Frost Damage This Morning

Killer freeze that froze all of the vine plants.  It did not seem to harm the pepper and tomato plants.

First thing after breakfast was to take the dead chickens to the dumpster.  There were two in the nests, two at the south end of the chicken run and one outside with its head caught in the netting.  I put them in a large garbage bag and drove to the dumpster.  The photo shows the two at the south end on the left side behind the netting is the third one.

Cow panel collapsed because of the heavy fruits and foliage.  This is the first thing I saw when I checked the luffas and Italian squash.  The trees are in the background and the cow panel at the bottom edge of the light is almost flat.  The conduit pieces were bent into an "L" shape.

This is what it looked like from the south side.  The goose neck object is a mature Italian squash.

Did more cleaning.  There a lot of pots where plants have died I need to empty.  What to do with the soil other than dumping in on the ground somewhere was somewhat a problem.  That is when I decided to build another raised bed.  I put the soil in the raised bed.

Last night I put the surviving hen near the heating lamp to help dry her of and keep her warm.  She hadn't moved and this morning.  I opened the gate so she could leave the hen house.  She didn't move until this afternoon.   She did come out, and I gently herded her to the north side where she could get in the sun.  She stayed in the shade.  She did get a drink of water.  I threw her some chicken scratch.  She didn't move.  Later she was out in the sun, but she stayed out for a short time and then sit in the corner looking out.  It looked like she wanted to watch for a fox and being the corner the fox could not sneak up behind her.  I picked up as the sun was going down and put her back into the hen house and shut the gate.

Frost revealed some sweet potatoes.  I have been closely watching the sweet potato vines the last couple of weeks.  The vines have grown so thick they hid the potatoes.  I looking at them this early afternoon and found two large sweet potatoes.

I covered them just before it got dark.  I don't think that the coming freeze tonight would hurt them but to be safe if covered.

Made framework for another raised bed in house two.  I have a stash of lumber.  From this stash I got two 2x6x12' for the sides and there was another 2x6 that was about 11 feet long.  The one left is badly twisted I have a wood clamp with a cement block holding it. It still has a way to go to remove the twist. The one on the right is slightly twisted.

The photo below shows the left corner.  You can see how much more I have to twist it to get it in the right plane.

I made four 2x2 corner blocks  that were 1 1/4 inch longer than the width of the 2x6. They would hold the raised be a little higher in the air.   The one in this corner split while trying to remove the twist, so I used a 2x4.  It seems to be holding.

I picked the watermelons and a Topaz melon.  Some had a drying or a dry tendril and others did not.

This is the biggest melon that I have ever grown, 27 1/2 pounds.  The tendril was not dry.  We will see if it is ripe or not.

Watermelon vines, Armenian cucumber vines and Topaz melon vined badly damaged by the frost.  Burpless cucumbers some slight damage.

Comments and questions are welcome.