General Looking for gardening tips when it comes to freezing temperatures

[Rayen]

So I have had my vegetables ready to plant for some time now. I have tons of lettuce, peppers, herbs and tomatoes (so many tomatoes! I'm so excited to eat them!) but the Manitoba weather is really not agreeing with me. It keeps dropping below 0C here, which means I have to drag in tons of plants every few days and my lettuce is now starting to die off because of the lack of room they have in their tiny pods. The weather is, once again, starting to warm up but I don't have very much faith that it will stay warm (it keeps climbing up to nearly 30C and then dropping to like -1C, fun times!).

If I were to just give up and plant them this week, are there any good ways to protect them from freezing temperatures? Would covering them up be enough, or would I still lose quite a bit?

 

[Easefirst]

Lettuce can stand fair amount of cold, if protected by a cold frame of some sort. Your could build a hoop frame and cover it with plastic. Here is a few videos about winter gardening. I know, that is not exactly what you are looking for, but it is similar, and maybe you can grow greens for your piggies and yourself in late summer to cover and keep them for winter to have some fresh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGuaLVJJbNc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClMgXmmLIFU

 

[Easefirst]

Here is one more, and if you search youtube, you should find bunch of tips about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0H7A48ZMBk

 

[Rayen]

Those are actually some interesting tips! I don't think I'm going to be doing anything quite that elaborate this year (I'm hoping to be moving by this fall so I think it would be waste just for a few weeks of possible freezing nights) but those lettuce container mini-greenhouses seem like such an obvious idea that I've been missing! Ugh! I've just been recycling them.

The forecast looks promising for the coming weeks, so maybe we're finally finished with this -1C nonsense now. Fingers crossed anyway, I've started planting my tomatoes into bigger pots and they will not fit in my house!

 

[Easefirst]

Tomatoes do not mind replanting several times, even when they are quite large, so it will be just fine as long as you and your piggies can still fit in. My garden is not next to my apartment, so when I go I cut bunch of greens for my piggies, and have a giant bag of them in the fridge. I feed them pellet free, so they eat lots.
Good luck with a weather, you can safely plant lettuce and other greens, but other stuff would freeze off, if not covered and possibly even covered.