What's the most inexpensive way to protect from a freeze

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Stvrob

get up real early, before the frost starts. Make several very smoky fires, maybe even some used motor oil. Or piles of wet leaves. If it's a frosty night, smoke will linger near the ground and prevent UV radiation from being radiated toward the sky.

Not evironmentally sound, but that's what we did on the farm where I was raised. My father would have taken old tires and made piles of them when expecting a too early freeze, we got up at about 4 AM, went out and poured gasoline on them, and that heavy smoke was everywhere.

It's known that those smoke particles created what are called ice nuclei which raised the temp of the leaves.

Did it bother the neigbors? Probably, but originally there were no neighbors. My grandfather had bought 90 acres from the Shakers for 5K , sold half of that for 6K to someone else and paid off the mortgage, so we originally had 45 acres and my grandfather sold off building lots that created several roads. Many rich folks bought lots and one was purchased by Eleanor Roosevelt for her then bodyguard and she used to walk down to visit with my grandmother and gave some fuzzy toy animals to my brother and myself.

Ah, memories.

Carolyn, also remembering that our kitchen at the farm was originally a log cabin and the Shakers had built an addition to that and then built the main house in 1883 which we still called the new addition.