Renewable Farming

Ideas to help crops recover from frost and cold-weather stress

AgriEnergy Resources today advised their farmer clients five ways to help your crops recover from freezing damage. We’re posting these recommendations below — plus a suggestion for using WakeUP to multiply effectiveness of each foliar product:

Add 5 ounces of WakeUP Spring per acre to your spray water before tank-mixing the recommended nutrient or biological product. The WakeUP will:

  • Enhance uniform leaf coverage,
  • Speed absorption into crop metabolism and
  • Mobilize leaf sugars through the crop system. 

WakeUP is formulated entirely from plant-based ingredients, most of which are forms of sugars and alcohol in a colloidal form. Crops recognize WakeUP as energy that the leaf can metabolize along with NPK, micronutrients and biostimulants.

In an earlier report, we recommended foliar spraying tender young crops with WakeUP and sugar as a way of gaining a couple of degrees of freeze protection. A few days ago, one of our Renewable Farming team members sprayed young tomatoes with WakeUP Spring, sugar and some nutrients like those in the AgriEnergy list below. Our local weather station recorded a low of 28 degrees F. for about four hours. Some of the tomatoes suffered freeze damage, but most of the vegetable crops came through well. (We’ve done this in previous years, and didn’t leave unsprayed veggies as a comparison check.)

WakeUP is available from AgriEnergy Resources (815-872-1190) in Princeton, Illinois, or directly from us at Renewable Farming.

Sprayed with WakeUP before two nights of below-freezing temps

Here’s an example of a soybean that was sprayed with WakeUP which survived two successive lows of 30 degrees and 29 degrees. 

We’re watching the further development of a soybean field sprayed with WakeUP and sugar about 48 hours before a freeze event. The beans were just showing cotyledons. We’ve never tried spraying beans that small for frost protection, so we may learn something as the beans push trifoliates.

Below is a reprint from AgriEnergy’s advice on frost recovery:

 

What can be done as a foliar application to re-energize crops affected by a frost? 
 
  • Replace the minerals that have been lost in the dead or damaged tissues.  Replace the lost N, P, K, and traces with products such as Accelerator, TracePak, MicroTech AG, and Micrel Total. (Your rep will help you select the best trace package for your crop).
  • Incorporate anti-oxidants such as Drammatic O Fish into the product to directly counter these abiotic stresses
  • Reinforce the spray with the beneficial bacteria from SP-1. The good microbes that live in partnership with plants, below and above ground, got hammered too.
  • Wait to apply these products until after the plants have started to rebound from the frost damage. It does little good to apply foliar nutrition if the plant is unable to take it in or use it.
  • Do so in a gentle manner. These plants are injured and should be nursed. All of the products mentioned above are in this category.
 
If you grow in a region susceptible to late frost events, you may want to consider a pre-emptive application of Drammatic Fish. This product will lower the freezing point of the plant, is often effective in mitigating frost damage, and will set up your plant for a faster recovery from a frost event.