Dave, I think you are pushing the limit a little on the 10 degree figure. You may be right as I have never had to push it to that limit. It's just what the manufacturer claims for it. I have had to count on it for some 26-27 degree nites and had no problems. As to the control of dirt/ground insect access with it, weed barrier and careful tucking of the Reemay around the base of the plants eliminates most of that for me. But even without that block you have eliminated all the air access and so cut the potential problems by 2/3. ;) I can't even get that with double plastic layer on a greenhouse. Air chamber double-wrap still doesn't give you 10 degrees? That's good to know. I realize you're way north of me and your greenhouses are quite a bit larger than my small 10x20' one so the cost might be prohibitive for you, but have you considered the bubble-wrap blankets? We bought ours from Farm Tek Supply at a good price and it's on its 5th year with only a few tears. With no or little wind I can get 20 degrees difference inside to outside temps with it. Just a thought. ;) Dave

I am pretty sure it is Garden Web and not you. It's been acting up for a week or two now. I'm sure they're working on getting it fixed. I haven't bought any Agri-bon 19 in either 4 or 5 years, but that does sound like a good price to me, especially since it includes shipping. My Agri-bon has lasted forever (considering it is so lightweight) and I've been really pleased with it. Piece by piece, though, it is becoming worn out and torn and I'll need to replace it sometime soon. The most recent roll of row cover I purchased (this spring) was an ultra heavy-duty frost blanket and gives at least 10 degrees of protection. I only used it in April and May and I am looking forward to seeing how well it works this fall or winter. It was great in spring, and I just barely ordered it in the nick of time because, you know, we just kept having all those late cold spells and I just kept planting anyway. I was able to almost get everything planted on time despite the cold spells since I had the frost blanket to keep the young plants from freezing. As far as when row cover is needed on the broccoli plants, it just depends. Some years the broccoli pests are pretty much non-existent in late summer and fall and I don't need to use it. Other years, their population is heavy and I do use it. What I have noticed here is that when the summer is very hot and dry, the native brassicas used by those same pests all die in the heat and there aren't any of the moths, butterflies or their caterpillars around in the fall. In cooler, rainier summers, the weed-type brassicas survive and so do the pests. I just plant without row cover and then use it if I start seeing pest damage. Usually, when I do that, I will spray the plants with Bt right before I put the row cover over the plants, so that the Bt will kill any brassica pests on the plants. Otherwise, there is the risk of trapping pests underneath the row cover,which clearly is not desirable. It has not been dry enough here this summer for the weedy brassicas to die, although as I mow, I've been cutting them down in the pastures. Still, if they are alive in our pastures, they are alive in other pastures, so I'll be watching the fall brassicas for pests very carefully after I plant them. I usually don't cover anything until I've first tried it without row covers. Then, if damage appears, I try to get all the pests off the plants first, and then put the row cover over the row of plants. I will carefully check underneath the row covers for several days to be sure I didn't accidentally leave pests under the row covers. Remember too, that many pests spend part of their life cycle in the soil or in garden debris, so it is important when using row cover to rotate a crop to a new area each time you plant it so you aren't putting row cover over plants in soil that may have pests in the soil just waiting to hatch out and infest the plants.This is especially critical with Colorado potato beetles. Grasshoppers are odd ducks. I never really know what they will hit, although in the spring I always see the damage first on catnip and lemon balm. Some years they seem to select beans as their favorite plant, but the next year it might be tomato plants. In my garden they almost never bother cucumber or squash leaves, though, so I often try to hide other plants within a planting of cukes or squash. I don't cover anything when it is first planted unless I have an ongoing pest problem, but am prepared to cover up anything and everything based on wherever the damage appears. Sometimes it appears early and sometimes I can have new plants go weeks or months before something starts devouring them. Summer beans probably are an exception. Grasshoppers find beans irrresistible in July and early August, but often don't bother the plants after about mid-August. I am not sure if that is because they have moved on to something else they like better, or what. In my new back garden, which is surrounded by pasture land on all 4 sides, the only plants they were eating in July was okra leaves at first. Then they went on a big binge eating ornamental sweet potato foliage. Now they've started eating bean foliage, but only the foliage of scarlet runner beans so far, and since I planted those for the enjoyment of the hummingbirds, I am not terribly distressed about that. They haven't bothered the foliage of the other 9 pole bean varieties I'm growing yet...just the scarlet runner beans which seems odd, but that is how they are. Meanwhile in the front garden, they are only eating the foliage of rose mallow, morning glories, moonflower vines and 5 varieties of southern peas,along with the catnip and lemon balm that they seem to find irresistible year-round. I've always got a stack of hoops, a bucket of the U-shaped landscape fabric staples, and row cover in my garden shed ready to go because you never know when a specific pest will hit or what it will hit. Dawn

Hi Sheila, I don't think the Agribon-19 will necessarily give you 8 degrees of protection if doubled, but it should give at least 6 or 7. A lot depends on how warm the ground still is (this works in your favor since this is the first big cold spell of the season and the ground remains relatively warm), how windy it is (uh oh....this front will be bringing the wind!) and when you cover up the plants. When I use Agribon-19 doubled, I do expect 8 degrees of protection and likely I get it, but it just isn't guaranteed. To ensure your Agribon-19 will keep your plants as warm as possible, put it on the plants long before sunset. You want for it to capture and retain as much of the daytime heating that has warmed up the earth as you possibly can. I like to get the Agribon on the plants shortly after lunch time while the earth is nice and warm. With the row cover over the plants, more of the heat will be retained. Be sure you weigh down the edges of the fabric as completely as possible. I normally use metal fence posts or pieces of rebar laid along the edges of the row cover to ensure the wind doesn't lift it up and expose some plants. I have used the U-shaped metal landscape staples that often are used to hold landscape mulch fabric in place and they work well enough but they put holes in the fabric (which isn't the end of the world). You can use anything that will hold down the edges of the fabric in the face of strong wind. Your cool-season crops normally start to show damage when the air temperatures drop below 24-25 degrees. Most of them can tolerate some amount of frost and with some of them, like kale or brussels sprouts, exposure to cold weather actually improves their flavor. Most of the crops you listed would tolerate the temperatures you're expecting, and they might even tolerate 25 degrees with little to no damage without being covered, but..... The big "but" in all this relates to how much cold exposure they've had prior to this cold spell. If they've already been exposed to a lot of near-freezing temperatures, they likely have hardened off some to the cold and are less likely to be damaged even if uncovered. However, if your weather has been relatively mild and warm and they have a lot of tender growth that has little prior exposure to freezing temperatures, they could suffer more damage if left uncovered. Based on the plants you listed, I wouldn't expect damage if they are covered with a double layer of Agribon-19 unless your temperatures fall significantly lower than expected. If you were to get sleet or freezing rain, all bets are off. One way to help the plants stay even warmer is to put containers of water alongside the rows of plants and cover the containers with the row cover. I like to use 5-gallon buckets and cat litter buckets, and after saving them all for the last 15 years, I have quite a large supply of them. However, in a pinch when we were having either very late frosts/freezes in spring or very early frosts/freezes in fall and I had more rows of crops than I had buckets of water, I've even placed a case of bottled water (16 or 20 oz. bottles) out on the driveway or concrete patio all day to let the water in the bottles heat up and then I've laid the bottles horizontally on the ground alongside the plants right before I covered them up. The bottles function as solar collectors and help keep the ground and surrounding plants a little warmer. I've used Agribon-19 for at least a decade and I normally don't see damage on plants covered with a double layer of it until we hit roughly 24-26 degrees. It depends on the other factors above, and obviously in the fall I've seen less damage due to the warmth of the earth. In February or early March when the earth is a lot cooler, a double layer of Agribon-19 might only give 6 degrees of protection. I've always wondered how much of a difference wind chill makes, because I know that I'll see more damage on very, very cold nights if the weather was windy than on wind-free nights with the same temperatures. Remember, too, that even if your plants were to be significantly damaged by this week's cold weather, they are likely to survive. I'd had fall garden plants freeze completely to the ground in 16-18 degree weather, and then almost immediately begin putting out new growth within a couple of days of the date that the freeze damage occurred. However, if they've been exposed to 10-12 degree weather and they freeze, they may die, although I've had Swiss chard survive down to the mid-teens uncovered, and it has survived single-digit temperatures under two layers of Agribon. Last year, using a double layer of Agribon-19 and cat littler buckets filled with water, I was able to keep lettuce, collards, turnips, and other winter greens growing and producing until we had an 11-degree night. After that night, everything in the ground froze, but the lettuce in containers near the concrete patio survived all winter. I did have their container (which is a black rubber cattle feed trough that sits elevated a foot or so above ground on metal legs) surrounded by cat litter buckets filled with water and covered in a sheet of black plastic to help the water buckets heat up and retain the heat). On extra cold nights (anything with a forecast low below 20 degrees), I threw a couple of moving blankets over the floating row cover for extra protection. At about 16-18 degrees, the plants in the trough suffered minor freeze damage if they were covered only by a double layer of row cover, but with the blankets over them on those really cold nights, they weren't damaged until the temperatures got down to 11-12 degrees. It is the first time I've kept lettuce alive all winter outside, and we were able to harvest and eat the lettuce and mesclun greens from that container until about April. By the time they were starting to bolt, the spring-planted lettuce was large enough to harvest and use. It is extra-important to make sure there's no where the wind can blow the fabric off the plants. I had the fabric rip loose and blow around in a windstorm one night last year, and the plants in the area of the rip had freeze damage while the covered plants had none. The damaged ones were half covered because only part of the fabric came out from underneath the pole that was laid on top of it, but being half covered wasn't good enough. Hope this helps, Dawn

Whoops! I'm taking too long to compose again---watching AFV while I'm doing it! Here's my take on the subject, B2, written before I saw your reply! I way second Dan's comments about your little garden pup tent, B2. It would need to be opened every day, and even if you managed to stake the bottom of it down securely, the first time a good gust of wind blew into the open side, I suspect it would rip right off of the grommets and be in Kansas by the time you got home. I really don't think it would help much with squash either. If you sow them directly in the ground this year, after danger of frost, I think they'll do much better than the ones you started inside last year. Then, after they come up, keep an eye on overnite temps, just in case, and you can easily cover them with a large pot or a corrugated cardboard box overnite on the few nites it might get too cold for them, and by the time they get too big for a pot or box, overnite temps shouldn't be any problem anymore--and even if we still got an unusually cold nite, you could still throw an old bed sheet (or row cover) over them for the nite. Summer squash just don't take that long to start producing, and starting them after danger of frost gives you plenty of time for a good crop. (Something else I'd worry about! Squash gets mildew VERY easily, and if it were me, I'd be afraid that if they were closed up under something that didn't allow for at least some air circulation, they just might develop the mildew very early on, and once they get it, it's virtually impossible to get rid of it again.) With spinach, you don't want the little pup tent---unless you're gonna air condition it! ;-) Spinach LOVES cold temps, and if it was getting heated up during the day in the tent, I think it would just cause it to bolt sooner. No special care for spinach! Just get it in the ground really, really early--when it's still cold out! Dan, sorry I never got back here, but thank you for the info and recommendations up on top when I first posted! And I was gonna ask what EMT was too (Emergency Medical Technician!), so thank you for asking B2! When I was a kid, conduit was just---well---conduit! It's what my parents made our big growing quonsets out of---and that was LONG before anybody dreamt of PVC! "Black poly pipe" seems to me it's kind of flexible/floppy to do a very stable support job. Have you ever used it? (You say there's some in that picture, but I sure can't figure out which it is!) How does it compare to PVC? PVC is what I was thinking of using if I decided I needed to put in some sort of support! I'm thinking that with some "connectors" from Lowe's, HD, or Ace, I could fairly easily put together some little row-size hoop tunnels to fend off the leaf miners in spring! Or maybe I'll come kidnap you some nite, and for "ransom" I'll make you build some good protection structures for me! ;-) You seem to be really good at inventing protection and support structures! I'm not really worried about cold protection! My big problem is getting the cold crops in before it gets too HOT out! LOL! Do you know what brand the stuff Nick's carries is, Dan? You're awfully far away from me! I'll be going to Paulino's (on a Wednesday Senior Discount Day) soon to get another bale of soil, and I'll check out what the lightest weight row cover they carry is. Kat, I checked Pellon out online a little bit more and was very surprised to see it comes in 20" widths! It's been a long time since I bought any, but I thought I remembered it being wider than that! But I did find--online--a Pellon product that might be a possibility, and if I get over to the local JoAnn, I think I'll check it out if they carry it. It's 45" wide, and a 10 yard bolt is just $16.50---online! Forty five inches would be WAY wide enough for what I want it for, and if it's thin enough, that would be a pretty good deal---IF they carry it! At least I have a couple more months to figure out what I want to do! Wanna help me kidnap Dan, B2??? Skybird