As predicted we got about 3-4 inches of snow last Friday. I was happy to have snow (which is very unusual in South east Texas) and we all had a blast, but I was very worried how our winter garden would handle the snow. It lasted all day and by mid Saturday it had melted away. DT did cover our lemon, grapefruit, fig and avocado trees. Everything else was on it own, and really no way to cover the ground plants that were already covered in snow.
The Garden last Friday
The garden currently at first glance it looks great! All the hardy winter plants like the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, and lettuces did just fine.
But at a closer inspection I found our experimental yellow squash did not fare so well.
Neither did our banana peppers leftover from the summer garden (but in the gist of things they did last over 8 months)
and the bell peppers, all froze and died. Which is fine it was there time to go, they did us well.
My one last glimmer of hope was my lone grape bunch, I ran to the back fence with my fingers crossed that it made it.
*picture from friday during the snow
But the frost got it also. Luckily the grape vine is not completely lost so we will have more grapes next summer as usual.
How do you protect your plants when it snows?
I will be posting weekly of the garden so please click on each week for more details. week 1, week 2, week 4 and week 7
This post is listed @
My Romantic Home“Show and Tell Friday”,
Canada Girl, “Show and Tell Friday”,
and
he Inspired Room “Its a beautiful Life Friday”
Well . . . I suppose some people try to protect their plants for the first freeze or two but then we all give in to the inevitable. We do normally mulch roses though to try to protect the roots through the worst of winter.
That’s so crazy that y’all got that much snow! We got a “dusting” here in southern Louisiana.
Looks like the garden fared pretty well considering..
I don’t know anyone who has a winter garden in IL. However, I did keep several of my potted plants alive by covering them up. I finally let them go last week and when it turned really cold overnight they were gone. Hopefully you won’t have to worry about the snow from here on out!
I love the new blog!! I just updated my blogroll, so I don’t miss out.
Sorry that you lost some of your plants, but my answer to your question is that we cannot protect against the snow; no winter garden here. 😉
Pretty crazy for Texas! Glad to see that all was not lost though. I’m so not a gardener so unfortunately I have no advice on this one.
Really glad you’re garden survived.
People around here put plastic over frames on the rows of stuff they want to save… it helps them last well into the fall past the frosts. The “Lee Valley” store or website can give you lots of ideas… stuff you can mock up yourself. Grapevines here survive the winter all the time. They’ll be ok. I think.
oh sad 🙁
It’s not particularly worth growing anything here in the wintertime, but I’m going to do the research this summer about it for next winter. It’s all a bit barren, and honestly, the dirt is as hard as a rock right now (which is a bit unusual; usually it’s muddy). I do need the ground to thaw so I can get my garlic in (that needs to be late-fall-planted).
I like your garden! Sorry some of the plants didn’t make it. Winter is too cold up here for anything.
I don’t. I put the garden to bed for the winter. But I am in Wisconsin so…
Hello,
Love your winter garden. Great idea.
Here in Peachland (in the mountains of British Columbia, semi desert but the winters get cold) is where “icewine” was developed (ust up the highway from me by about ¼ m). You can check-out on the net “Ice wines in the Okanagan if you want to to learn about doing this.Some people do garden ( hardier plants) outdoors through the cold months but you need to check out cold climate gardening and find seeds and plants that will withstand the lower temperatures. There are also plant protecters that you can rig-up to help also.
I wish you all the best and I’ll follow your blog to see how you are doing 😉
Thanks for sharing and have a GRAND weekend.