We had a killer frost (7 am temp 26 deg at leaf height and 20 at ground level!) Sept 17. I got out the hose about 5 am and started spraying - I had about 20% of my crop remaining on the stalks from earlier priming.
The spraying before sun-up is a standard practice with veggie growers here to protect their tender plants from light frost damage. Had a nice ice build-up, but the leaves showed significant damage after they warmed up, so I harvested them to dry. Will see how they look after drying. I left a couple of small leaves on the top of each stalk, but they were cooked - no further growth.
An interesting observation - both the Poquonock and Canadian Virginia (seed from Lakota via Matty) leaves showed no damage, suggesting that they are a bit more frost tolerant.
The stalks continued to produce suckers and to ripen the seed pods.
We had no more frost until this am - a light touch.That's a most unusual pattern for our location.
Seed pods are probably 3 weeks later than previous years. I harvested a few this morning, but most are still ripening - pods 20 to 70% brown.
Bob - only one pod of 20 on the 3 Poq plants I bagged has turned brown (I suspect it's a dud and I didn't bring my ladder to climb up to check it) - the rest are almost all green yet. About half of the H263 were completely brown and harvested today.
I'm leaving them for a few more days, then will cut the stalks and move them inside to finish ripening. Hopefully I'll get some viable seed from the Poq.
Happy thanksgiving, all you canucks!
Jack
The spraying before sun-up is a standard practice with veggie growers here to protect their tender plants from light frost damage. Had a nice ice build-up, but the leaves showed significant damage after they warmed up, so I harvested them to dry. Will see how they look after drying. I left a couple of small leaves on the top of each stalk, but they were cooked - no further growth.
An interesting observation - both the Poquonock and Canadian Virginia (seed from Lakota via Matty) leaves showed no damage, suggesting that they are a bit more frost tolerant.
The stalks continued to produce suckers and to ripen the seed pods.
We had no more frost until this am - a light touch.That's a most unusual pattern for our location.
Seed pods are probably 3 weeks later than previous years. I harvested a few this morning, but most are still ripening - pods 20 to 70% brown.
Bob - only one pod of 20 on the 3 Poq plants I bagged has turned brown (I suspect it's a dud and I didn't bring my ladder to climb up to check it) - the rest are almost all green yet. About half of the H263 were completely brown and harvested today.
I'm leaving them for a few more days, then will cut the stalks and move them inside to finish ripening. Hopefully I'll get some viable seed from the Poq.
Happy thanksgiving, all you canucks!
Jack