First Frost

The temperature, which as lately as this past weekend has been in the 80's, suddenly dropped down to the 50's. Yesterday morning half the leaves on our gay squash plant were dead, and it wasn't any warmer during the day, so I knew it would frost. And last night we had our first frost.

Princess and I went out last night and pulled everything we could salvage from the garden. We have three carrots, a bunch of tiny zucchinis, and a whole towel full of collard greens. That's it; that's what we got from our garden. We got scarcely any tomatoes this year, which bothered me. Not getting but three carrots is one thing; I've never grown carrots before as an adult (I had them when I was a kid). But tomatoes? I thought I knew all the tricks. I used to grow them in Logan and the bushes were so big that we couldn't plant anything else in a 4'x8' bed that had 2-3 plants in it. They were so productive that I used to send Princess and Sonshine outside to pick themselves a snack all the time. This year the plants were so scraggly and unproductive; they set flowers but not fruits for a long time, and when they finally did start setting fruits there were only a few.

The rabbits have a nest box to snuggle up in. We had to move them outside because I got sick of the fights they caused; Princess wouldn't clean out the cage and it set off FH's sensitive nose. I'm hoping we can move the rabbits' cage over the garden beds after we rip out what's left of our garden plants, so that they can, ahem, produce fertilizer for next year.

What to plant next year? Well, I want to try the carrots again. They're authentically medieval purple carrots, and I still have seeds left. Collard greens were very successful, but I'd like to maybe add lettuce or spinach. I'm thinking of trying to turn my window well into a greenhouse, or maybe building a small one out of a recycled window to start seeds in outdoors.