Early Frost

Tonight we are forecast to get a hard frost, three weeks earlier than usual.  All day, Bethany and Brendan worked in the garden, harvesting all the  squashes, pumpkins and melons. digging up the potato site, pulling out the cucumber vines, planting winter rye as a cover crop.  We still have oodles of tomatoes, lush but green. I purchased a stack of old bed sheets at Salvation Army this morning and scrounged every extra sheet, tablecloth, and curtain in the house to  cover up the tomatoes and peppers and annual flowers. Our garden now looks like some sort of camp.

Having so many veggies to protect forces to you to do triage- which are the most critical plants to save? We covered most of the tomatoes, some of the basil,  as many peppers and sweet potatoes as we could. We hope the chard and beets will endure the cold on their own. We picked all the tomatoes that were  exposed and had any hint of color to them. We covered about 50 tomato plants, bearing at least 5 bushels worth of tomatoes that still need to ripen. I blanketed the morning glories growing on the fence and hauled all the potted plants inside.
All day, I felt sad about harvesting everything and cleaning up the garden, yet I absolutely appreciate  Bethany and Brendan's industriousness.  I tend to procrastinate dealing with garden cleanup until  it is really cold and really overwhelming--always in denial about winter coming, I guess.