Frost in July?

No,  just a brief scare.  It got down to 46 degrees the other morning.  I had the windows open in the bedroom that night and had to get up and get a blanket in the middle of the night.  It felt cold.  When I got up at daybreak and looked out the window the asparagus and the ground around looked white like frost.  I freaked out.  Got dressed in seconds and ran out the door.  Grabbed the thermometer.  Relief.  It read 46.  We can have a frost at 38 degrees if the wind is still and especially if the sky is clear.   Both of which it was that night.  But I calmed down.  It was a very heavy dew refracting sunlight that made it look like frost.   Nothing to worry about.  We did have frosts and freezes in May this year.  That was bad enough.   A frost in July would be devastating to a garden and to agricultural crops. 

  

There have been frosts in Kansas in July.  In Europe we have records of nasty cold crop killing weather in the summer going back many centuries.  Here in the USA we have a few records of cold damaged crops.  If my memory serves me well the year without a summer was 1816.  According to the records in New England, January and February of that year were warm and spring like. March was cold and stormy. Vegetation had gotten well along in April when real winter set in. Sleet and snow fell on seventeen different days in May. In June there was either frost or snow every night but three. The snow was five inches deep for several days in succession in the interior of New York and from ten inches to three feet in Vermont and Maine. July was cold and frosty, ice formed as thick as window panes in every one of the New England States.  August was still worse.  Ice formed nearly an inch in thickness, and killed nearly every green thing in the United States and in Europe.  Of course we don't have records of what was happening in this area we call Kassas in 1816.  But it was in the 1880's that we had what they called "the little ice age" in the USA and Europe.  Here in Kansas during that cold spell we had one summer that had a frost every month.  What a blow that was for anyone farming.  I hope I never see that.    

Meantime. . . 

Crops here are doing well.  I sprayed seaweed extract to protect tomato and pepper flower blooms from the cold the afternoon before the temperature dropped below 50.  The blooms all survived and will continue growing into tomatoes.   Yeah!  Without the seaweed spray the blooms would have most likely dropped off the plants from the cold.  As it is plants are loaded with fruit and covered with new blooms.  That's lucky.  Now if only the tomatoes would ripen a little quicker.

Here is a picture of one amber raspberry already ripe.  That’s earlier than usual.  Turns out there were two and they both were sooooo good.  The amber raspberries have so much sugar in them that they are like eating candy.  They don’t store well but it sure is a taste treat to graze on them.  I have neighbors and friends who tease me that they wait to see when I’m gone so they can come and eat their fill.  Ha ha.  The truth is they are welcome anytime and they know it.   These amber raspberries will continue to bear fruit till the real frost comes this Fall.  I am lucky enough to have handfuls of the sweet little berries daily.  That is lucky!

My middle son, Robyn, asked if I could make a foot bridge using the sycamore that blew down at the creek.  Looks like it, Rob.  I guess this calls for another play day.

History disclaimer:

In today’s world a person can do fact checking on the internet.  But it takes time.  Time I don’t want to spend.  So I will rely on my sometimes not so good memory when writing these posts.  I'm good at remembering historical trivia most of the time.  But, if my facts are wrong you are welcome to let me know and the next time I tell the story I’ll be more accurate.