AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Dan Hutton

Orchard Frost Protection

30 years ago, I got a job as a caretaker on a cattle slash pleasure ranch in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California.

It's a very beautiful area in California.

This particular ranch was not a typical dude ranch but it was a family affair it was a wealthy family and the parents were in there they were both 65 when I arrived, and they had 4 adult children.

And they had 5 grandchildren at that time.

And 1 of my first assignments was to grow a family orchard, and it was to grow 25 to 30 fruit trees.

And everybody in the family picked what they wanted.

And I was thrilled about it because I had had some experience with it, but I had never been where it got cold.

I'm going to put out a disclaimer first off.

This class, this presentation is not for growing citrus in Nebraska or growing figs in Canada.

This is to deal with frost in the springtime primarily and a few other things.

And so the principles are going to be mostly the same wherever you live, but you're gonna have to match it to your climate.

Anyway, When I got to the ranch, I had 490 acres.

And now, just pretend that you have 490 acres, and they look like this.

This, unfortunately, the picture got a little fuzzy in the translation, but it's hills.

And if you had this choice, where would you put your orchard if it looked like that?

What I didn't do for AudioVerse, the picture is foothills and it's up and down, quite steep with some trees and grass and anyway this second picture shows an area to the right that is a little bit higher and it what oh I was going to have Weston show me how to use his mouse.

Well, in this picture, without having a mouse to.

If you point at your screen, the camera should show your finger, right?

And then in the back of the bottom of the canyon is a bigger canyon.

Can you, do you have a, do you have a pointer that, that has a dot or something?

I've only got this, but this doesn't work too well.

No, that's not doing, that's hardly any better than my finger.

Not a problem, we'll just, anyway, there's 1 major canyon, and there's 2, as my friend from Kentucky called them, draws or drainages or places where things go down.

Now, 1 of the principles that has to be dealt with is heat rises and cold comes down.

And so in our country, we're in the hills, fire goes up.

And it, you know, come down and then follow and find the, find the lowest spot and then keep going.

And then it'll find a channel and it will follow the channel to the lowest spot and if there's no outlet then it will build up at that spot.

I'm afraid this is not my setup, so let's see what we can do.

Okay, this shows what is considered, called frost drainage.

And On the right, you can see, well, we'll start on the left.

This picture is designed for, There's other illustrations that I've worked with that are similar.

Anyway, from the top to the bottom, they had it at 1, 500 feet of change in elevation.

So at the bottom where it looks like a pool, that's cold air that has gone to the bottom.

And as an illustration, and then as you worked up the sides of the hill, the temperature gets warmer.

And so if you're somewhere between 50 and 100 feet above the bottom, you're in what they call a thermal belt.

And that will last for several hundred feet, 4 or 500 feet.

And then the temperature starts decreasing as you go higher.

Where we were at the ranch, we were at the bottom of a canyon, And we would be 10 degrees cooler than the nearest little town.

And people would say, well, are you as cold as this resort town that's 2, 500 feet higher up?

But we didn't get the snow because our elevation was lower, they got the snow.

Anyway, this shows that they have, in this case, well, trees or vines or whatever, in the thermal belt, and on the left, and on the right, it shows where the frost comes down, and the trees are there, but there's a big tree in the, before it gets to the bottom, and that acts as a dam, and that holds the air back, and that air behind it is colder.

And so you've created your own, you haven't created.

There's a problem has been created because of the dam that's preventing it from, the cold air from continuing down.

The air comes down cold and it passes by and does little damage except when it gets to the bottom and sits there, and that's where it causes the damage.

This picture lost a lot in translation, but this is my story.

I went down memory lane, and so 30 years ago, I had a red beard.

In the process, the neighbors had a vineyard, and I spent a bunch of time with them and they taught me a bunch of things and 1 of their big things with with frost protection was they had a weather they had an alarm system They had sensors out in the vineyard and it was hardwired into their house and they had an alarm system.

And when it got down to 34 degrees, not 32 degrees, but 34 degrees, it would set off an alarm and they would jump out of bed and stagger out and go turn on their pumps and get the water going.

And so Today, you can do things wireless.

And so it's easier not to have to do hard wire everything.

It's still not cheap, it still costs money.

In the case of commercial people, they have to get a crop.

In case of 2 or 3 trees in your backyard, you have to justify the expense.

Because it's $150 to $500, depending on what you want.

And it's a weather station with an alarm system involved, and the modern ones go to your telephone.

So that's 1 important thing if you're in a situation where you can't avoid, if you're gonna be in a frost.

Oh boy, this picture didn't come out good.

These are a few examples of irrigation systems to protect for frost.

The top left is what is called the flipper And it's what I used on my grapes.

And it's a little narrow micro sprinkler, and it goes, chup-chup-chup-chup-chup-chup.

And it makes this very narrow band of moisture, water, over, and It's like 2 feet wide, 3 feet wide, and it goes right over your row of vines.

It does not work for most other things, but it's great for grapes.

The picture on the bottom shows the sprinklers underneath the trees.

Frost, cold, goes down, and it goes along the ground, and then when it hits something, it builds up.

Orchard Frost Protection

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Related

Seminar 3

Soil Management in Greenhouses

1h 1m

Market Gardening Track

A Balancing Act

59m

Misc

Bootstrapping a School Farm

48m

Homesteading

My Wild Orchard: Successful Home Fruit Production

51m

Experience The Power

It’s Your Move

1h 10m

Home Gardening

Intro to the Home Garden & Planning

54m

Market Gardening

The New Big is Small: Value-added Product Integration on Your Farm

1h 4m

Meeting the Master Gardener

Jesus’ Heavenly Fruit

37m

Market Gardening

Meet the Farmers— Market Gardening Panel Discussion

1h 2m

Specialty Crops Track

Baby Greens: How to Scale Up

1h 1m

Breakout Session C

Team Building: Praying With Patients

1h 9m

Session 6

Feasible Fruit

56m

Sound Doctrine