Outsmarting Jack Frost

"Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart."

  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks


We are about to have a hard frost -- a very hard frost for a garden that had so many 80 degrees days to waken it up just a week earlier!  Check out the weather forecast through NOAA's weather.gov for Boston:

But, being a small gardener on a balcony, I have ways of combatting that sneaky Jack Frost, such as:

Bring all the plants into the warm kitchen for the night!!  
An incredibly patient husband is also recommended to accomplish this feat...  

"Yep, Allison," you might say, "You really fill that balcony full of plants."  To which I will say, "Well, um, there's actually a few more around the corner.... We kind of have a lot of plants.


Don't worry!  I'm married to an engineer who double and triple checked the weight our balcony can handle for me.  I have a good one!  (I'll let you decide whether I mean the balcony or James)

In an outside, larger, and in-ground garden it's much harder to combat a frost like this if you have plants already growing outside.  Putting down mulch or hay is a good way to protect your garden.  Even a cloth barrier might help such as burlap or reemay (a light-permeable, mesh fabric).  Lucky us, we have a big enough kitchen.