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Old September 17, 2013   #8
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tedln View Post
"Carolyn, who remembers when growing up on the farm that if frost was expected, especially in late Spring, her father would take lots of old tires to the fields , put them in piles and set them on fire. The black residue would land on the foliage and serve as ice nucleating particles,not known by that name back then, thus protecting the foliage."

The EPA would quickly arrive with a swat team and black helicopters if you tried that today. You would be sorting and saving your tomato seeds in a jail cell.

Ted
Don't I know it Ted, but if jail was up here where I am now the jail food isn't all that bad and I should know b'c the meals on wheel lunches that I get are prepared at the jail and the inmates do some of the prep work.

And I first found out about ice nucleating particles when I was in Denver in the 70's and the Chairman of the Microbiology Dept had received a grant, I think from the Federal Govt to work on it as he had proposed. His name was Dr. Lloyd Kozloff and I'll link to a Google search for him and his work, but first let me link to a Google Search on ice nucleation in general as it related to frost protection.

https://www.google.com/#q=ice+nuclea...ost+protection

And now to Kozloff's work with it:

https://www.google.com/#q=Kozloff+ice+nucleation

Kozloff moved from the Med School in Denver to become the Dean of the Grad School at the U of California, so that's why some of the links refer to his continued work there.

It's been used successfully for the many acres of Strawberry fields in CA, and I certainly didn't read all the links where it's been successful for frost protection.

Carolyn
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