Spring frosts

The first weekend in September, the nights are cold, the first lime green shoots are on the tips of the willow trees, the tulips are up and the sky is blue. Just as the new growth of spring shows its delicate toes, jack frost visits with a vengeance, intent on killing all new life. This interplay of nature and weather makes for a stressfull dance. Will the new growth survive the harsh chill? This interplay of weather also stimulates sugars and saps within the feeds the leaves and then flowers and then fruit. And the extreme of temperatures, while death defying, adds to the flavour and sugars in the fruit.

On Friday night by 9.30pm it was -1, by midnight it was -4 and everything was covered in white. This is the time of buds bursting into leaves on the grape vines. A frost kills these. It is a tense time. The second budding is weaker. The frost system David installed, last year, automatically activates at 2 degrees, then the flippers keeps spraying the water over the vines until 9.30 in the morning, by which time the sun has melted the ice which forms around the water spray on the buds and stem of the vine. The layes of mist builds into ice. This layer of ice protects the bud rather than freezing the water inside the soft bud tissue.

If there is no cloud and wind on spring evenings, the stars are bright, and the frost is likely. Frost doesnt survive with wind. And if there are clouds, the air isnt cold enough to chill the earth.

In spring we like wind, and clouds. By 9.30am the temperature is 14 degrees, warm and every trace of frost gone. We phone Oldfields and have bark chips delivered to go around the base of the water tank by the barn. A job waiting from February last year. The chips are delivered within the hour and the job completed and it looks good.