Re: Ice cubes in the garden?

jymarino 6/5/2011, 11:09 am

Wow these are some great ideas, keep them coming! We will be revisiting the experiment today since I didn't have a chance to put down the ice yesterday and worked all day.

On Friday the result after around 4-5 hours was that the squares only hand watered were bone dry on top, but the ones with 4-5 ice cubes were still moist on top. Not terribly scientific yet, but we will get there.

Today I hope to water, put ice down and make it to church on time. We'll see how that goes! What a Face

Dunkinjean 6/5/2011, 4:17 pm

In the past and present I have always added ice cubes to my few indoor plants throughout the year.

These were usually ice cubes that fell on the floor or I need to empty out of a glass.

I have also emptied a cooler of cold water into my garden in lieu of the sink. (Obviously from a cooler of beer and soda from a party) cheers

I just hate to waste water. So why not in the veg garden but I would gather you would need alot of ice....... :scratch:

Dunkinjean

FarmerValerie 6/6/2011, 8:24 am

Moist on the top down here does not mean much, it will evaporate within an hour or two. I check 1-2 inches down, as long as that is moist I don't worry. We just got our summer forcast, HOT with a chance of surprise thunderstorms in the afternoon, temps in the 100's. That's until October. Oh, it will cool off a bit on Friday, the high will be 92.

H_TX 6/6/2011, 2:34 pm

On my way home from work on Friday I bought some tulle and some meat thermometers (much easier to find than soil thermometers). I used a cup of ice water to kind of calibrate the two thermometers to make sure they were giving me the same temp. I put down some tulle and the two thermometers; one sticking through the tulle and one in bare soil. Then I thought about the ice so I poured the ice water onto the soil under the tulle. The soil temp dropped under the tulle due to the ice water but by bed time both thermometers were showing the same temp. I checked the temps throughout the day and they were within one degree of each other in the morning, noon and night. I am guessing that it would be less work (and possible cheaper) to just plant a few cilantro seeds every 2 or 3 weeks and let it bolt whenever it bolts.

Miss M 6/6/2011, 3:14 pm

Ice can be used to delay blooming in azaleas. It has long been rumored that the golf course at Augusta, GA does this to time the blooms for the Masters, but they deny doing so: http://www.augusta.com/masters/masters/natural_beauty.shtml

They may not, but others do: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3627113.html

jymarino 6/6/2011, 3:19 pm

We just put down ice again at about noon. I will see what happens later today. I do know that one of the lettuces that I did not give ice to has started bolting. Very interesting too since I've never seen lettuce make flowers before.

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