We Are Still Growing After a Freeze

The biggest news since the last post is the snap of cold weather we had. A couple weeks ago it froze pretty hard here in Memphis. It was only three days later than the earliest recorded freeze here.  This is realy early so we decided to try to cover the garden and try to protect it from the 27 degree weather. We had three days with lows of 31, 27, and 32. We wrapped up the square foot garden in canvas drop cloths and plastic. We also made sure the ground inside was wet. The garden survived with the only damage being the eggplant which was bent down under the weight of the cover. I think the very warm ground and the water helped us out. We have not had any temperatures close to freezing since then so we are still growing. Here is a video of how we covered it up:

Sweet Potato Harvest

Even though we covered up the garden to protect it, it is time to harvest the sweet potatoes. We got six sweet potatoes from the two squares we planted. This does not seem like much except three of them were the largest sweet potatoes I have ever seen by far. The six potatoes weighed in at 8.4 lbs and the longest one was 10 inches long and weighed 2.3 lbs just by itself. Many vegetables don't taste good when they get large, but these potatoes were very good, at least the portion we have been able to eat so far. I was worried that the harvest would not be very good because the landscapers cut them back so severely in July, but they pulled though and did great.

Lettuce is out already

I have also harvested most of the lettuce. The oakleaf lettuce was showing signs of bolting so I harvested it and then a few days ago the Romain was starting to bolt so I harvested it too. The Romaine had not gone bitter yet so that is good.
The oakleaf lettuce is starting to regrow where it was cut off so we may get another harvest out of it which would be nice. I left two Romain plants that were smaller so they will have more time to mature.
I picked .58 lbs of oakleaf and 1.2 lbs of Romain.

Mid-harvest on the Romaine. You can see the bolted plants still in the ground

Oakleaf lettuce plants regrowing (left). Remains of the Romaine on the right. Maybe they will regrow too.

Rogue Carrot

I pulled all the carrots a long time ago, but there was one I missed. I found it and pulled it. So add one carrot to the total.

Other Harvests

We have harvested a number of other vegetables since the last post:
3 more eggplant (1.51 lbs)
1 cantaloupe (.71lbs)
1 watermelon (2.1 lbs)
2 cucumbers (1.02 lbs)
15 tomatoes: 8 full size, 7 cherry (1.84 lbs)

There are still quite a few tomatoes on the vine and we are expecting several nights of hard freeze this weekend. This will probably be the end of the tomatoes and other cold sensitive plants.