Freeze

[Richard Miller]

If a freeze is coming at night can you take garbage bags and cover your
plants before you go to bed at night and uncover them a little before
sunrise?

Richard

[Lawrence Akutagawa]

yup...and you can in addition place a bucket of hot/warm water under that
plastic at the same time. Next morning you should find the water cooled
off, but not frozen. If you do this, place a small container/dish of water
on the ground outside the plastic at teh same time. And if you do in fact
have a freeze, you'll find a thin layer of ice on surface of the water in
that outside container, while that water under the plastic remains ice free.

An alternative is to leave a 60 watt light burning under that plastic. Make
sure you have the right extension cord if you do this.

"Richard Miller" > wrote in message
news:SqNgf.17699$qw.5156@fed1read07...
> If a freeze is coming at night can you take garbage bags and cover your
> plants before you go to bed at night and uncover them a little before
> sunrise?
>
> Richard
>

[dps]

Uncovering them before sunrise is not required. Wait until the air
temperature rises above freezing (generally just a couple of hours). THe
plants will survive the lack of a couple hours of sunlight.

This process will not work indefinitely. Eventually the daytime will
remain below freezing (assuming you're not in a tropical climate) and
the cover will be unable to retain enough heat to keep the plant warm
without having you change the hot water frequently (or use the light
bulb). At that point you might as well build and heat a greenhouse for
your plant or become resigned to the fact that annuals have a limited
lifetime.


Lawrence Akutagawa wrote:
> yup...and you can in addition place a bucket of hot/warm water under that
> plastic at the same time. Next morning you should find the water cooled
> off, but not frozen. If you do this, place a small container/dish of water
> on the ground outside the plastic at teh same time. And if you do in fact
> have a freeze, you'll find a thin layer of ice on surface of the water in
> that outside container, while that water under the plastic remains ice free.
>
> An alternative is to leave a 60 watt light burning under that plastic. Make
> sure you have the right extension cord if you do this.
>
> "Richard Miller" > wrote in message
> news:SqNgf.17699$qw.5156@fed1read07...
>
>>If a freeze is coming at night can you take garbage bags and cover your
>>plants before you go to bed at night and uncover them a little before
>>sunrise?
>>
>>Richard
>>
>
>
>