Frost

[crusher]

Who said lightning (or in this case frost) never strikes twice?
Last year a frost in May, about the end of the second week, put paid to my grape harvest. It was bad enough to kill all the new fruiting growth. I ended up picking 2 small bunches of grapes from over 50 vines.
Last night we had a frost again, not as severe as last years but it has done some damage. To early to tell how much but I am not a happy bunny
What happened to global warming or has that gone now and we are going back to the ice age?
Any one else affected?

[Cellar_Rat]

Bummer!

For info - I spray mine with water if I think there is going to be a frost !

[Rich]

Global warming has been renamed to 'climate change' after the experts realised they were wrong.

Edit: It also frosted over the last few mornings up here. I found the way to keep this off the vines is to leave them down in Hereford

[lockwood1956]

We escaped last night, but am on frost watch

i use 3 different weather websites, they invariably all have different ideas with 24 hours to go, but they all seem to be predicting the same at around 8pm the evening befopre

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather

http://www.weather.co.uk

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/

I feel your Pain Malcolm

[lockwood1956]

1 a.m. and 4 a.m. seem to be the critical times....

I now have too many vines to fleece, so if a hard frost is expected I will mist the vines with water...

seems unlikely but it will protect the vines, even if it gets really cold and turns to ice

regards
Bob

[crusher]

I use 2 of your 3 weather sites Bob, thanks.
Last night our local forcast said minimum of +2 with the possibility of a touch of ground frost. I went out at 10.15 to lock up and walk the dogs and it was quite cloudy and still mild so I wasn't to worried.
We actually had an air frost and -2 according to the BBC this morning!!
I know that misting with water works down to about -2 but I would need quite a few sprinklers to cover all the vines.
I'll have to look into it for next year.
The damage is not as severe as last years so I'm still hopeful that there will be a crop, after all we still have the mildew, wasps, birds, squirrels, etc. to cope with
Roll on Grapefest

[David]

It registered -4°C min on my max/min thermometer and went through the coverings over on spuds and got the lot. It also blackened all the bramble tips.

Luckily my 2 dozen apple trees are so early this year they hadn't got a single blossom left on them to be frosted. That heavy frost last year was on 13th May and those trees were in full blossom. So by being early it actually saved them from frost!

Does anyone use Wunderground.com?

[crusher]

My Damsons, Gages and Pears have all blossomed, some Apples still have blossom on but appear to have escaped damage, fingers crossed.
Hopefully the spuds will survive and regrow although they will be later cropping.
Just looked at Wunderground, thats one each from you and Bob thanks, lots of info.
If the forcasts are right we might be getting some very welcome rain this weekend. We've had one 15min shower in the last 7 weeks !!

[lockwood1956]

its just hosed it down for the last hour here in Pontefract

[Bertie]

Hi,

I am new (wrote on the welcome bit earlier) but I have planted 27 vines during the winter and everything was going really well loads of growth (over a foot on some) yet the frost has killed almost everything (only 4 vines got through it). Is there anyway to avoid it? Spraying isnt really practical and the vines are in pink grow tubes. The high graft vines stick out the top of these but they are still useful for protecting from rabbits and weedkiller. But the trellis is over 30m long and so I cant really fleece them either.

Ashley

[lockwood1956]

Hi Ashley

no way of avoiding it without spraying or fleecing or heating etc

but the vines will likely recover, you will still get a crop, just much smaller

its a heartache for sure

regards
Bob

[crusher]

It's just not fair, you are only just up the road Bob, we had a 15min light shower!
Not even damped the dust

[Bertie]

I was just wondering what is the best way to deal with the frost damage? All the growth has died off, do I leave it on the vines or do I chop it off?

[fatbloke]

I was just wondering what is the best way to deal with the frost damage? All the growth has died off, do I leave it on the vines or do I chop it off?

I'd also be interested to hear how this is sorted out, not that I have any vines, but we've got 6 apple/pear tree's in the garden.

Also, I'm struggling with working out the logic of spraying with water. Sure, some sort of fleece/straw or other gentle insulation, but water ? Surely, the excess water sprayed onto a plant/tree would also freeze up exacerbating the levels of frost/cold damage ???

Or is there some sort of wisdom behind the idea of doing that ???

regards

jtfb

[lockwood1956]

Water freezes at 0 deg, and so protects the vines from the minus zero temps that damage them.

regards
Bob