Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Lost To Frost

We returned from a weekend away to find that there must have been at least one night of frost as some of our plants were damaged.
The most affected were a Salvia, the poor Chokos (that we are having trouble establishing) and some recently germinated Nasturtiums.
To help prevent any further damage and to protect some other possibly frost tender plants I put some covers over them.
When I inspected the back garden this morning this is what I found.

This scene was possibly devastating, as everything was covered in thick white frost, and many of the plants might just be destroyed.

Even the Broad Beans were covered with ice and limp. They soon recovered, but not before they caused me some concern.

Ice was everywhere this morning, on the car, over the ground, on leaves of plants and also over the top of water that has been collected from a leaking downpipe. That water is in a wheelbarrow, and the ice was a couple of millimetres thick over the top.
It looks like the action of covering the affected plants was worthwhile as they don't seem to have been further affected. And those plants that did get a coating of frost this morning have all bounced back, without apparent damage. Time will tell.
To help with recovery for some plants I splashed them with some water to wash off the frost. For the Loquat trees, that seemed to have worked as the leaves don't appear to have any damage. I did notice that the water on those leaves did freeze over again, but that was just on the surface, hopefully preventing any freezing of the cells in the leaves.
In some future posts I hope to outline what has been planted, and how they are going.