digitS'
Garden Master
I'm not sure about what helps and how much. @nittygrittydirtdigger was telling us last spring about the helicopters hovering above the cherry orchards night after night. Apparently, the movement of air or the mixing of air layers helps mitigate frost. Big outfits do things because of the economics of size and crop insurance that don't make sense to backyard orchardists.
I have run sprinklers on the veggie and flower gardens even to the point of covering plants with ice. It does help. To what temperature, I'm not sure. Frost damage is partly dehydration of the tissue. (Dad broke branches off his apple trees running sprinklers.)
When I was a kid, there were fruit orchards all around us there in the Rogue River Valley. In the spring, our white farm house would turn black from the waste oil that was burned in the smudge pots. Window screens were clogged with soot. What a mess, some years.
I had to walk nearly a mile to the bus stop through that air. I guess I could have dropped out of school and gotten a job firing those smudge pots like my brother did.
Steve
I have run sprinklers on the veggie and flower gardens even to the point of covering plants with ice. It does help. To what temperature, I'm not sure. Frost damage is partly dehydration of the tissue. (Dad broke branches off his apple trees running sprinklers.)
When I was a kid, there were fruit orchards all around us there in the Rogue River Valley. In the spring, our white farm house would turn black from the waste oil that was burned in the smudge pots. Window screens were clogged with soot. What a mess, some years.
I had to walk nearly a mile to the bus stop through that air. I guess I could have dropped out of school and gotten a job firing those smudge pots like my brother did.
Steve