The inner city’s first frost and our first snow both occurred the same night, Friday night.  (For non-Minnesotans:  that’s a little early for snow, and a little late for first frost.)  Here was the situation in my garden at 7 a.m. Saturday:

The snow had all melted by noon or so.  The tomatoes, banana peppers, beans, and zucchini are dead.  The parsnips can now be harvested, and the ‘late-season’ kale that I planted in mid-July is still very small, but looks healthy and I’ll probably harvest it relatively soon.  The brussels sprouts are all unfazed by light freezing, but we ripped them out today anyway because it was time to acknowledge that it’s just not going to happen.

Here’s the sad state of affairs as it looks right now.  I pulled out the soaker hoses and put them away, too.  I’m leaving the beans in place to see if the green ones that are still on there might think about drying up now that the plants are pretty much dead.

We started an additional “starter” area to the left of the compost bin, so now we are officially acknowledging that we have a 3-stage compost bin.  We create so much material for the bin that 2 side-by-side bins are not enough.  There used to be a pine tree directly to the left of the bin, but now that it’s gone we can use that area more easily.