Why Protection is Needed

Hey there, greetings! We're going to take you through how we got ready for the frost that rolled through a few days ago. It got in the 20s in North Florida.

What We Used

This second and third row here is actually seedlings down the middle and I just covered the Middle with plastic ground covering. That way we can still fulfill tree orders and even get a few greens from these rows over the next three three months. If they rot out and die then we'll have nothing for several months, so it's very important to save these seedlings.

I got this plastic out here and then I essentially just dropped it in the middle and that way it just covered all these little baby trees that I cut back two weeks ago. I harvested all the greens off of all these trees so I got a couple kilos drying right now from all the leaves out here. I pretty much got the plastic all in the center. It didn't take long at all. It took us about 10 minutes per row and I did 2 rows. I was able to get the seedling trees covered up.

We have two really nice established rows of Moringa seedling trees in the middle of the orchard trees here that I ended up not being able to cover and take care of.

First Look

I just left these greens on here for you to see exactly what they'll look like after they get Frost. They are shot. They're still green but within the next day they will all be brown and falling off. It is like a graveyard out here.

Limitations of the Plastic Used

So how can you grow Moringa in a place that might get some Frost maybe a few nights a year? I just took some plastic ground cover that's usually in plant nurseries, and just cut and covered up the center here. It got freaking cold out here so it looks like they got a little damage too, but definitely not too bad. These aren't as thick as the orchard style trees and it might have gotten too cold and they might have been touching the plastic but I'm mostly worried about this root system. I really feel like this plastic helped to keep the frost off. This was my first time ever covering anything. First time ever having any kind of farm or field or Orchard or anything to even care for like this. I'm glad that we got this on camera.

A Bit of Damage

 

I was expecting these leaves to still be perfectly green and not even harmed but this plastic does have some holes in it and some of the cold air could still get in there. It was freezing last night. I'll go ahead and get these opened up, take the plastic covering off.

Protecting The Roots

We'll just keep up with the progress and see how they bounce back over the next couple months. I'm happy with the fact that the sticks here are still intact so these could still re-sprout and come back. We'll see what they look like in the next couple days after we get through this first cold Frost. I believe that they're going to make a great comeback. A lot of the stalks don't seem to be affected. As long as that water did not freeze getting down to the root then we're good. I was mostly worried about the frost being able to penetrate down into these brittle little sticks freezing the root system. Even if the stalks don't actually make it, the most important part is saving the root system. What the plastic covering prevented from happening was the trunk or the little stem from freezing. That water would then travel down and rot the root. I don't believe any of that happened here from what I just saw going down both of these rows. I'll grab one to see if the root system is in tact or if it was damaged.

Checking on the Roots

That's what you want to see. This is fine. That's all we wanted to do, protect the roots. We just wanted to make sure that this didn't freeze because if this stayed out and this water froze then this would travel down into the roots and freeze and that is what we don't want. We're going to be just fine. We can still ship these out as mature trees in a couple months. These trees are about to be almost a year old now and look at them. I'll go ahead and stick this back down but you can see, essentially we were able to save our beautiful Moringa seedlings as well as a

whole line of Moringa sticks. How many seedlings are in here? Probably a thousand. I mean you can see them going all the way down the middle here and I believe even the the warmth and the heat from some many living things was also able to help radiate heat and save all of these root systems.

Bigger Orchard Trees

Once the the orchard trees get thick enough and big enough we really won't be

worried about them. These big trees over here are really thick. This one here that's really thick, you have nothing to worry about. She'll be fine. She's definitely not

Winter is not Over

 

Here we are middle of winter. We're gonna come back here and we'll share with you guys some updates here as the winter time progresses.

Peace, love, and prosperous growing!