In my area, we gardeners have been threatened with the dreaded F-word for this weekend.

Frost.

How is it even possible? Just last week, we saw temperatures near 90. Now, frost? It's enough to drive a gardener crazy.

A frost doesn't have to mean the end of your tender annuals and vegetables, though. If you want to try to keep them going a while longer, you can try a few things to protect your annual flowers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and warm-season herbs from frost. Some ideas:

• If you are growing annuals, herbs, or frost-tender vegetables in containers, consider moving them into a garage, an enclosed porch, or inside for the night. Move them back outside in the morning.
• Use sheets or lightweight blankets (or floating row covers, if you have them) to cover tender plants you are growing in garden beds. It may seem like they're too thin to help much, but they buy the plants a few extra degrees of frost protection, and, at this time of year, that's often all they need to live another day.
• Place five-gallon plastic buckets or large flower pots over individual tender plants. Weigh them down with a rock to ensure they don't blow over during the night. Be sure to uncover your plants in the morning. Cardboard boxes would also work well for this.
• Place a gallon milk jug full of water near your plants during the day. It will get warmed by the sun all day (on a sunny day, obviously...) and release its heat to the surrounding plants during the night.

I have a few tomato plants I want to keep growing because they're full of almost-ripe fruit, and I'm not quite ready to say good-bye to my zinnias yet (especially since the bees have been enjoying them so much lately) so I'll be out there this weekend, trying to buy them a few more days.

Here's hoping it stays frost-free a while longer in your garden!

This is likely to be one of the last 'Brandywine' tomatoes of the season from my garden. There's a chance of frost this weekend, and the rest of the tomatoes on this plant are tiny and green, and running out of time. It's an ugly tomato, cracked and kind of mottled. But boy, did it taste good!

If you read this blog often, you know that compost is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Don't get me started on the magic of turning "trash" into black gold for the garden, or the heavenly smell that envelops me when I turn my compost.  The clean, earthy smell of well-made compost is one of the joys of gardening. I compost indoors and out, in piles and tumblers, in garbage cans and trenches, in worm bins and Bokashi buckets.

So maybe I'm a tad obsessed. That's all right -- there are worse things to be obsessed with, I guess. But it shouldn't come as a surprise then that some of my favorite gardening books are actually books about composting. Here are my top five favorite books about compost:

1. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Composting by Chris McLaughlin is one of those books that I heartily recommend to anyone who is new at making compost. A very encouraging tone, paired with real compost know-how (and just a tad of fanaticism -- I can relate!) make this a fun, informational read.

2. The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin is full of interesting, creative ways to make and use compost.

3. Let It Rot! by Stu Campbell is a great book for the beginning composter. He includes many drawings of designs for different types of compost bins, which is useful if you plan on making your own bin.

4. Worms Eat My Garbage! by Mary Applehof is the bible of worm composting. Everything you'll ever want to know about composting with worms is covered in this easy to read, informative book.

5. The Rodale Book of Composting is a thorough introduction to composting,  It may be a bit too much for some readers -- this book is practically a textbook about composting -- but it's sure to have the answer to any compost question that arises in my garden.

It's been a while since I've done a good vermicompost-themed post. Luckily, I received an email from Janice, who asks:

"Hi Colleen. My worms don't seem to eat the potato peelings I put in the bin, even when there's no other food in there to eat. Are there certain foods that they avoid?"

Thanks for the excellent question, Janice! As you've noticed with your potato peels, there are certainly some foods that red wigglers are less than fond of. When I first started my worm bin, I noticed the same thing regarding potato peels (which is a shame, because we eat potatoes most days during the week!) I have noticed that my worms will eat the potato peels if they're very thin -- they seem to avoid thicker pieces of potato, and definitely avoid anything that is sprouting. So those potatoes that are sprouting already are better sent out to the compost pile than into the worm bin. They'll eat their newspaper bedding before they eat a sprouting bit of potato.

There are a few other foods red wigglers tend to avoid. They usually avoid anything that causes them irritation, especially acidic foods. Onions and all types of citrus should be added very sparingly, or just added to an outdoor compost pile instead.

Conversely, I've found that our worms tend to really enjoy certain foods, such as melon and plain pasta. For more hit and miss foods for your vermicomposting worms, check out my article on the best and worst foods for worm bins.

More Vermicomposting:

• Can I Add Bokashi to a Worm Bin?
• Fruit Flies and Worm Bins
• Wet Worm Bin
• How to Set Up a Worm Bin
• Why Are My Worms Trying to Escape?