[permaculture] Creating frost-free microclimates
yarrow at sfo.com
yarrow at sfo.com
Tue Oct 23 21:51:00 EDT 2007
I'm skeptical that water bottles would affect temperatures below
freezing enough to make a difference. But for mornings where frost
forms early and then disappears with the first rays of the sun, lots
of things work -- anything that can prevent the frost from touching
the leaves of the plant so that its tissues don't participate in the
freeze-thaw cycle.
To raise the temperature around a plant a few degrees, I've used
water-filled plastic tubes (walls-o-water) around young tomato
transplants early in the season and had tomatoes 2-4 weeks earlier
than without. One year I improvised with bubble wrap and water-filled
plastic bottles, which was not as successful as the tubes. So much
depends on the weather: one spring it rained nearly every day for a
couple months, with wind storms, so nothing really worked. This
spring was much milder than usual, so anything probably would have
worked.
At 7:53 PM -0500 10/22/07, George Anna Clark wrote:
>Almost forgot to report...
>
>I met some campesinos in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico who swear by
>water-filled glass bottles, placed in the paths between the vegetable
>beds. I assume their temperatures dip only a few degrees below 0....
>
>good luck,
>george anna
>south-central Mexico
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