Want to extend your vegetable gardening season and keep harvesting a little longer? Row covers, frost blankets, cold frames and other simple season-extension methods can protect your vegetables when temperatures begin to drop.
Here's how to decide which plants are worth protecting, how to give them a little extra time before frost.
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How to Extend the Season in Your Vegetable Garden
One morning you walk outside and realize that something is different. The breeze is cooler. The sunlight is coming from a different angle. There’s dew on the grass. And you suddenly realize that summer isn't going to last forever.
If you’re not quite ready to walk away yet, today we’re talking about protecting your plants from frost.
The End of the Summer Growing Season
When summer begins to wind down, our job as gardener begins to change. Maybe you’re worried about protecting your tomato plants from frost. Maybe you’re wondering when to harvest your carrots, and will they be big enough?
Or maybe you’re secretly happy that summer is nearly over and you can walk away from the garden until spring. Maybe you don’t want to extend the season. And that’s a valid viewpoint. I admit to a few years when I might not have even put the shovel back in the shed.
Some years I’m ready for it to be over. Other years I want to keep growing as long as I can.
The point is, there's no right answer, and you might make a different decision every year.
Vegetable Plants You Might Want to Protect from Frost
If you decided not to plant more cool-weather vegetables in late summer and early fall, that’s ok. But you still might have some heat-loving plants that you want to protect for a few more weeks:
- Tomato plants still laden with green tomatoes.
- Peppers that are taking their sweet time to change color.
- Plus a few long-season crops that still need a couple more weeks so they’ll be big enough to harvest.
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| Homemade row cover made with wire fencing bent into a hoop shape. Swap the pictured insect netting with row cover fabric or even old bedsheets to help protect plants from a light frost. |
When to Cover Your Plants
Tomato plants are actually tropical plants, and they’re considered frost sensitive. That means that without help, they won't survive frost.
A hard frost, when the low temperature reaches 25°F or lower, will certainly spell doom for your tomato plants, whether you've covered them or not.
Peppers and cucumbers and squash are pretty much the same.
Aside from watching the weather forecast every night, there are a few signs to watch for. These are signs that you should protect your plants overnight if you want them to live.
Of course the daytime temperatures and the time of year have a great deal to tell us, and so does the weatherman on the evening news.
Overnight temperatures of 40°F or below are when you need to decide whether or not to protect your plants.
You'll find several "country wisdom" ways to predict a frost in my article on Overwintering Tomato Plants, in the section How to Predict a Frost.
Decide what's worth protecting
One of the biggest lessons gardening teaches is that not every plant is worth protecting. That might sound harsh, but it's true.
Walk through your garden and ask yourself:
- Which plants are still healthy and productive?
- Which ones are loaded with fruit - like tomatoes and peppers - that simply need a little more time?
- And which ones are tired, struggling, diseased, or obviously finished for the season?
Those beautiful pepper plants that are still covered with peppers? They're probably worth protecting.
A healthy tomato plant loaded with almost-ready-to-turn-red fruit? Absolutely.
But that squash vine covered in powdery mildew? It may be time to pull it out.
Don't try to save everything. Instead, decide where your time and energy will make the biggest difference.
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| While this homemade frame is shown covered with insect netting, using row cover or frost blanket fabric instead would help protect these cabbage plants from frost. |
Simple ways to stretch the season
When people hear "season extension," they often picture elaborate greenhouses or expensive equipment. But most of us don't need that.
Extending the season is simply giving your garden a little more time.
Covering your plants is one option.
Floating row covers are one of the easiest tools you can use. They trap a little extra warmth around your plants and help protect them from a light frost. You can even use bedsheets if it’s a light frost.
Frost blankets work much the same way. They’re made from heavier materials and can buy you a few extra nights when temperatures begin dipping.
If you garden in raised beds, low tunnels are another great option (most products do not include the fabric though, the kit is usually for the hoops only). A few hoops covered with row cover fabric can create a pocket of warmer air around your plants.
Cold frames work especially well for lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens later in the season, long after your heat-loving plants have given up. Cold frames are similar to a short mini-greenhouse set on the ground, with greenhouse-type panels to let the sun in but not the cold.
None of these methods are "magic," but they'll give your plants a little extra protection when they need it most.
They work the same way in the spring too, allowing you to plant a little earlier, or to protect your plants from a surprise late frost.
Greenhouses
There are several companies selling small greenhouses for backyard gardens. I had one for about a year, until it disappeared in a tornado. They have advantages and disadvantages - one of the disadvantages being that these small structures are not tornado proof!
Some of my friends have built some incredibly ingenious structures instead of expensive traditional greenhouses. If you're interested, you'll find my descriptions of them here: Inexpensive Alternatives to Greenhouses.
Protecting Container Plants
One advantage of growing vegetables in pots and containers is that you can simply move them closer to the house, onto a porch, or even into the garage overnight if severe weather is expected.
My rosemary plant is in a big pot for that very reason: so I can bring it indoors when the weather gets fierce. It’s not quite winter-hardy in my growing zone.
I usually bury my potted perennials in the soil of a raised bed for the winter, so that the roots are insulated from the cold air by the soil.
When to Let the Garden Go
Every year I eventually reach the point where I stop trying to save every last tomato.
For example, there may still be green tomatoes on the vine, but the plant is tired. The days are getting shorter. Other parts of the garden - or parts of my life - need my attention more than the tomato plants do.
Sometimes the best gardening decision isn't to keep going. It's to let go.
Pull out spent plants. Prune your herbs one last time. Save seeds if you haven’t already. Then add compost on top of the empty beds, so the beds are ready for spring planting.
The garden has seasons for a reason, and so do we.
Don't Panic About Green Tomatoes
But don’t panic about those green tomatoes. If you don’t want to lose them, there are some options. You can read more about the options in my article What to Do with Your Green Tomatoes in the Fall.
When to Extend the Season, and When to Walk Away
The more you garden, the more you'll learn to trust your own judgment - and recognize your own needs, too. Some years you'll be eager to cover the tomatoes, move the containers and squeeze every possible day out of the growing season. Other years, you'll be ready to pull the tired plants, put the garden to bed and call it a year.
Both are perfectly good choices.
Extending the gardening season isn't about keeping everything alive for as long as possible. It's about knowing what is worth the effort, what you need, and deciding what makes sense for you this year.
Kathi Rodgers is the gardener and writer behind Oak Hill Homestead (est. 2006) and the host of HOMEGROWN: Your Backyard Garden Podcast. With over 30 years of gardening experience in a variety of climates and soils, she helps new and aspiring gardeners grow healthy, organic food right in their own backyards.
A passionate advocate for simple, self-reliant living, Kathi is the author of multiple ebooks, a published magazine contributor, and shares practical advice with readers who want real-life solutions they can trust.
Kathi lives in Oklahoma, where she grows more cherry tomatoes than she can count and keeps a watchful eye on tornado season. A proud grandma and great-grandma, she believes that wisdom - like a bountiful garden harvest - should be shared.
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