Carrots, parsnips and frost

[MrsCordial]

Hello. It's forecast to go down to 2 degs here on Friday night, and as we're rural we'll likely get a frost. My parents, five miles away and in a small town, are often surprised how much harder we've been hit by frost than them, so if it's going we'll get it.

I'm going to earth up the potatoes, which are now about 6" high. I have carrot seedlings (Purple Haze and Rondo) that are at the two-leaf stage. They've been under glass since sowing comme ca:



Will they be okay at that low temperature, or should I bubble wrap them? I'm assumning that means just laying BW over them loosely and anchoring it?

Secondly, I have parsnips seedlings under a long polythene cloche, and I was planning to sow more on Thursday. I'm guessing the established ones under the cloche will be okay (the cloche has been on two weeks so they should be toasty in there), but would it be silly to plant more seeds 24 hours before a frost? I've read on here that seeds are fine as they'e tucked away in the ground, but I'd like a bit of guidance on that.

Thank you so much.

[Kristen]

It won't take 6" potatoes long to push through soil that you earth them up with, so i would do that as late as possible (Thursday might be too early, for example)

Carrots and Parsnips should be fine. Personally I wouldn't have a cloche over them as I would not want to give them too much heat when young (as I think it may encourage them to bolt - but others may have different views? Warming the soil, to encourage them to germinate, would be different though)

I don't see any problem with sowing seeds before frost. The frost is likely to only be for a few hours, and thus unlikely to penetrate very far into soil nor to be sufficiently cold such that the cold remains long in the soil.

[MrsCordial]

Oh okay, I'll leave the parsnip cloche off after I sow more seeds. So far the carrots are so tiny I can't see them bolting anywhere. The glass was as much about preventing seeds then tiny seedlings them from a pounding from the rain as anything else, but if it's better that they're left uncovered now I'll remove the glass.

Thanks as always Kristen

[Kristen]

Keeping the worse of the weather off them is no bad thing. Leaving the ends of the cloche open, so it doesn't get too hot inside, would achieve that aim I reckon?