chacruna frost damage

[insearchwhy]

A foaf has 2 large viridis trees in a greenhouse in his garden one night when it was the coldest its been there for a long while and the silly guy left a window of his greenhouse open the plants got very damaged by the frost. All the leaves went brown the plants are still well alive and have a strong resiliant spirit after a few shakes on the trees about 80% of the leaves fell off which is quite alot. Now my foaf wants to gain any help from you guys onto whether you think they would still be active he has heard that stressed plants create more alkaloids but does not know if over stressed plants lose it. He brews and with his limited caapi left until he goes overseas he does not want to waste a brew. His interaction with the plant spirits are not reaveling anything about activity just lessons on growing in this climate so he thought this would be a wonderful help.

so thanks for your help and take care everyone.

[SaBReT00tH]

I've heard dead leaves are meant to be inactive, however IMO I think they still should be a little active which would be worthwhile especially if you have a large bunch of them FOAF found this with dead sally leaves once also ;).

[Tripitaka]

Definitely active!!

Leaves can sit in a hot car for months at a time with little apparent loss of alkaloids.

Well worth de-fatting if thats the path you want to go.

Would suggest a starting range of 50grams of leaf material with suitable MAOI if in brew.

Hey insearch I cant find your addy, can you resend and I will send some incense off to you.

The Palo santo was exquisite!

[planthelper]

I've heard dead leaves are meant to be inactive, however IMO I think they still should be a little active which would be worthwhile especially if you have a large bunch of them FOAF found this with dead sally leaves once also ;).

if dead leaves would be inactive, no brew would be working...

you mean, old fallen leaves don't have much grunt in them and i agree.

once you got used to brew with fresh leaves, you would find dried material quite unapealing.

my viridis plants never showed any signs of distress after experiencing some early morning ground frosts, in the open but in a shelterd position. maybe you kept the plant too dry aswell, i know they say keep drier over winter, but too dry is too stressfull for a viridis.

i think if you can shake the leaves off the plant, it was kept to dry. i never saw viridis frost damage, but i saw coffee frost damage, and in this case the leaves did not fall off right away, but stay on the plant, with a scourched appereance.

so my guess, too lil water stressed the plant, than frost (frost means zilch water available) made it worse.

aswell leaving the door open caused a sudden change in air moisture (suddenly very, very dry, frost air has zero water, glasshouse air has close to 100%), this probably was the worst factor.

so it was not the frost, but the carers shortcomming, sorry to say that.

Edited July 27, 2007 by planthelper

[insearchwhy]

thanks for all your help guys love your work planthelper your exactly right the water was cut off quite dramatically a month before the event and the expressing of love and interactions with the plants was also cut back quite dramatically aswell. I highly value your knowledge here thankyou it was spot on this was the initial feeling when it happened i sat with the plants for a long while and this was it they taught a great lesson in their needs and how to forfill them. Theres still life in the leaves hasnt got a dead leaf energy to them at all. 2 coffee plants in the same greenhouse had gotten browning on the tops but as you said leaves are very intact with the rest of the plant.

Tripitaka ill send you a pm after this would love some of your precious incense up to my last stick of palo santo until i head off overseas so beautiful timing. Some of those palo santo pecieces were amazing i had one that was just filled with amazing intricate patterns of that beautiful brown essential oil but most were great anyway!

lots of love to you all and thanks for your help

[Vertmorpheus]

The thing with frost is, it isn't going to treat the leaf the same way as a gentle natural browning off will. In the latter the plant for it's own reasons decides to draw water n goodies back out of that leaf to somewhere else, so the tasty things tend to stay behind just taking the water, chloro, fert salts etc with it (some people apparently ringbark their Digitatia deliciosis to improve the cure overall). Whereas with a frost burn, it is no different to putting a fresh green leaf in the freezer until every last cell freezes, then defrosting it nice and quick, til just about every last cell bursts... so the frosty leaves might be about the same state as if you'd picked em green, frozen, defrosted... probably not a real big deal in the short term, but with that many holes in the structure, if the leaves have hung out on the plant for a while, things might have gone a bit stale. However the actives tend to go if they oxidise I guess (no chemist here).

VM

[Stonehenge]

Most likely the plants will recover. I've heard about plants that were frozen down to the ground and grew back from the roots if they were well established. A lesson learned.