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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Garden questions
  • Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:49:53 -0500



Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:
Can these babies
survive the greenhouse?
Yes, but not all at once. Take them to the greenhouse to get the sunlight and bring them back indoors at night for a couple of weeks. After that they should do fine in the greenhouse.

Yeah, good idea. I'm usually so brain wasted when I get home from work that I am likely to forget to bring them in. I need to figure out a way to remember them, but that is probably the best thing to do, and then in a few weeks, into the raised bed of mulch/straw/compost they go.



Exactly how much cold can cabbage transplants take?


A lot. A cabbage seedling can survive 15 degrees handily .... but again, not all at once. If they go from room temp to well below freezing all at once, they will freeze. but if you expose them to cold a few hours at a time, they will do fine. If you transplant them in situ, cover them with straw, hay, or milk jugs minus the bottom if the temps get below 25 or so. A cabbage transplant buried under snow will survive no matter what.

Wow. I know mine, with remay covers over the beds, have survived 21 or 22 degrees, but they weren't this 'young' at that time. 15 degrees...wow. I checked the 15 day forecast, which puts me through to the end of the month, and 22 was the lowest temp I saw...for tonight. At the end of two weeks, we will have low temps in the 40's, but that is still a month before last frost, so I don't trust that a bit. We all remember how warm and wet it was in 1993 right before the Storm of the Century hit March 13, 1993...cabbage buried under several feet of snow??? I don't want to think about it.



When transplanting anything into very cold ground or cold conditions, do not water it. It isn't growing at any rate and the water will burst the cells.

LOL...everything is so wet. I am so glad I made those raised beds, otherwise, I could not have a Spring garden. Very often, the ground is too wet even after Easter. Last year, I was several weeks late in planting..


Also if it appears to freeze, leave it strictly alone and let it thaw on
its own. I've had lettuces freeze hard as a board and when they gradually and naturally thawed, there was no damage whatever.

Yeah, I've been there, too. Sometimes the tops will freeze and yet the roots are nice and warm.



Cabbage that has nearly frozen in the seedling stage will be very good tasting cabbage when it is mature.

That is good to know. Usually, when I plant cabbages in the spring, I am pushing to get one or two in the house before the heat of late Spring kicks in. Every year I try to push the envelope on starting my cole crops earlier, and so far so good. This year, with this hybrid variety of cabbage, they seem to be growing at double speed, so I have been caught off guard in trying to time everything from transplanting to space under the lights. I definitely want to try these cabbages. Hopefully, they will continue to mature early and hopefully they will be great tasting and good keeping cabbages.

What have you got growing, James, and when did you sow, transplant, etc?
I know you always have something going.
I still have potatoes in the ground from last year, and it is time to plant again, but it is just too wet. I had good intentions to get some onions going in December, but I just couldn't pull it all together enough to get anything done. I do have some garlic in one of my raised beds, but I think the chickens took out half of that. Bummer.

B


--
Many of our greatest American thinkers, men of the caliber of Thomas Jefferson, Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, William James, and John Muir, have found the forest an effective stimulus to original thought.
Bob Marshall




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