Monday, January 21, 2008

-12F and -15F ... 40 hours below zero

The low Friday night reached -12 F and the low Saturday night was -15F. We did not even get above zero on Saturday ... about 40 hours straight of below zero F temperatures. We do have a good snow cover, which helps some. I am concerned about my stressed Foch vines. Normally they would survive -15F weather easily, but they went into the winter fairly weak. We will see what happens come this spring.

The high tunnel only got down to about 15 F .... WOW! ... much warmer than I had planned. I am anxious to see what the spring brings for it. My next concern, is that the vines in the tunnel will break bud too early. Hopefully that risk won't occur until the beginning of April.


The rabbits are attacking my vines in my backyard. They chewed right through one, and damaged another severely. I have had snow cover in my backyard since the beginning of December, so food may be scarce. The vineyard is probably doing better.... there are a lot of owls in the area, and there has been periods with no snow cover, so the rabbits may not be as hungry as they are in the city. I'll need to scout the vineyard for animal damage in a few weeks.

3 comments:

Linnea said...

Sounds like your high tunnel is really doing its job! Do you think early bud break will be a problem? Shouldn't the temperature remain pretty good in there?

Jerrold said...

Yes ... I do think it will be a problem. At one time I thought I would put tarps over the high tunnel, in spring to keep it from getting warm too quickly, but I'm not sure that is practical. This year I'm going to evaluate what happens, and decide what I will do for next spring.

Linnea said...

Hm-m-m, quite a problem. I'll keep up with your reports and see how you make out. We hit almost -40 celcius a couple of days ago but we have a terrific snow cover so I think everything is under a nice thick blanket. Hope your vines do okay.