It’s been one crazy year so far when it comes to our weather…and apparently our last burst of summer last week, which was followed with typical all rain and cool temps, will now be accentuated with our first few nights of frost.

And you know what I have to say about that?

Booooooo!

It’s still supposed to be in 60’s during the day, but I’m just not quite ready to give way to the cold temperatures that are coming our way. But on the other hand, I am interested to see how everything we still have growing and have started growing does during this weather.

The good news with a first frost is that it is usually fairly mild, and often followed with several weeks of decent weather. So if you are still hanging on to summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and other “tender” crops, you can still manage to get a few more finished veggies before the cold does them in.

One way to protect your plants would be building hoop houses or mini-greenhouses for your beds. Check out Heidi’s row covers below, which she and a friend threw together overnight due to a big storm that blew her way. They are so fabulous!

We actually hope to do something like that in our garden for next spring, so that we can get things in the ground early and extend our growing season. We installed PVC pipes as holder on the sides of our raised beds when we built them so that we can fit the hoops of the bed covers in there quickly and easily — but we just haven’t gotten the hoops build yet. If only we had all day, every day to work on our garden!

In the meantime (and because we don’t have anything like that set up for our plants in the courtyard), I will be outside covering up the plants with old sheets (courtesy of the pack rat that used to own our house) and hoping for the best! The lettuce is all snuggled down in the covered salad table so I’m not worried about it (although I think there are still caterpillars in there somewhere). But I do need to transplant our stevia which was just thrived outside this year…and see if I can’t squeeze a bit more produce out of the remaining summer crops.

You can also cover your herbs and other crops low to the ground with straw or mulch to provide insulation. Even the hardiest of herb plants will appreciate some protection from the cold. I leave my thyme and sage in planters in our window boxes throughout the winter with no trouble, but they are mostly protected from the wind and snow. My parsley plant in the aquaponics table, on the other hand, was buried in a foot of snow last year and didn’t seem to mind at all. It was green all winter long and back stronger than ever in the summer.

The weather here in Germany is so unpredictible that you may have temps in the 70’s or 80’s in April & May, then get blasted with temps close to freezing again in June, and then bounce back and forth from warm to cool the rest of the summer. At least that’s how our most recent summer progressed! It certainly makes gardening a challenge — and since this is my first fall garden here, I’m a bit unsure of what to expect.

I’ve briefly talked about a fall garden before, but if you find yourself getting frost earlier than you anticipate, here’s a quick overview of plants that can and cannot handle the frost well.

Tender Plants

(must be covered before a light frost to prevent damage)

Semi-Hardy

(will tolerate light frost)

Hardy Crops

(will tolerate hard frost)

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