I found a little excerpt from another grower who uses copper mixed with sulfur to give him a couple of added degrees of frost protection:

His program changes a bit for frost prone areas. He mixes in copper with sulfur early from bud break to mid April. The copper kills ice nucleating bacterial and can give a vineyard one to two degrees of added frost protection.

“Timing is everything using copper. It has to be on 24 hours before a frost for it to do any good. Frost usually follows a rain,” he said. The Catch 22 dilemma is “probably the most difficult timing decision we make all year…put the copper on too early and the rain will wash it off, negating any frost control benefit,” said Roche.

“Frost can be significant on the coast ever three or fours years…maybe not in entire vineyards but in pockets. You can get a frost that burns the tips or one where you lose the entire crop. Frost can be costly on the coast,” he said.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2005 at 10:17 am and is filed under Frost Protection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.