Blueberry Freeze Protection

My FIL lives near Canton GA and they were supposed to get to 24 degrees the other night. He pulled a sprinkler out and ran it to cause a casing of ice around the plants. It’s his first time doing it. He is not on this forum but I thought I would share his pics as it was pretty neat to see the buds encased in ice.

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That’s gotta stop you from moving! :smiling_imp:

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That might end up doing more damage than the frost would have… Neat pictures tho, I had to share with my facebook gardening group!

Looks like he did it right, kept it on all night to get that much ice.
Keep us updated on this, and did he keep the water on all night?

Following directions he read on the internet somewhere he started when temps got to 33 degrees and stopped in the morning when they got up to 40 degrees. He said was about 12-14 hours. I will update when he tells me if the buds survived or not.

Yes let us know if it worked! Last year 3 of my potted blueberry plants started growing early and the flower buds were swelling, the tips greening and getting ready to grow. Then we had a late hard freeze. For two nights it was 21 or 22F for hours. Sweetcrisp lost all of it’s tips, and the biggest cane died. No fruit buds survived. Southmoon just died. What was amazing was Legacy didn’t even lose it’s flower buds, they went on to produce fruit. Legacy is well named. This year I kept them outside with overhead protection and they look better, only a little damage to Sweetcrisp. Legacy grew like a beast and turned into a huge plant, it’s a keeper! Not perfect, it’s super hard to tell when berries are ripe. Some other cultivars it’s easy, not this one. The fruit needs to stay blue (all blue, even at stem) for a couple weeks to be fully ripe. Yet one that turned 2 days ago, looks like the 2 week old blue fruit, no cultivar is perfect. Maybe it will cluster more when bigger and easy to tell which cluster. Ripening period is long too.

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I asked him the results and he said 50% of the blossoms were viable and set fruit. He said he wouldn’t do it again because his BB’s are too spread out and it’s too much water. He said if the plants were closer together it would make more sense.

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My Sunshine Blue had both open and closed flowers when we got hit by 2 consecutive nights at 19-21 degrees. My protection worked (it’s not a huge plant)! I put 2 layers of fleece blankets over it. It lost the open flowers but not the ones just about to open up.

That’s good to hear. I suggested he cover his plants with frost fabric he said they are too tall I doubt that as the fabric can be bought in big sizes.

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