Deep Freeze
The sound of ice pellets hitting the corrugated tin roof that covers the patio/carport was distinctive and disappointing. Ice makes a different sound then rain, and snow. There are a million ways to describe rain for those of us in the Pacific NW, but Snow makes the best sound. It’s hard to describe for sure, but it’s like a quiet, muffled hush, asked to describe what sound a muffled hush makes and it is the sound of snow flakes softly piling up. For a hot minute the weather app was saying we were going to get 17” of snow. It’s been a while since we got that kind of a snow storm and my 10 year old self was giddy in anticipation. Of course it would mean hourly trips to knock the accumulation off the greenhouse, but that would be worth it for the chance to ski Jackson Hill like I got to in the epic snows of 2009 and 2013. Unfortunately the metallic ticks of ice and graupel hitting the roof meant we were in store for something different. The arctic air mass had settled into place, but a warm finger of air was coming in off the Pacific so somewhere south of Woodburn it was sleet, and freezing rain for us. Cold temperatures were the order of the weekend and normally I wouldn’t worry quite so much about temps dipping into the high teens, but this is after the most mild of early winter seasons, so the bulb house looks mor like early March then Mid January. Remember the pic of a Fritillaria about to spring forth with bloom? Check out the gallery to see a bit of the deep freeze on the nursery:
Followers of my early blog on flower bulbs probably remember how I often covered remarkable weather events and how they impacted my growing. The low outside hit 15 degrees and we are promised to see 13 or perhaps 10 deg. F. as another little system dips in here Tuesday before the warm air scours it out. Since I use this blog a bit like a garden journal, it’s a reminder for me about prepping for a storm event. Here are a few bullet points from a greenhouse grower on surviving an Arctic blast in Western Oregon, after a relatively mild early winter:
Hardening off your plants properly-I run the bulb house at as a low a temperature as I possibly can through the winter months, the new roll up sides make that very easy since I can fully ventilate the whole house now. Unfortunately if mother nature doesn’t cooperate and just constantly throws warm temps, the bulbs don’t want to stay dormant for long and begin the growth process. Keeping them dormant or at least in a bit of torpor as long as possible is the key to making it through until the true warmth of spring is here. If the sun comes out and the greenhouse looks to warm up significantly I’ll ventilate it, even if it’s very cold outside, massive temperature swings are no good for the plants, I don’t want them to start into growth more than they already have with a lot of winter left to come yet.
I knew this was coming and watered the very dry pots ahead of this, my thought is that a barely moist pot has a better insulating factor than a bone dry one, and a soaking wet pot is probably the worst thing you can have as you then have the potential for ice damage and heaving the bulbs out as they freeze. Water a bit ahead of the worst weather giving a bit of time for the pots to dry down and drain. Then make sure the water is off so you don’t have to worry about freezing pipes!
Frost blankets-for the stuff that is up and growing a covering of frost blankets adds at least a few degrees protection and are well worth the investment. I cover all the bulbs in the bulb house with frost blankets when the temps dip into the 20’s.
Center supports if your greenhouse doesn’t have snow trusses. We got 2 feet of snow in 2013 and many hoop houses in the Salem area collapsed under the weight. A few 4x4 posts ran up to the purlins can make a huge difference in having your greenhouse survive until spring. You may still need to knock snow off but in the worst case scenario you will be recovering the plastic and not replacing the expensive metal bows. The new propagation house (the unbuilt geothermal one) is going to be a gable end, which shed snow better.
I did heat the bulb house, just to keep it barely at freezing this time around. Most of the stuff I grow is very hardy, although a hard lesson was learned in 2009 with a huge collection of South African bulbs when the bulb house was frozen to 9 degrees. In an effort to not see that again with the now rebuilt South African collection, I ran a diesel heater through the night. Diesel is $3.99 a gallon right now and a gallon and a half a night was able to keep things just at or slightly above freezing for the duration of this event. A small price to pay assuming (fingers crossed) this is an isolated event. Extended periods of heating can really eat into whatever profit was hopefully going to be made come bulb sales season.
A lot of bulbs were starting to peak out of the ground in the rock garden, border and sand beds. I’m not worried about these as they now have a nice insulating blanket of snow/ice mix around them. In the bulb house, most of the pots are gage dura pots, that some call “self plunging” as they nestle tightly together to provide more insulation for bulbs and roots. If you can’t actually plunge a pot into the ground, this is the next best thing.
At least with this weather system we didn’t lose power like the epic Valentines day storm of several years ago where we were without power for a week. As climate change continues to dish out unpredictable weather both in the warm season and the cold, we need to stay reactive and adaptable. It’s Martin Luther King day and also a big politics day, in the middle of a big freeze, in the middle of a world full of raging wars, in the middle of a global climate catastrophe and I’m reminded of the great Dr. kings quote: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
and another Martin Luther quote from a much different but probably equally chaotic time: “Even if I knew tomorrow the world would go to pieces I would still plant my apple tree”
Cheers,
Mark