Garden in the Desert: Wrapping up the Plants

And, no, it wasn't for Christmas.

We had a week of "hard freeze" temperatures. Last year we had it easy and didn't have below freezing for more than a few hours on a couple of nights. We did pretty well though, and only had a few casualties.

Our front raised planters are now mostly shaded from the sun by the house. Even with a plastic mini-greenhouse, the soil just isn't staying warm.

Sad Swiss Chard and frozen mixed greens.

The front bed is far enough from the house to get some light, so hopefully the spinach keeps growing strong.

Spinach

We're not out of lettuce. We had patches all over and this one is doing just fine.

No plastic, just a canvas drop cloth to shield it from the low temps.

Carrots did fine under a sheet at night.

Now, once the hot temps left us with a beautiful fall our Early Girl tomato exploded with tomatoes. Which were still green at the freeze. We wrapped it with a welded wire fencing (like chicken wire, but with rectangles) and wrapped that with drop cloth and a comforter and a tarp... and we still didn't think it would be warm enough. So we bought Christmas lights. Not the wimpy little mini ones, but the big ones that actually put out a little heat.

Hard to see them, but the tomatoes still look good.

To keep the greenhouse warm, we vented our dryer out there and make sure we do a load or two each evening to heat it up. We also put a couple of strands of those warm lights in there, too. We decided to try using the drop cloths under the plastic to keep the cold from transmitting through into the greenhouse, and so far it seems to work really well.