Our attempt to save our garden

As I said in my last post we were suppose to have a freeze last night which is the day of the first known frost in MN ever.  Needless to say I was not prepared for this at all.  when I first heard of this on the news I figured it was probably up north they were talking about not the twin cities area (Minneapolis), so I wasn't that concerned.  Until I watched the weather for a few days it finally sunk in.  Well I was busy all day long yesterday!  I harvested any warm  weathered vegetables I could (30 lbs of tomatoes, 2lb beans, tons of catnip, soybeans, etc).  And of course had to come up with on the fly ways to cover our garden.  I always feel like a thief in the night when I am frantically harvesting by our house in the dark with a hoodie on and the street lights are on and the neighborhood is quiet.   Not many people garden at night.....



How to Cover Your Plants With Stuff Around the House

1.  Use Bricks or something heavy and plastic or bed sheets
The picture above is some of our garden that we covered with plastic.  I used left over plastic paint drop sheets that we had left over, patio bricks left over from our garden and just tied it into the trellis we had and the chicken wire to stabilize it.  that way if it gets to windy worse cause scenario it won't be blowing around our neighborhood.  You could use bed sheets, but I like using the plastic because I can poke holes in it if necessary and leave it on the next day if necessary because it's clear like a greenhouse but still has ventilation (which is what I am doing today because the weather guy said it will be questionable tonight and then warm up again so he would just leave it on).  It stayed on all night and our plants look OK.  Although it ended up being a frost and not a freeze instead.

2. Use a Long Sleeved Shirt as a Cover
I came up with this idea by pure chance.  I raided our rag pile looking for large ones that might work just in case.  I grabbed one of my husbands old button down shirts just because it was larger.  When I went to try to use it on a pepper plant we had in a wire cage I realized how cool it was for this cause you can use the arms to tie it to the cage!  I wish I could say I was just that cleaver and pre-thought that out, but I wasn't....just lucky.  I am so keeping some old shirts and setting them aside for tis from now one instead of tearing them up.


Hope this gives some ideas about how to save your garden this fall.  I'd love to hear any ideas about what other people do in their garden.  Feel free to share!  We plan to come up with something better than on the fly next year, but till then we'll stick to this method.   Hope everyone's gardens survived last night.