We had our first frost this morning... although it didn't really seem to touch anything in the garden. (A little hard to tell at this point, since the tomatoes are pretty well shot from "blight" or whatever (other than the ones in the hoop house), and the cukes are also done, due to mildew. Beans have been done for a while now, and all the pumpkins and squash were pulled out several days ago. The peppers didn't look like that had been frozen at all, so I did cover them for tonight (which is supposed to be a couple of degrees colder) - since after tonight the weather is supposed to warm up a bit and the lows will mostly be in the low 50s to high 40s.
This is one of very few years that I'm actually ready for the garden to be done for the year... probably because my mind is occupied with plans for building the new greenhouse (actually a larger hoop house, 16 x 20'). First I have to get everything out of the present greenhouse (8x16), and then we're going to try to move it over to a different area so we can use it to store all the "stuff" -- shelves, pots and so on -- until the new one is ready. The project also involves moving large railroad ties around (which we used for the base of the old GH and will also be used for the new one) and leveling them -- a lot of work there, not something I would attempt myself for sure. After that things should happen pretty quickly, but that may or may not be before the weather gets too bad to continue. So, might not get finished until spring, but in that case I'll use the small hoop house for my seedlings, and the new one should easily be done in time to put in my tomato plants (which is actually the main reason for the whole thing). Tomorrow we're going to go buy the lumber that we need, because it's on sale, as well as the PVC pipes which will be used for the top half. And I also need to get my garlic planted tomorrow if at all possible!
