Cold tonight

It was supposed to be warmer here with a minimun of 6 Deg C forecast for last night, but it went down to 3.5 deg C in my garden and would have even lower at my edge of village plot.

All it needs needs is an unexpected loss of cloud cover shortly before dawn to get lower than forecast temperatures, so I look at both cloud and temperature forecasts fir early morning.

I've done that with frosted potato leaves and it worked. As ice crytals melt in sunshine they take heat from the leaves and damage them, washing them off prevents that. The opposite is used to protect plants from cold using a wall o'water, a plastic water filled wall and when the water freezes it will release heat and help protect the plant inside.

 

Glad all ok. It's odd because we are having quite significant frosts but it doesn't appear to have done huge amounts of damage. Yes some Rhododendron flowers are brown, some Hostas are all mushy and the Rodgersia will have to start all over again but apart from that not as bad as it should be. Maybe because we are really dry here ?not having had any rain since the SNOW on 29th April! I'm having to water various things which I don't like doing. Do you actually get any Bananas @JWK?

 

We got down to 35f last night. The lanterns kept the smaller greenhouse up at 41f and the heater in the big one easily maintained 50f (that is the min setting) and the cloches and plastic are still in place outside so hopefully everyone is okay. One more night like this to do.

 

Blimey, that's 1.6 recurring celcius

 

That's global warming for you

Well, when I think about it, there are always a few nasty days before Victoria Day long weekend. We get teased with nice warm days and then bam, a cold snap. We also call that weekend May 2-4. When we were young we used to all go camping and celebrate with a 24 of beer and fireworks.

 

I wish we were going up to 70 - we're hoping to break 50

 

Mrs Scrungee keeps asking when my 150 guests who've been spending the night on our living room floor are going to leave as they've been there for 2 nights now and show no apparent signs of wanting to move on.

I'm going to evict some of the more hardy plants from my greenhouse and force them to rough it for a couple of nights back in my tunnels before they warm up again, that will enable some of the tomatoes, etc. that have been spending nights in my living room to move into my greenhouse.

Going to put a temperature datalogger in a tunnel tonight to check exactly what they're going down to.

 

Show Mrs. Scrungee my new addition to the living room - she could do worse !

 

But how many demijohns of homemade wine have you got behind your sofa and armchairs?

 

Ah, my wine is down in the cellar. There is not enough room for it upstairs...

 

Well the cold nights have caught me out a touch . Forecast around 7°c actual 2 0r 3 for three nights !! My New Guineas and Verbenas are looking a little worse for wear if they don't improve over the next two weeks , I will replace them . My own fault the warnings were on here .