Busy night on the farm!

It got cold on the farm last night.  Forecast for Locust Grove was in the low 30’s.  Our strawberry forecast was for 23 degrees.  About 9:30 we noticed it was 30 degrees outside.  I went to the farm with my boys.  The strawberry patch was 40 degrees under the row covers.  Perfect!  Then we checked the tomatoes.  It was 36 inside the high tunnels at 9:30.  With 9.5 hrs to go til morning I figured it would get too cold in the high tunnels for the tomatoes.  There aren’t heaters in the high tunnels, so we had to improvise.  We had some propane heaters here that are unvented.  Tomatoes do not like unvented propane.  When the propane burns it gives off ethylene.  Ethylene will ruin the growing point on tomatoes.  So my 3 boys and I spent 3 hrs covering each of the 1,024 tomato plants with a plastic market thank you bag so we could blow heat in there.  The bags keep the gas off the tomato plants.  At 12:30 a.m. we were done.  It was 26 when we got home.  It was definitely worth it!  This a.m. we turned off the heat around 10:00 and opened the doors.  Then we pulled the bags off the plants.  Strawberry patch was 35 degrees under the covers this a.m.  The strawberry flower can handle 28 degrees as long as you keep the frost off.  Keeping an eye on Saturday night/Sunday a.m.  Looks like a repeat with the weather.  Maybe just a touch colder.  Hopefully we’ll be ahead of the game this time!  See you at the farm!IMG_20160406_071833

Busy night on the farm!
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