For most Kansans, last week’s tumble into the deep freeze was an inconvenience. For vegetable gardeners and people with fruit trees, it was a cause for heartbreak.

Some people held out hope that the dire forecast would not materialize and tried to cover their lettuce and cole crops with bed sheets, which is a reasonable strategy if the problem is frost. But overnight lows in the teens constitute a hard freeze by anyone’s definition. Unless some doting gardener figured out a way to cover plants with an electric blanket, the effort was for naught.

By way of indulging this disappointment just a moment longer, let me note that the brutal wind during the past week compounded gardeners’ misery. While the thermometer may have pegged the daytime temperature in the 30s or 40s, mean old Mr. Wind Chill Factor made sure it was even colder in the garden.

OK, so what happens now?

For some crops, the damage will be negligible. Those growing underground, such as beets, carrots, onions and potatoes, will be fine. Their tops showing above the soil level may have frozen, but the rest of the plant will continue to grow. New greens should appear as soon as the temperatures warm again.

We can take a lesson from my garlic. The green tops are Popsicles, but the bulbs have been sitting in the soil since last October. They already have been through one winter, so this mini-chill won’t faze them. The deciding factor is that they already were established when the freeze hit. Newly germinated carrots, beets and so forth won’t fare as well.

Asparagus that was standing when the cold hit is obviously done for, but that doesn’t mean the crop is ruined. We had a late freeze a couple of years ago that destroyed the front end of the asparagus crop, but once the ground warmed back up, new spears emerged. Mind you, the harvest was not as plentiful as it would have been otherwise, but we did eat asparagus that year.

Cole crops such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, greens such as lettuce and spinach, and early-season legumes such as peas and snowpeas really took it on the chin. Some clever gardeners have figured out ways to overwinter particularly hardy varieties of spinach, and their crops may still be intact. Realistically, however, plants in the above-ground category are headed for the compost pile.

But that’s no reason to despair, as there’s plenty of time to replant most of these crops. While the harvest won’t be as long or as large, gardeners still can get several pickings of greens and a crop of snowpeas before it becomes too hot. If greenhouses still have cole crop plants, those vegetables can be replaced as well.

A major tragedy in this weather situation is the damage to this year’s fruit crop. While temperatures were coasting in the 70s and 80s in late March, we enjoyed a succession of glorious blooms on our peach, apple and cherry trees. If the quantity of flowers was a predictor, this year was going to see an incredible bounty.

That was then. The blossoms have fallen to the ground, the baby cherries have turned black, and even the leaves are burned on the tips.

The good news is that the blossoms will return next year. Similarly, in just a few weeks we’ll be ready to plant the hot-weather garden, and these current disappointments will be forgotten.