(this is worse)
fighting climate change by burning petroleum! Yay
They are fighting not only the symptoms, but also the root cause
This is only done when there’s an unexpected frost in spring or summer when the poly tunnels have been taken away.
A while ago, I saw a documentary where they had a big-ass fan on an apple orchard, which they would turn on early in the morning.
The problem is that when it cools down in the night, it can dip below freezing temperatures, which would damage the blossoms, if it stays that low for too long. And the cold air gets trapped between the apple trees, so just creating some artificial wind is apparently a pretty good solution to untrap it and therefore allow things to warm back up as soon as the sun hits.
Just found it interesting that this is a common enough problem, without requiring more drastic solutions like actual heating, so that they came up with this idea.
The documentary is in German, but you can see it at 5:00 here: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/Y3JpZDovL3dkci5kZS9CZWl0cmFnLXNvcGhvcmEtNzJhZTQ5NTctNDkxOS00YTRkLTk0ZTItMGU0YWQwYzFkODE1
Some varieties of apples blooms are frost sensitive. Others can shrug off a frost and not really care. It’s a genetic difference in the cultivars.
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/biol-2025-1107/html
So if you see a big ass fan in the orchard, it’s because the grower wanted to push a variety that is not well adapted to the local environment.
don’t you only see these being used when other preferable infrastructure has already failed, and it’s like, an emergency or something?
That’s exactly why this is done. It’s an emergency operation if there is a sudden freeze that would kill the vines.
A sudden freeze will not kill the vines. Grapes are extremely tough. It can hurt the flower buds though. A severe enough freeze can cut the yield.
For wine grapes less fruit in the bunches = lower quality wine.
