We hit zero

Last week, according to Environment Canada, the temperature dropped to zero several times. There was no frost on the ground, which for me is a better indicator that the garden season has ended, and I don't know enough about weather to know if no frost means it did not hit zero in my particular micro-environment. Given my usual experience of being slightly later on all my flowers and plants than anyone else in my area including my neighbours, if there would be frost on only one lawn in the city I expect it would be on mine. Not being a pessimist, though, I have not yet thrown in the towel. Instead I threw on some blankets.

 My decision to not pick 1,000 green tomatoes (again) and spend the next month trying to make them into something palatable has been haunting me, for the simple reason that my tomatoes have really finally come into their stride. Despite losing half their leaves and branches to bacterial blight or just late season gradual death, I am still getting new flowers, and the current unripe tomatoes are the biggest and nicest looking of the whole season. The slugs and tiny worms which devour the tomatoes that fall on the ground are still alive and active, evidenced by the tomatoes on the ground with worms and slugs busily getting their last feast of the season, but there is a lot less insect activity going on. I did not have the heart to just give it all up to the mercy of the weather. So following the example of my friends up north who grow a spectacular garden despite a much shorter growing season, Josh and I pulled out our sleeping bags and extra blankets and threw them over the tomato cages. I put some hay bales on the sides as well to keep some of the heat in. My goal was to get a few more of the tomatoes to start to turn orange, then pick them and bring them inside to ripen. I picked a few bucketfuls of tomatoes which were just barely orange, or lighter green, even some which were really green in the hope that they will turn indoors. I know from experience of two years ago that tomatoes that are really green can be brought to ripen in paper bags, but the longer it takes for them to ripen, the less tasty they are so the is no point at all if the end product is lower quality than what I can buy in the store. The temperature was supposed to hover around but not below zero every night last week, and days were cloudy and even rainy. As long as the sun was out, I hoped my tomatoes would take the hint.

I did a bit of research on frost. A light frost is when the temperature drops below zero, a hard frost means it stays down there for four hours or more. So zero is just on the cusp, but a bit more wind and a zero can drop a degree or two and goodbye tomatoes. There are also charts on-line with estimated first and last frost dates. Montreal, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac, should be frost free by May 3, and frost can start as early as October 7. To play it safe, we don't plant much before the third week of May, especially plants like peppers and tomatoes which are tropical and die if the temperature hits below zero. I don't remember a frost as early as October 7, but we usually have our first frost anywhere from mid October to early November.

After two days of putting blankets on my tomato cages, I realized that the temperature was not low enough to really worry, so I gave it up, and put away my well-aired sleeping bags and blankets before it poured rain on them. I have continued to pick likely looking green tomatoes to bring inside to ripen, but whatever is still green by Sunday will be thrown out. Josh proposed posting on Facebook offering anyone who wants a bucket of green tomatoes, but I nixed the idea. Seriously, who wants someone else's green tomatoes. The only people who make things with green tomatoes are serious gardeners who have learned that even green tomatoes may produce surprise volunteers all over next year's garden from compost and hate to throw anything away. Sounds like me. I figure if I got over my aversion to ripping out weeds (which I do with abandon now) and drowning slugs (which I don't do anymore thanks to Slug-be-gone!) I can learn to throw green tomatoes in the garbage. Alternately, I can throw them under my lilac trees and give the last remaining slugs a sour feast, and see what happens.

I have been trying unsuccessfully to keep the peppers going inside. A few seem like they may survive, though most are losing their leaves. At least the peppers are turning red. As I harvest the ripe ones, I am tossing the leafless stems into my compost and reusing the earth to plant my garlic.

I have also inherited Julie's very large pineapple sage plant for safekeeping indoors for the winter. I have had to do a lot of rearranging of my dining room to fit everything in, but so far we still have room to eat, even with guests.

This past weekend, despite a sudden drop in temperature, I finished off the tomatoes and took apart the the cages, put out compost and planted half of the garlic before I ran out of time. Days are getting shorter, and busier. To complicate matters, Josh has temporarily converted the garden shed into a heated, sealed, wood drying chamber as the next installment in building our kitchen (oiling and varnishing the kitchen cabinet drawers outside of the house, and sealed off all my gardening tools before I had the foresight to take them out. I have a rake which was left out, and some bamboo stakes which I used to dig a very thin trench for the garlic cloves. I felt very primitive. Once I got to breaking up the compost and carrying it around to where I was planting the garlic, I decided I needed better tools and borrowed a hoe from my neighbours.

I need to find the time to finish before it gets too cold. Last night we had our first hard frost and whatever is left in the garden now looks like when I leave lettuce at the back of the fridge. I expect to be able to pull out the dahlias, begonias and cannas within days to safeguard their roots (corms? tubers? rhizomes? not sure what is down there).