Protecting potatoes or other crops from possible frost.

Good evening. I wanna find out how can we protect our crops including potatoes from late or spring frost. Could we use mulch or wait till frost end. I've planted mine outside in the large black bags at my community farm. Are potatoes frost hardy this spring? I don't know how potatoes will survive a spring frost. Please catch me on this forum if you need me. Good night!

Typically I've heard that potatoes will get frozen by a frost but they'll send up new growth from the tuber and manage ok.  If they aren't too big, just mulch over them with some leaves and they should make it.  I did that one year with beans that had their first set of true leaves when a late frost came through.

I know a gal who throws large buckets over her plants at night if there is frost in the weather forecast. She removes the buckets at soon as the sun is out and the risk of frost is gone. I knew another person who cut the bottom of large plastic milk gallon jugs and set that over the plant, pushing it into the soil just enough so it would not blow away.

No fear of losing potatoes to frost after all in this spring climate? I've planted some that are small and sprouted. Could we also plant them in our greenhouses as long as they in the ground where it's warmer?

The potatoes also know when to pop up.  The volunteers from last year seem to pop out at the right time.  In a greenhouse they'll just think they are south of you a ways and come up when it makes sense.  Don't worry, they got this :)

Got ya! Could greens and carrots also survive spring frost?

I think they can handle a light frost but I'd do a bit of checking.  Or hopefully someone with better memory can chime in...

Are there any frost resilient crops this spring that we can plant right now? How do plants in the south react to frost as they are in the north? Crops get too ripe soon when they farther north.

Hi Blake,
Too many times I just let it be and see what happens, but I would typically use a light row cover or even an old sheet to cover them with.

In the Farmer boy book, didn't the family go out super early to poor water on the potatoes because they froze?

**Edit - nope, it was corn, I looked it up.

Blake, I used to run into this problem with tomatoes and late frosts.

My solution was to take a big, 30-50 gallon black garbage bag and fill it 1/4-1/3 full with water.  I then rolled the bag such that the water pressed down on the opening which was squeezed shut and held water overnight.  Ideally, I would put these bags out in the morning or night prior, sitting in the middle of my plants and leave the smooth bottom aimed up at the sky and let it soak up heat all day and warm the water.

At night I might or might not put a cloth or tarp over my plants, but in the morning, there was frost everywhere but my garden.  The water in the bags kept the local temperature above freezing and my tomatoes escaped just fine whereas otherwise they would have been frost killed.

I know that this is a little complex, but if you are concerned about serious temperature drops, having the warm water in bags really radiates out the heat.

I hope this helps,

Eric

I check the weather forecasting for Chicago area and it will be around 38F. Calm and clear night like this will have frost on the lower ground. If your potatoes just sprouted, you could simply cover them up by mounding the soil or mulch around the shoots. It's fine if you don't, more shoots will come up anyway.

My forcast is similar, low at 37 on Monday morning, but my potatoes are much bigger, 1 ft tall and wide. They are in a 12x8 area so I plan on placing a few milk crates in between and cover the patch up with several blankets.

For mulching, hilling up the soil around the base would be the easiest.  Another thing is to space the plants carefully so they will touch canopy to shade the ground without getting too crowded.

Do the mulch help keep the soil warmer to keep potatoes from freezing? If we wanted more potatoes, should we need a larger container and a little wider room to produce a crop full of them? Are there any containers out there provide sold soil warmth to keep them from freezing further as we already in the spring season?

Sorry I forgot you are growing them all in containers. Compared to planting in ground, soil/root temperature will fluctuate more. If the day temperature is high, the soil will warm up faster than the ground. A few hours to cool nights won't do much damage, but if it's prolonged freeze, the soil in a container has much less thermal mass to keep the heat.

I have one potato planted in a 5 gallon bucket. It is light enough to move around if it needs frost protection. I also mulch with some crushed dry leaves. The problem is not coldness but the side of the container getting too hot in sunlight. Potato likes it cool and high temperature will inhibit tuber formation. Since this container is standing alone, I plan on covering up the wall of the bucket.

In the south, do potatoes sprout earlier than the ones up north? We've seen north type winters push south marginalize growth and blooming periods for fruit trees and other edible crops and now that the El Nino out, La Nina loom. How do La Nina accelerate the growth of potatoes from a production standpoint? Could that make or break a later harvest or for all future harvests to come?

I just check my container potato. It's partly cloudy at 49F outside and the soil next to the bucket wall is already at 70F. Keep the soil cool would be critical to get a harvest. Currently I put the bucket next to the lawn mower to shield from afternoon sun.

A warmer than usual summer is in the outlook for most of the US this year. At least you could choose locations to make the container potatoes happy. Good luck.

Good observation of the potatoes! Sure needed some.