Risk of Frost... AIEEEEE!

There I was... toiling over the garden beds that The Hubs and I had spent countless hours prepping and filling with dirt and mulch and manure*. Working through supper time on Sunday to get all my lovely little plants into their new home, all plotted out on the cheat sheet that I'd put together weeks before of what would go where to maximize sun exposure etc. Got them all in the beds... a week early even! Yippee!

And then... dun dun duuuuun... "RISK OF FROST". Nooo! Save the precious little plants! Can you imagine losing all your from-seed green guys in one night?

And, what are the chances we'd get frost? Apparently, very good -- in fact I KNEW this, I'd done the research and looked up the dates and I knew there was still a chance of frost up until June 1(ish) in my area. And yet, seeing those garden beds all ready for their plants, I really couldn't resist! I jumped on the chance to get them all planted... and nearly got bitten in the *ahem* rear.

No matter, I had bought row covers for just this purpose. I'd just pull the covers over the hoops and we'd be all set. Until... the covers didn't fit. The hoops added at least 2' around each side of each bed, and I hadn't taken that into account. Oooops. There goes $23... *shakes fist*.

So... we found the biggest tarp we had stashed in the garage (which in our case is like an acre big... almost) and pulled that puppy over both garden beds, wee little plants all tucked in and warm for the night. Crisis averted!

I'm told there's no more risk of frost and we should be okay to leave the plants uncovered at night... except for the whole deer/gopher/rabbit issue... It's always something. We'll tackle that next -- for now we have a motion-sensor sprinkler aimed at the beds to deter the varmin.

* When we first bought the dirt, I made the mistake of assuming it would be 'plant ready'. Not so. It was listed as 40% organic garden soil... instead it was mostly dirt and sand. Ugh. Back to the garden centre we went (after totally filling the beds with this stuff... 48,925 wheelbarrows full... almost) to ask what we should add to the beds. The nice lady at the garen centre looked at The Hubs like he was really quite dumb and said "You haven't done that already??" Uhm... no. So one bale of sphagnum mulch and 6 bags of sheep manure loaded into the van, then unloaded, several wheelbarrows of dirt removed from the just-filled beds, and mulch and manure added to beds and mixed in... we were finally, actually READY for plants.

Just should have waited until after the risk of frost had passed. It's not always a good thing to be early!!