If you're in or near the affected counties, you might want to cover up any tender vegetation that might suffer from frost damage.

The map is at the bottom of the linked page and the advisory counties are colored blue.

Dawn

I know peas will sustain a light frost as well as kale, and some cabbages.

I ask because my timing was off on some of my plantings and the veggies are about half way mature.

Still getting lots of warm sunny days, but the nights very chilly. I know the frost is bound to hit here pretty soon.

Barbara

All of them can take some frost and some freezing damage, but every one of them has their limits. With all the cool-season crops, the most important thing is 'how' the first freezing weather arrives. If you are having very warm to hot days and the first frost or hard freeze arrives in the middle of that, it can do a lot of damage. If your plants have had a lot of near-freezing nights, though, they usually are more hardened and will have less damage.

I think that cabbage can tolerate hard freezing temps down into the low 20s as long as it has had time to gradually acclimate to the colder weather, and so can spinach. It helps to keep them well mulched and to pull or rake the mulch up over them if the nighttime low is going below 25 degrees. Just having a little mulch over them can protect them from the occasional very cold night and keep them growing a while longer. In the morning, you just pull back the mulch so they won't roast in the sun.

I've had both spinach and chard overwinter. Sometimes a very cold night has frozen them back to the ground but they've resprouted. They do better in a more consistently cool winter than in one with weather that swings wildly from mild/warm to cool/cold.

Salsify, parsnips and carrots all can take a lot of cold, and the longer you leave them in the ground, the better they taste. As long as your ground doesn't freeze, you can leave them in the ground all winter and dig them/use them as needed. Exposure to cold makes them tastier!

Chinese Cabbage is less hardy for me than regular cabbage. It seems to winterkill when temps drop into the mid-20s and also seems to bolt more easily if the temperatures are having those wild temperature swings from warm to almost hot autumn and winter days to cold nights.

The cole crops are reliable only to the mid-20s too, although I think cabbage and kale handles the cold better than broccoli and cauliflower. Brussels sprouts often can take temps down to about 20 degrees but don't do well if the days are staying very warm (over about 65 degrees) and the nights are very cool. They're happier if the days stay cooler--about 55-65 and the nights stay 25-45.

Peas that have already formed on the plants can take some pretty cold weather (about 20-25 degrees), but their blooms abort once freezing temperatures arrive. So, whatever peas you have on the plant when freezing temps arrive are likely to be all you get.

I just throw a bedsheet over the cool-season crops when a frost threatens, but the green beans and cukes get an actual Reemay-type frost blanket that is supposed to give them 4 to 6 degrees of protection.

Sadly, a milder, cooler fall is better for the cool-season crops and damages them less than a fall with really warm days/cool nights like we're having here in Love County this week. They start liking those warm days and putting out excessive new growth, and then that new growth is damaged by a very cold night.

Dawn

On a side note, the parsnips I planted late summer sprouted really fast, as opposed to the traditional notion that they are slow to sprout. They were up and growing pretty little foliage in a week or two it seemed like. Then, when the weather started warming up again, a bunch more of them sprouted and I had to do a lot of thinning. I'm excited because this will be my first crop of parsnips if they make it through the winter. And I love them in stews and about any way you can fix them.

Well, frost or no frost, these days of Indian Summer have been glorious. And I am so glad we got one this year.

Barbara

You're welcome. I would have covered plants too if I lived as far north as you do. I've noticed that on almost every night they've issued a frost advisory, many areas have just missed getting that frost, so we all must be living right...or just really lucky.

I've had to cover mine about once a week, but we only had light frost on one of those nights and it only caused the most minor of damage to plants I didn't cover.

Parsnips and carrots, among other things, sprout REALLY fast in hot weather and really slow in cold weather which can be perplexing if you're trying to plant them in late winter to early spring but great if you're planting in mid-summer for a fall or winter harvest.

Indian Summer has been glorious, even though I spent a lot of this beautiful day mowing the front pasture between the road and the house. I liked mowing more in 50 degree weather than in 76 or 78 degree weather, because when it was cooler, I didn't have to watch out for snakes. Still, it was a gorgeous day even if I spent it pushing a lawnmower.

There were oodles of butterflies out here today, and lots of birds as well.

Dawn