The affects of Snow, Ice and the Cold on your Vegetable Garden

Posted on 14. Jan, 2010 by Tracey in Pests

With the cold snap of snow lasting for a little while longer, I have enjoyed seeing snowy vegetables on other peoples blogs like Kale and Brussels Sprouts on Nip It In The Bud’s Winter Wonderland Post and Leeks on Eight by Six’s blog and I was interested to find out how the snow is affecting my vegetables on my plot.

Snow and cold temperatures can provide advantages as well as disadvantages in your vegetable garden.

Advantages of Snow and Ice include:

It can provide a cover to protect vegetables against frost and ice,
The dip in temperature can make vegetables like Brussels sprouts and parsnips have better flavour and sweetness,
Pest populations are hit hard and many pests communities like aphids will not survive to the spring,

Disadvantages of Snow and Ice include:

Frozen Soil - this doesn’t help if you want to harvest your leeks!
Freezing, thawing and re-freezing water – This can be bad for plant cells especially if this is happening in the crevasses of vegetables or their leaves. It could also cause some diseases like rust or rot if the water its in contact with the leaves for a period of time.
Heavy weight – the weight of the snow could break or make plants collapse under its weight and some may not recover.
No Harvesting – access to your plot, frozen soil or frozen leaves are some reasons why harvesting may be delayed. You may need to wait for a break in the weather to be able to start harvesting again.
No Sowing Seeds either – Not that’s there’s much that can be sowed in early January however definitely nothing can be sown into frozen soil and germination rates are extremely slow in cold temperatures even on covered ground.