Two ordinary daily tasks just reminded me how important mass is when storing energy for the early garden. It is winter now and my garden has long been asleep but the wheels of the mind keep turning.
The other day we bought a 5 gallon jug of water for our kitchen drinking water fountain. When we came home we forgot it in the car. It was about -17C outside. By the time I remembered it 4 hours had passed. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t frozen. I was expecting a cracked bottle as the water froze and expanded, but everything was alright. This had earth shaking consequences for me. The bottle was in a store for a few days so the water was probably at room temperature of 21C. After it came home it was in our car which was in the shelter out of the wind.
The next event came when I was taking garbage out to the trash can. I had an empty plastic milk container in my hand because I had already sealed up the bag. It is a short walk and it was cold outside but that plastic keep making popping sounds. The air inside was cooling rapidly and contracting forcing the plastic inward and making popping sounds.
There are a couple lessons to take away from this. Of course I’m looking at readily available homemade solutions here that you can put into place in a few seconds, not professional grade solutions or special and expensive options. First, air doesn’t hold heat as well as water. Water is still the best available option that you have in your home already. I’ve been advocating milk jugs for some time, and they are great when you can put them in between something like a block of 4 peppers where they are sheltered from rapid cooling by wind. They work best when you have had a warm day for them to heat up but you are expecting a cool evening. They work even better in a row tunnel. However, there are times when you need more storage to release over a longer period of time, like a cool evening after a cloudy day with little heating. A 5 gallon jug or bigger would be a good solution. Especially if you have a row cover tunnel style season extender where you could put 2 or three evenly spaced jugs inside out of the wind.
The jug is also an excellent item to have on hand in the event of an emergency frost warning in the fall. You just put them out as needed, where needed. Make sure they are out early enough to warm up. 5 gallons is heavy to carry so you’ll probably want to fill then in place with a garden hose. Remember to plan early in the season and leave space for them when planting.
Hopefully these two winter time observations will help you get some new ideas to start your early garden and extend your season.