Denver landscaping

[denverian]

Last year I didn't get any frost until October 10th, and even then it was very light and I covered the tomatoes. I don't think we had a hard freeze until late October, so I was getting tomatoes, squash and cucumbers well into October. I guess it just depends on the year.

[BlueWillowPlate]

Originally Posted by denverian

Last year I didn't get any frost until October 10th, and even then it was very light and I covered the tomatoes. I don't think we had a hard freeze until late October, so I was getting tomatoes, squash and cucumbers well into October. I guess it just depends on the year.

Yes, I've had falls where I've been harvesting tomatoes well into October--what a delight.
I've also had Septembers where I've been hosting incredulous relatives who woke up to snow falling outside.
You just never know.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by BlueWillowPlate

Yes, I've had falls where I've been harvesting tomatoes well into October--what a delight.
I've also had Septembers where I've been hosting incredulous relatives who woke up to snow falling outside.
You just never know.

Yes, it does depend on the year. We got tired of covering tomatoes, b/c many times it stays cold for a few days, and the tomatoes get wrecked anyway. So now we just let it freeze. This fall was nice because things that had stopped growing b/c it got so hot in the summer were doing well. It may be different in 2008.

[nelumbo]

I have a community garden plot, the garden is in a particularly cold area of Boulder. It frequently snaps about 5-10F colder at night than most of Boulder. We had a killing freeze on June 15 last summer, which didn't seem to happen at any of the other gardens around the city. Most of the unprotected squash, beans, and warm-weather plants were killed or took heavy damage. We also tend to start getting freezes about two weeks earlier than other locales in the city. It appears that one of the coldest points in Boulder is to the east, near the East Rec Center out along Baseline (per conversation with persons who collect this sort of data).

So, just a note that local climate variations can have a big effect on horticultural efforts.

[denverian]

Originally Posted by nelumbo

I have a community garden plot, the garden is in a particularly cold area of Boulder. It frequently snaps about 5-10F colder at night than most of Boulder. We had a killing freeze on June 15 last summer, which didn't seem to happen at any of the other gardens around the city. Most of the unprotected squash, beans, and warm-weather plants were killed or took heavy damage. We also tend to start getting freezes about two weeks earlier than other locales in the city. It appears that one of the coldest points in Boulder is to the east, near the East Rec Center out along Baseline (per conversation with persons who collect this sort of data).

So, just a note that local climate variations can have a big effect on horticultural efforts.

Thats' strange. My last frost last year was sometime around May 12th, I believe. I covered my banana trees with trash cans, but nothing else was harmed, and no frost until well into October. It's a strange climate here!

[nelumbo]

The June freeze was I think the night after the day of 100 mph winds. So stuff took a double beating.

I grow a lot of asian produce, but keep most of it under a tent of arched pvc (heavy polyspun cover in spring and fall, cotton gauze in summer), it keeps the humidity up, moderates the extreme sun, and takes the edge off of the nights. I left it up one winter (not this year) with some really tender taiwanese stuff; the cover was only rated to 25F and actual temps made it down to -10F during the winter, but almost everything under the cover survived. I think there was a study in New Hampshire with some row covers that found that plants survived temperatures way below the rating of the row cover fabric, but they didn't know why....