2025 Little Easy Bean Network - Growers Of The Future Will Be Glad We Saved

[flowerbug]

wow, this weather forecast has gone from great to the opposite in only a couple of days. while the beans that are just developing might do ok as a result all the dry beans i don't have already harvested might be ruined. a mixed bag this season for sure... i did get a lot of dry beans picked last week but not nearly all of them. hard to say how this will end up but yet another tick in the difficult and challenging category this season.

in better news i think i have some more network seeds harvested that are continuing to dry down so that will add chances to my results, but i have no idea the quality yet.

 

[heirloomgal]

I have had the most incredible seed saving journey in the last couple of days, in the literal sense.

I've been keeping a fairly close eye on the weather network for nighttime lows for awhile. However, things apparently can shift quickly and two days ago at 10 o'clock at night I saw a frost advisory warning out of the blue. OMG, it was black outside. And of all times, we could not find the flashlight which DH had just used in a plumbing job a week ago. There was absolutely no way I could find all my blankets out in the sheds with no flashlight, let alone work among the plants. Really, almost everything left as far as beans was poles so I would have needed to use a ladder as well, which would have been crazy in the dark. It would have taken hours to tackle that level of covering. About 1/2 (or more) of this years seed crop was still out there.

DH said to go out at the crack of dawn and hose down the plants, that was about the only thing I could do at this point. That night I barely slept, maybe 3 interupted hours of sleep. I got up just as the dark was receding and the lawn was pure white. I went for the 1st hose, it was frozen. No water would come out! Of the 3 hoses I had, I got one to work (probably because it had no nozzle). I sprayed everything I could reach, and managed to finally get the 2nd hose going. I hosed for about 1.5 hours rotating around the gardens. I started feeling *perturbed* at DH and this whackadoodle idea when I saw that ice sheets had formed all over the plants. I mean the bean pods were coated in ice, the bean leaves, the cherry tomatoes. I tried over and over to hose the ice off, and as you can imagine that didn't work.

By 8 a.m. I gave up, and I was beyond exhausted, wet and cold. I tried to go back to sleep so I could have nominal brain function and get warm, but I was so upset about the whole situation I could not fall asleep. After an hour I got up and discussed the situation with DH, reporting back about how his plan failed. He laughed and told me the plants were SUPPOSED to get covered in ice. I mean, I can't think of anything more counterintuitive than that. I went outside to see the damage and my gosh every single bean plant was fine. A few of them, the very top of the pole got zipped, because they were 12 feet and I didn't shoot the water up on top thoroughly I guess. But the ice actually worked. I can't even believe it! The tomato plants that I didn't hose down because I couldn't get the 3rd hose to work in that section of garden were blackened. Oh boy did I get lucky!!!! I told him from now on forget your name, I'm calling you MacGyver!

 

[flowerbug]

...Oh boy did I get lucky!!!! I told him from now on forget your name, I'm calling you MacGyver!

i'm not wanting to rain on your parade but i would also not count those chickens as hatched just yet.

my experience is that such events may look ok at first and then within a few days...

i will hope for otherwise and look forwards to updates.

what this will do is send a strong signal to the plants to get things finished up ASAP. ...

 

[heirloomgal]

i'm not wanting to rain on your parade but i would also not count those chickens as hatched just yet.

my experience is that such events may look ok at first and then within a few days...

i will hope for otherwise and look forwards to updates.

what this will do is send a strong signal to the plants to get things finished up ASAP. ...

I will post pictures later tonight if I get to it. No, the chickens will hatch for sure. The reason being it's a physics principle. DH is very science minded, the ice doesn't send a message to the plant - it acts like a skinsuit on a diver. When ice freezes, it actually releases a tiny amount of heat. That water gets trapped between the plant leaf (or whatever it is, bean pod) and the ice, protecting the plant. It's the wildest science trick I've ever seen, very subtle principle involved. The leaves were not damaged, once the ice melted they were perfectly green and smooth again. Like a magic trick. Remember, this was a day and a half ago. The plants are doing amazing. The tomatoes that got hit with frost went dark and watery within an hour, frost damage from freezing is obvious fairly soon. The tomato fruits that had ice on them, totally fine. But really, this isn't new. Another bean thread member told me that in Florida this is how they protect the orange groves from frosts, sprinklers. It's not a new thing in commercial agriculture, I just never did it before myself.

In hindsight, I should have actually iced up the plants more. DH didn't mention that part to me. The more ice you pile on the better. If you look at the strawberry plants in this video, it's amazing how he's encased them literally in thick ice. I believe this is called 'heat fusion'. Scroll to 2:08.

 

[Artorius]

In Poland, this method is common during late spring frosts. Sprinklers are deliberately installed in orchards and vineyards for this very purpose.