In the Netherlands, the fickle weather is over, and the sun is back. But, there has been light nightly frost again, Weer.nl reports. For many fruit growers, that means there is work to be done to prevent damage.

Early yesterday morning, fruit growers Andries Geluk and Erik van Rossum had a helicopter flying low over their orchards to combat the freezing temperatures' impact. "It moves the air, mixing the warmer and colder layers, so the temperature in the orchard rises by about 1.5˚C. That's just enough to protect the blossoms," Andries says.

Other fruit growers are also taking steps to protect the early blossoms from freezing. Early varieties like plums, cherries, and early pears are already in bloom, and in one of the Dutch fruit-growing regions, temperatures fell to -2˚C on Tuesday morning. "That can be fatal for the plum blossoms now in full bloom. If those freeze, we won't have any plums to sell," says plum grower Kris Franssens. He took precautions when the night frost alarm woke him at 4:30 yesterday.

"You go to bed, but you don't sleep," fruit grower Gerard Molema said. "On Tuesday morning, I started at 01:00, the morning before at 03:00. Once the buds freeze, it's over. Then there will either be no or much smaller fruit, which we, obviously, don't want." To prevent that, the grower uses a natural phenomenon: fighting cold with cold.

Many growers also took to Twitter to voice their concerns, and it became apparent that they are hard at work combatting frost damage. Here is a sampling of those posts.

Source - https://www.freshplaza.com