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nafex - Re: [nafex] Water for Freeze Protection and off topic Ice age stuff

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  • From: "Kieran or Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>
  • To: <nafex@egroups.com>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] Water for Freeze Protection and off topic Ice age stuff
  • Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 16:03:59 -0500

Gordon wrote, "It is over due already."
We have been having hotter weather than normal, and dry as seems to be
standard in Sept these last few years. That means there's no moisture to
help hold heat, and with the moon coming toward full and a front on the way,
I wonder if we are going to lose our garden early. Here in this part of TN
we usually get a few light frosts, and then the first weekend in Nov a
killing frost turns any remaining beans or crowder peas to mush. I've had
nylon curtains pinned over my pepper plants for a couple of weeks, this
weekend they will get moved to the tomatoes, as we give up on the peppers,
and then they will be moved to the greens to hold off the real winter cold.
I got cured of trying to use water for frost protection the year that I
ran a sprinkler on a peach tree during a late freeze. Where the tree was
wet, all the flowers and buds were killed. One side of the tree was missed,
and sufered no damage at all from the freeze.
In Florida they use sprinklers for frost protection, I have seen trees
nearly broken down by the weight of ice. More recently they put a small
mister in the middle of each tree, so that the ice begins on the trunk and
builds up from there and does not break the tree.
Convection frosts were the traditional kind in Florida for much of the
century, but the 80's brought blowing freezes in which water or fans offered
no protection. Convection frosts are much easier to deal with, and to
predict. Full moons and dry weather facilitate convection frosts. I have
found that frosts that take all the rest of my beans generally leave healthy
plants some 50 feet from the windward side of some tall trees. (The
protection on the lee side is probably even better, but it's not ours.) I'm
sure that the trees stir the air and prevent stratification. Mike Cartright
told me that he had examined trifoliate trees after severe cold (for south
Alabama) and found damage only in the bottom 6" of the trunk. Of course the
whole tree died after that, but it shows the extreme stratification that can
occur during a convection freeze.
During all this global warming noise, I have stuck with the snowblitz
theory of Ice Ages. Ice cores show that CO2 levels always rise before a new
ice age, but I have just read a theory for how Ice Ages start so suddenly.
The book, ideal for all your phobia needs, is THE COMING GLOBAL SUPERSTORM,
but Whitley Streiber and Art Bell. Yes, they admit they are just lay people
trying to bring the attention of the public to a scientific theory. What
impressed us is that they explain the mystery of why the upper atmosphere is
actually cooling down, and what it could cause to happen. It makes sense of
a lot of things that are going on, for all you climate freaks. Donna z6 TN


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