First Frost Of The Season!

As I sat down to write this latest farm blog post I noticed my most recent post was about the fall heatwave. Funny that less than a week later we experienced the first frost of the season! That’s a nearly 60 degree temperature swing from our high of 90 on Friday to the low of 32 overnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Crazy!

We actually managed to save our bell peppers and sweet peppers from the frost using a irrigation method we read about that orchards sometimes use in the spring. We got up in the middle of the night and turned on our overhead irrigation on our peppers on Tuesday night and let that run through until the next morning. The idea being that because it takes a lot of energy to do the phase change from liquid to ice you can protect your plants from the cold temps. It seems to have worked! With a rather pleasant forecast for the next week or two we should continue to have bell and sweet peppers available!

This first frost was not unexpected - we typically plan for about October 1 for the first frost so that’s about on schedule. We didn’t lose any crops we weren’t prepared to lose and it actually helps improve some of our fall crops flavor. Crops like lettuce, carrots, cabbage, broccoli & kale all benefit from a light frost. It makes them sweeter and can improve texture as well. This happens as a defensive function from these crops: increasing the sugar content in the plant cells decreases the temperature at which the cells will freeze and burst potentially killing the plant. Pretty neat!

A frosty morning last Wednesday, October 8th!