Good morning everyone. I don’t know about you, but for me as a farmer, my first thought this morning was how hard of a frost we had. Although I have not checked the fields over, I looked into a bucket of basil I accidentally left out on our porch and noticed cold damage. Teachable moment. Basil is very cold sensitive, as you can see in the picture. The green leaves were somewhat protected while the brown leaves were exposed to the cold. Most frost sensitive crops will exhibit similar characteristics if hit by a frost. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans among others will show dead brownish black foliage only hours after the frost has hit them. You may still be able to pull some fruits off the plants and salvage them, but the plant, more or less, is dead. I spent a good portion of the day yesterday protecting plants from the impending cold. The forecast looks pretty mild for the next couple of weeks, so I tried protecting some beans and basil in the field to give them a little extra time to produce.
Available this week:
Beets
Carrots
Cabbage
Kale
Spinach
Head Lettuce
Radishes
Zucchini (last call)
Cucumbers (last call)
Tomatoes (paste, slicers, heirloom)
Hot peppers (cayenne, royal torpedoes, jigsaw, serrano, jalapeno)
Broccoli
Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin (“As far as taste and texture go, the Winter Luxury Pumpkin is the cream of the crop. With a flesh that’s remarkably velvety smooth, creamy, and delicious in all the best ways a pumpkin should be, you will be hard-pressed to find a better component for pumpkin pie!” – Minneopa Orchards Website)
Winter Squash (delicata, acorn, butternut, buttercup, kabocha, others)
Gourds (spinning, warted, winged, etc)
Herbs (parsley, sage)
