Frost Advisories Mean Business

As Amber mentioned, one of the things that were transplanted this weekend were corn sprouts that had shot up in just a week’s time in the greenhouse area. Corn is normally direct-seeded into the ground after all danger of frost, so this was an experiment. Doubly so because the last frost date isn’t until May 1st.

Sitting around the table after dark yesterday, I checked the weather for the next few days because we will all be away for that time. There was a “Frost Advisory” flag at the top of weather.com for our area. Reading the text of the advisory aloud to Amber, we consulted about whether we ought to go out and throw some row cover over the corn. Ultimately it was decided that we would wait and see what happened (“I guess it depends on how lazy you feel right now.” “Well, I feel pretty lazy.” “We’ll call it an experiment.” “Okay.”)

What happened was a hard frost. When Amber and Lewis left at the crack of dawn this morning, the corn was frozen solid. By the time I checked the rows, the frost had melted off and a bit more than half of the corn shoots were limp and dead. What really surprised me was that several of the corn shoots were NOT frozen and dead. Way to be strong, corn shoots!

I’ve covered the rows of what’s left with row cover to keep them safe from now on. Time to replant.