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Random Thoughts on Insulation

Message from Jim Wilmington DE 7a

It usually strikes me strange when I hear of folks wrapping or insulating parts of plants far removed from the soil. Unless there is an interior heat source, how does wrapping a spear or growing point help keep it warmer? It should be the same temperature inside as out. Where wrapping DOES have benefits is with regard to ameliorating the desiccating influence of wind/sun.

Making a shelter for a plant, as long as it includes within it access to the soil (mulched soil or not), WOULD help, temperature-wise. In that case, you are using the ground as a heat source and bottling up that warmth within the structure. We're only talking a couple of degrees advantage, but if you're hovering around the fatal temperature for a plant, it could make all the difference in the world come March.

Just speaking logically, shelters and mulching should work. Both by using heat radiated off the top of the soil. But wrapping remote sections of plants, logically, should not.

Even so, as my doctor said when I asked him if taking vitamins every day was good, "It can't hurt. And it just might help."





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