’s time to bring them inside and see what some warmth can produce.
In this country frost is a nudge telling you that it’s time to wrap things up, it’s a watered down preview of things to come. I guess I can’t complain too much as we were lucky to avoid frost throughout the spring and summer months (if you exclude the June snow).
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