Possibility of frost

To spray at 4am you don't need a watering can

 

Wouldn't be the first time I've been wandering around putting fleece or similar on plants, in springtime, in the early hours.

 

yep, frost always happens prior to Mother's day.

 

Yes, I've done it with potatoes and it does work, but they don't need to be sprayed before dawn, only before the Sun starts to melt the ice crystals on the leaves.

I've also heard of spraying apple blossom to prevent frost damage, but the thought of traipsing around my plot with a stirrup pump and umpteen gallons of water at daybreak spraying a dozen trees sort of puts me off the idea.

I'm sticking with keeping all stuff that might suffer either in trapeze handled supermarket crates or ex-mushroom boxes and stacking and covering overnight in both a polytunnel at my plot and a heated greenhouse at home.

I've also got a 600mm wide sheet of plywood that spans between my upper staging shelves and provides some additional overnight space in my greenhouse, but it gets a bit crammy in there with other stuff overhanging staging and a big stack of crates just inside overnight.

 

To combat frost damage in Belgium, farmers spray water onto blossom so it freezes, protecting it from even lower temps and a harder frost!

 

The reason it works is that as water freezes it gives up it's latent heat of crystallisation and this is sufficient to keep the plant tissue just above freezing, until the sprayed water has frozen.

 

Reading the forecasts for next week, perhaps this thread should be renamed "Probability of Frost, Snow, Ice, Hail and Gales"

 

Just in time for the bank holiday weekend

 

There's a bank holiday??

 

A couple of dozen if you vote for Corbyn !

 

I dare say if Corbyn gets in charge we might even get a three day working week.

 

I remember the three day week in the 1970's . I , unfortunately,was working 6 days a week , in an "essential" aerospace company in Devon. Due to the rampant inflation at the time , we got a pay rise every few weeks , as I recall . Anyone else recall this heyday ?