just a quick garden update, then i'm really done for the night

we had a cold snap! all of our warm, sunny, fantastic weather came to an abrupt halt. it went below freezing for 2 nights! once only to 31, but once to 29. i had to cover everything--the strawberries with a sheet, propped above the delicate plants by sticks i'd shoved into the ground, same for the peas, the tomatoes under a box with a thick old mattress cover above that, and the pumpkin and okra seedlings/baby plants under plastic buckets. only the okra succumbed to the cold. though it's still possible the tomatoes have been damaged--they don't even like temps below 45, so i feel like it's still a waiting game with them. and it's still going below 45 at night, so every night they're going back under the box with the mattress cover on top. time will tell... man, the life of a farmer is rough!

i've also been battling slugs, though for now the cold is taking care of them. they were doing a number on my spinach, so i've been saving all of my eggshells, letting them dry on the counter for about a day, and then letting the girls crush them with a rock and sprinkle them all over the garden (they LOVE this). according to the internet, the broken shells are painful for the slugs to crawl over, so they don't. seems to be working so far, though there wasn't a lot of time between eggshell application and cold snap, so we'll see if it works as a long-term solution. either way, it's good for the soil, and the girls like it, so i think we're going to keep it up.

also, the green beans are sprouting, and i'm pretty sure the potatoes are too, except i don't know what potato sprouts are supposed to look like. but there are 3 sprouts i think are good candidates for potato sprouts. hopefully more will come up, it's just now been 3 weeks since they went it, and i read that it takes 3 weeks to see sprouts. but we planted like, a dozen or so potato pieces, i sure hope we get at least a half-dozen potato plants!