This past week has been colder than usual here with winter weather advisories, freeze warnings, and even snow in some areas of Florida… we didn’t get any snow but 10 minutes north of us had some flurries. A bit west of us got almost 10 inches of snow! I wasn’t really upset that we didn’t get any snow but the kids were a little disappointed.
I didn’t cover or do anything to prepare our gardens either. Normally I would water everything very well for a day or two before the expected cold but this time we had A LOT of rain so nature took care of that for me. We had already moved our more cold-sensitive plants to be closer to the pond and since they had already lost all their leaves we didn’t cover them either.
Our goal is to make as many ‘micro-climates’ as we can so that we don’t need to ‘baby’ our plants. If they don’t survive then they just aren’t meant for us to have.
We did move some of the newer potted plants inside only to have a mouse come in and eat them… I did have some cuttings of some of them but the mouse ate some of those too. We’ll see what comes back and decide what to do then.
I also set up a temporary plant starting area in the dining room. I haven’t started anything though because the weather has been so cold and the windows let in quite a bit of cool air so I’ll wait another week before trying to start anything.
I also saw my first snake of the year!
Our greenhouse project has also been put on hold because of the weather but we do hope to get it completed this week… at least have it built. It will take some time to get it all set up. I also need to get a couple of barrels for water and such. I plan to use them as solar heaters as we usually don’t have extremely cold winters like this one. I also want to get a couple of solar fans and lights set up too and maybe some fancy automatic vent openers.
I plan to repurpose some wire shelving that we were going to use for our pantry… the pantry is still in the plans but other things keep happening.
So far we have built a level dirt pad. Mr. Awesome used some of the hard clay we had dug up from other areas. It doesn’t grow things well and it packs down rock hard so it should be perfect for the foundation.
He also built a frame with 4x4s to level out the greenhouse. The posts are lagged together and the base of the greenhouse has been attached to these.
In addition to this, we added two anchors on each side and they will be bolted to the 4×4 frame to help keep it secured in the event of a hurricane or other strong wind event.
We will also be adding some 4×4 posts inside the greenhouse to attach to each corner. These may also be incorporated into the shelving at some point.
When we attach the polycarbonate panels we will be securing each panel to the frame with a few screws… we really don’t want this thing to blow away!
I’ll try to do a separate post on the greenhouse when we get it up and running to show all the modifications we have made for it.
Earlier in the week we had some appointments and it was curious to see that temperatures around us and even a little further south were 5-10 degrees cooler.
Saturday was our first really hard frost on our property this winter… even the backyard had a bit of frost cover the plants. I think the temperature did dip down to about 27 for an hour or so. It warmed up quickly though and the frost was mostly gone by 9:00.
Our bananas really didn’t appreciate that and have now turned black but hopefully they’ll come back out when the weather warms up. The collards and cabbages really didn’t mind the weather at all and I was able to pick a bunch for dinner last night. The beans however look like they’ve given up… they were more of an experiment though and they did surprisingly well with the cooler weather.
Several plants are showing signs of being a bit frost-bitten but we won’t know the full extent of any damage until the weather warms up. We will give the plants time to recover and see what happens.
The cold has its advantages as well like the fact that it should help to kill off a lot of the pests. I’ve also heard some people say that the strawberries should be really good this year because of the cold… maybe the cold will help some of our stone fruits have better production this year too.
Some of our trees have already started blooming thanks to the cool weather followed by the warm weather last month. They don’t seem to have been bothered by the frost and they held their flowers so we will see if they will actually set any fruit. We have seen some pollinators out but they are moving very slowly but with warmer weather on the way they should be out in full force soon.
Anyways… we hope you are all doing well and staying warm!
God bless!
P.S. I also wanted to add that Shyanne has had another great checkup with her oncologist… she is now 3 years in remission from AML. Thank you all for your continued prayers!
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