Much like the past 5 months, the weather in the Chicago area has been…shall we say…abnormal. More rain than normal and below average temperatures made for a fabulous growing season for the home gardener. But all good things must come to an end. This growing season has been holding on for much longer than I had expected. I’ve had a full second harvest of late season beans and I’m a few days away from a full first harvest of late season peas. But when is that killing frost going to hit? We’re coming close to breaking another record this year. The record for the last frost date is November 1st. That’s only 13 days away. The current long term forecasts are for near frost levels wednesday night, and another shot Sunday night.
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I got my cold frame out of storage several weeks ago and I’ve had to battle 107 degree temperatures in the cold frame due to the unseasonably warm temperatures. I was able to rig together a fan and some small solar panels I had laying around that should keep temperatures moderated in the future. I’ve also figured out what was causing the significant temperature differences between my weather station and the cold frame. Last year my cold frame was running 5 to 6 degrees colder than ambient temperature outside during the over night hours. I dropped an email to the mailing list for friends of the meteorology department at the College of DuPage and got a great discussions back on what was causing the readings to be off. It was in fact 5 to 6 degrees colder in my frame for several reasons. Anyway, I resolved that by using plastic as a second thermal break between the box and the windows. This traps a TON more heat inside the frame. (See note above about 107 degrees) I’ve got some baby cabbage plants I’m trying to take into december with me. We’ll see how they do when the snow starts falling.