It froze pretty hard here two nights in a row. Although that wasn't abnormal, it followed an unusually mild September, so nothing had properly hardened off. Even my swiss chard and kale took a beating. Looks like all the outer leaves of my chard are gone.

Not early for z2, but very early for the eastern states, other than VT and ME high elevation.

100* here today for the Harvest Fair! Nancy

42 tonight and tomorrow night forecast. Should be ok but it's the beginning of the end. We should still have another 2-3 weeks until frost.

I picked all my tomatoes that had any blush to them. I'm going to make relish out of my green tomatoes when frost is looking more likely. My cherries are producing like crazy, so I hope it drags out. My globe tomatoes have come out with another flush but it is probably too late for red tomatoes. And my bush beans planted in May just won't give up. I also have a couple surprise October zucchini growing very slowly, for zucchini.

Alas something decimated my fall garden, ate my lettuce, carrots, and broccoli :( .. all I have left for after frost is the peas.

Peter,
Could be a rabbit.

We were nipped with a freeze a couple of days ago and it was earlier than expected too. It nipped the pumpkins but not enough to kill the vines, yet. It was a bit of a surprise too as the predicted low was 41, but it must be a function of my micro-climate. Now I can dig up the bed the cukes were in and amend for garlic. I am hoping for a winter hard enough to kill off the hoppers but not so hard that I lose perennials.

Had a frost light here last night, but nothing was killed. We were nipped in late September as well, with only a little leaf burn. The long-term forecast is for lows in the 30's for most of the week, so there will probably be a few more frosts... and a killing freeze is not out of the question. Cloud cover is light, we'll probably be in the low 30's again tonight.

The growing season has already ended just North & West of me, but my garden is still going strong. I count my blessings, the average killing freeze date here is October 5th. Still have snap beans, limas, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers producing, until the freeze kills them off... and plenty of chard to pick even after the first freeze. A few late seed crops are just beginning to dry down, even a few more days without a freeze will let me harvest seed from them.

But it has been a pretty good year & my freezers are full, so I'm ready for the freeze when it comes. I need to clear the garden, mow it, and turn everything under in preparation for garlic planting... and haven't got the heart to do so while the garden is still producing.

We got a very light frost here Sunday, which was a surprise too. Only really damaged the sweet potato, so I decided to dig it. Not sure what happened, but no tubers, just long, extra thick roots and a couple baby tubers just forming. I covered the potatoes last night just in case. Everything else can go (or withstand), but the potatoes are just forming, give me a couple more weeks, please!

Zeedman-mow the garden? :o sounds funny, even as a year-end event!

Sunnibel, the growth in my garden is mostly 2-3' tall, over 6' in some places, with a lot of tall bushes & vines. If I didn't mow before tilling, the growth would just clog the tines. The flowers I allow to grow throughout the garden have some really tough stalks, especially the cleome.{{gwi:103236}}

That is very pretty! Do those self seed or do you plant them each year (the flowers)? I guess I mostly remove the bigger stuff by hand and compost it, till in the smaller stuff after its mostly brown. But my winter comes on a lot slower than yours! :)