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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Creating frost-free microclimates

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  • From: yarrow@sfo.com
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Creating frost-free microclimates
  • Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:51:00 -0700

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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