This morning when Lucy the Puggle Dog and I went outside to fed the chickens, we discovered the whole backyard was covered in frost.
Lucy loved licking the frost off the garden boxes and barking at the grass. 😉 What a nut!
It was so chilly outside I decided to make the chickens some warm oatmeal for breakfast. Chickens living in suburbia have it rough, don’t they?
This being my first fall growing fava beans, I’m not exactly sure what I am suppose to do. Since fava bean plants can grow to about 4 feet tall, I wasn’t planning on putting a row cover over them. But now I’m second guessing myself. Have you ever grown fava beans in the winter? Does the frost and cold temps bother them much? Is there something I should be doing to protect them?
Check out the beets! They look so dark and mysterious.
And the leeks too.
It might be time to pull them, what do you think?
I’m new to this whole winter gardening thing and would love any advice I can get.
~Mavis
Paula says
I’m curious about how much growth you’re still seeing. I would have thought the short days would be a limiting factor.
Dianna says
I’m as new to winter gardening as you are, but we’ve been having frosts for about a month. My beets and chard and carrots wilt and look sad every morning, but they perk up in the afternoon. I’m not sure when to pull them and call it a season.
julie says
I am so glad to hear someone else feeds their chickens oatmeal. especially in the winter we feed our girls warm oatmeal with a little milk in it. They look like a bunch of little piggies sitting around the dish. I think we can smell it when we hit the back yard with because they are all lined up at their patio fence. Chickens are so much fun.
Sarah says
I’ve never thought of feeding my chickens oatmeal. Do you just prepare it the usual way? What consistency? I’m assuming no sugar added? 🙂
Susan says
We had frost and 32 degrees this morning, and I made my girls some oatmeal, too. So funny!
I think they need some slippers and robes…what do you think?? 🙂
Chris C. says
I’m pretty sure that’s the end of your fava beans. 🙁 Mine pretty much died after our first hard frost. There were a few leaves that clung on, but most of them wilted and blackened. I was able to grow them through the winter in the San Francisco area, when I lived there, but we never got a hard frost (and they didn’t produce beans until well into the spring).
As for winter gardening, the biggest issue where you live will be the short days. Plants can survive a lot of frost and even snow, especially with row covers, but they won’t do much actual growing for the next couple months because they simply don’t get enough sunlight. Even in California, I found that greens did pretty well in the winter, although they grew slowly, but root crops and fruiting crops really didn’t take off again until late February or early March, at least.
Kevin Wilson says
Fava beans will handle a certain degree of frost. Here in coastal BC (our first frost this year was about Oct 25) I lose some plants over the winter but most survive. Even some that look dead, revive and regrow in the spring.
We have pulled our beets, but mostly because if you leave them in the ground over winter the roots get woody and they bolt to seed in the spring. There are specific varieties to use if you want them to last into the winter, like Lutz Winterkeeper.
Many other cool-season veg will recover from a frost if allowed to thaw out in the ground, as you’re seeing. Our brussels sprout plants look like frosty Xmas trees in the mornings 🙂
Re winter growth and light levels – no, things won’t grow much in the winter, but they are in “cold storage” in the garden for you to harvest as you need them. How long you can leave them out there depends partly on your pest ecosystem. We have enough wireworms that leaving carrots in the ground over winter is a mugs game: we need to harvest them by the end of Sept.
Kevin
Jess says
We’ve had a few 20 degree nights over in eastern washington. And it’s only got up to 32 in the daytime so they don’t thaw out. My plants have been frozen solid for 3 days. I’m pretty sure my broccoli, cauliflower, kale and spinach is all dead. I’m devastated 🙁