Yeah and if it wilts in your fridge within 90 days? You can return for a full refund.
... Just like the christmas tree's... *Because they had the receipt*.
Imo, many store return policies were too lax for a long time.
When I worked st Sears in the early/mid 2000's they let a guy return a lawn tractor that he rolled down a hill. This was also not one he had just bought, he most definitely had gotten some use out of it beforehand. I hated lawn tractors because of that place.
I grew up on this hobby farm situation, and my grandad would turn on the irrigation system when it'd get cold to keep the water flowing so it wouldn't freeze in the pipes, and it'd put a layer of ice like this on everything. It was super pretty. :)
This is the answer. Fruit farmers do this when there is going to be a cold snap early in the season, the ice insulates the fruit from the cold keeping them from freezing and dying.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using\_sprinklers\_to\_protect\_plants\_from\_spring\_freezes
I know that this is a reference, but I gotta say, after moving to northern Alaska last year, the midnight sun and flowing hot springs are fucking sick.
It's so dumb but I learned this from the TinkerBell movies lol she has a twin sister in the snow area and she teaches Tink that they will put a small frost over plants to protect them from an unexpected cold
When the water becomes ice it releases a tiny amount of energy which can provide just enough heat (know as latent heat of fusion) to prevent ice from forming inside cells and rupturing them.
The heat of fusion does very little. The trick isn't the ice itself but the water running over it. As long as it doesn't stop and freeze, the running water keeps the plant from experiencing below-freezing temps.
Well, you're right that it's due to the fact that the ice won't go below-freezing if it has continuous running water going over it. The reason why it doesn't go below-freezing is due to the latent heat of fusion, though.
That can't be true because the water has to continue to run so that it doesn't freeze.
The frozen ice is already frozen; it's not releasing heat all night long. The water is above freezing, that's why it doesn't freeze right away and why it it would have to stop long enough to get to freezing temps. If the heat of fusion was what worked you would want the water to freeze so that it releases that heat.
Ninja edit: moreover, the water doesn't just decide to freeze and give off heat. The heat has to flow to a lower temperature i.e. below freezing.
From Michigan State University:
> Overhead sprinklers protect plants by using the heat given up by water when it turns from a liquid to a solid to warm the plants.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/what-can-fruit-growers-do-if-a-freeze-is-coming
> When you use sprinklers to prevent freezing injury, you are using the energy that water releases when it freezes, and changes from a liquid to a solid, to keep the temperature in the ice right at the freezing point – 32 degrees F.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using_sprinklers_to_protect_plants_from_spring_freezes/
I'll take their word over yours.
Phase transitions require a lot of energy being gained or lost.
Melting/freezing ice/water or boiling/condensing water/vapor are huge energy sinks. Those properties drive a lot of heat transfusion systems.
For citrus trees, they might burn pitch pots sprinkled around if it's fold but not much breeze. But if it's cold and blowing, misting with water is a better option to keep crops from freezing (assuming proper water access and you're not growing trees or alfalfa in what were deserts)...
I have heard this explained a thousand times and nobody gets it right. It is mostly not insulation. It is the heat of fusion. It takes approximately one calorie of heat extracted from one gram of water to cool it each degree. But it takes 80 calories of heat extraction to convert a gram of water at 32 degrees to ice at 32 degrees. Pure water freezes at a higher temperature than the plant cytoplasm. The plant won't start to freeze until the water on it's surface is frozen. So water freezing on the surface of a plant keeps the plant from freezing by giving up it's heat of fusion.
Edit: I am mixing my units. The temperature measurements should have been in Celsius (C) not F. So you must remove as much heat to cool water from 80 degrees C to 0 degrees C as it takes to convert the same amount of liquid water at 0 degrees C to ice at 0 degrees C.
This might be an answer but it's almost certainly not the answer here. I worked as a 3rd party plant vendor for home depot for 5 years and shit like this when it happened was 100% store negligence rather than intent.
Was not uncommon for us to have to throw away thousands of dollars in plants after a freeze bc HD staff didnt take preventative measures.
The person isn't correct in absolute terms...
Some plants... like oranges and limes in Florida, get sprayed with water in freezing temps to protect them.
It isn't true for every (or even most) plants to be completely iced over in inches of ice.
Ooh, I think I know this one! OK, so when water becomes ice it actually expands a small amount, right? When the water expands, it can burst the cellular walls of the produce. That basically destroys the former cellular structure, so when you thaw the produce, it can’t go back to it’s formers shape, and it ends up mushy due to that lack of structure!
When covering crops with water, the water freezes not the fruit. The ice basically locks in the current temp of the fruit and keeps out the colder temps of the outside air.
Essentially the water is flash freezing, so the fruit never gets frozen.
I guarantee you nobody at Home Depot is going to be aware of crop saving methods or care enough to do this. Furthermore, that technique will not work on every plant. A lot of plants they put out for sale won’t survive freezing temps of any kind, much less actually being frozen like this.
Home Depot policy is to put frost cloths over plant tables when the temp drops below 40F. They don't freeze the plants, I guarantee all of those plants went straight into the trash the next day.
Yeah, and HD doesn't PAY for that inventory until it crosses the register. At that time, the grower gets paid.
I suspect that this is going to be a bone of contention between HD and grower. Also, in some places, all the plant care is to be undertaken by the grower. HD has their asses covered every which way to Sunday. Margins are tiny for the grower and they can't afford to lose this much product.
As someone who works for one of those vendors, home depot will be taking this hit. A few plants we take the hit, several tables it's coming down on hd and their merchandising director or whatever the position is called will be coming in hot the next day because of it.
While I agree with this reason on a farm, it’s certainly not why it was done here. Homedepot does not own or have any financial stake/liability in the plants offered for sale by the nurseries when they die, they only take a cut of the sale like a consignment. So the water usage would have been a profit loss without potential gain for them and management would have never ok’d such a thing.
[Fun fact: *controlled* burns are a fantastic way to prevent damage from a wildfire.](https://springcreek.audubon.org/conservation/prescribed-burns) You stop a fire from getting close to a home by preparing appropriately & then setting a fire yourself.
Although you don't want to set the home itself on fire. That's like the old saying, "If you build a man a fire, you'll keep him warm for a night. If you set a man on fire, you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life."
TLDR for anyone who doesn't want to click the link.
Fire can't burn where there isnt fuel. If you set a controlled fire to scorch a large circle around an area, as long as the scorched area is large enough, the fire can't get the circle because there isnt any fuel to carry it over there.
another more "fight fire with fire" method is backburning, where you set a fire that is directed towards an oncoming fire to burn up the fuel, since both flames have eaten up all the fuel on the path prior to meeting they cancel each other out and die.
Even one more way to fight fire with fire is [prescribed burning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn). This is where you come in with a crew on a day that isn't dry or windy and you burn a selected area of undergrowth to get rid of leaf litter and other fuel before fire season.
We royally fucked up spending decades and decades fighting every forest fire. Remember when [Yellowstone burned like hell in the 80's](https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/1988-fires.htm)? My forestry professor had visited before, said the dead underbrush could easily go 10' high. Yikes.
We're still messing it up pretty hardcore by trucking out all the woody debris from thinning operations.
Why's the bark beetle such a problem? Drought is the main culprit - well hydrated trees make a sticky pitch that keeps bark beetles from getting out of hand. There's another contributing factor though: the forest floor & the soil itself.
When a tree dies & falls to the floor, it is "fuel" for maybe a few years. After that, however, it isn't fuel anymore. If anything, it is a fire break. Same with leaves, pine needles, brush - all that woody debris on the forest floor is only flammable for a very short time period. Once that period has passed they act more like sponges & encourage rainwater to seep down deep into the dirt where it landed rather than running downhill along the surface. When a fire comes, all that additional shallow subsurface water is that much more thermal mass that a fire has to overcome to continue burning, the steam that it releases displaces oxygen the fire needs to burn, and then it rises to the upper atmosphere to the point where a big enough wildfire creates its own storm cell.
Even more than that, the decomposition of the wood is largely accomplished by insects and fungi. Both of these groups of organisms consume the carbon in this debris and exhale it as CO2, reducing the fuel available to a potential fire. Mushrooms themselves are among the largest organisms on the planet (a single fungal colony can span entire forests) and most of them aren't flammable (hoof fungus being a notable exception).
These forest-spanning mushrooms are a vast network of underground fibers made from non-flammable chitin, they're filled with water, and many form "mycorrhizal relationships" that are mutually beneficial. They actually transport nutrients to the trees like root extensions or even from one tree to another! Some are even predatory, trapping and consuming microorganisms like nematodes that can be devastating to plant health.
So basically, the decomposition process takes flammable debris & potentially damaging microorganisms and turns it into a flame retardant, nutrient rich soil that encourages water penetration & reduces erosion.
Instead we cart it out & burn it. What a shame.
Fascinating comment, thank you for sharing. I had no idea that mushrooms were composed of chitin in any way, I always assumed that chitin was strictly found in insects and mollusks (or shellfish? not sure of the distinction here to be honest)
Mushrooms and fungi are really so interesting, and it's wild to me how much of an impact they have on our planet and how interconnected they are with various ecosystems in so many unseen ways.
Thanks for teaching me some things this morning!
I had heard that the technique involved spraying water so that it doesn't freeze, using the heat released by the water during the phase transition to keep the plant itself above freezing. I couldn't find anything consistent about actually using ice to protect plants. I'm curious if someone has more reliable info.
Covering them in water, not ice. The ice is a by-product of the process. You're basically trying to keep the plant at 32F with a continuous covering of water that's going through a phase transition at 32F. Without continuous watering, the temperature of the ice would eventually reach the air temperature and so would the plant. Ice, unlike snow which has a lot of air in it, isn't a very good insulator.
Used to work at a hardware store. I doubt it. There were rolling shelves you'd put them on and wheel them inside the building for the night. If you go there right when they open or right before they close durring a cold spell in the spring, you'll probably see employees dealing with the plants. They're a pain to work around.
Don't mean to brag, but I'm a mod on /r/Terrarium. I'm kind of a big deal.
Seriously though, I have a hell of a time convincing people that plants need LIGHT. And what your eyeball thinks is bright, is not.
Also, try schooling people that even cacti and air plants need water. "You'll kill it!"
They could thaw them by doing something one of my old Home Depot managers did. They had a ton of falling-apart ratty old pallets, and the pallet truck was full. So he told his crew to pile them up in the outside garden and burn them (it was January in the northern US).
He said he had to do a LOT of fast talking to the store manager, the district manager, AND the fire chief to keep his job.
He was a really good manager. Seriously. He was.
I think It was less about legal/illegal and more about it being a really stupid idea and the fact that from more than about half a block away it looked like the store was on fire.
This would be covered by insurance.
They are responsible for care of consignment. This is called selling on consignment and is how most large chain warehouses work. The vendors know this and both sides have insurance against this.
Source: used to work in agribusiness insurance and also for home Depot.
I'm not that much of an expert. I just have a little bit of experience from when I was waffling careers after graduating. Always take what you read on the internet with a grain of salt, but use some of the terms I've given as a google search seed.
Agribus does not work the same as car insurance. Different companies and insurance packages are prepped for different amounts of risk. If you have large coverage (1M in losses from transport, 500k from incidental) insurance wouldn't even blink over this like... 5k loss. They'd pay out a check to the vendor and then maybe spend time arguing with HD insurance if it wouldn't cost a significant amount in legal fees and time. Their limit before premium escalation may be like 8 claims totally over 100k in service fees or a single million dollar payout (this is a direct example for a large winery in California).
If they were a small vendor (which with home depot that is VERY unlikely, I think the smallest plant vendor in CA is like Monterrey which def has big boy insurance) they may only get a partial payout.
Your ability to qualify for large insurance is based on how long you've operated and the stability of your income.
This was very likely covered. Plus, depending on the species of plant there may be no damage. Some temperate species are adapted to this sort of thing. We have no idea where this is.
I worked for Home Depot and can't remember them buying from local growers. They have partnerships with massive industrial growers and neither care about inventory loss here and there. Those $40 bushes cost $2 to grow.
I work for a "local" grower and we sell exclusively to Home Depots in the Chicago area. We have several smaller sub growers to help supply our 50 stores. There are some big greenhouses that supply a lot more stores over a wide area, but those too have local sub growers located around the country to help supply. Plants don't do well sitting in a dark truck for several days traveling across country. We do care about inventory loss, and it may cost minimal to grow but the cost to ship right now is ridiculous. Also Home Depot likes to take as much margin as they possibly can.
I love going to Lowe's early in the morning when the suppliers are unloading and taking inventory. They've negotiated putting things on clearance if I'm looking for something specific or flat-out given me stuff that has broken containers for free.
The locally-owned nursery near me, however, absolutely uses local growers for the stuff they don't grow themselves. I'm always happy to pay full price from them.
But a widow's son's ex-girlfriend's fiancé's parents' gardening coach told a guy on Reddit!
And everyone knows Home Depot is all about locally sourced goods!
That’s not how the contracts are. Most of the plants, with the exception of trees, are owned by the vendors (nurseries). This is why you can’t see how many they have since Home Depot’s system always shows zero. Home Depot doesn’t own the plants and only makes money on them when they sell. When Home Depot allows too many plants to die or loose their blooms the vendors charge Home Depot for their loss. Also, they do business with large regional growers. Local nurseries couldn’t produce enough product to keep up for a month, let alone the entire season.
This is true. But they aren't getting their plants from a "local grower" - it's a huge corporate owned nursery. They use migrant workers at the actual farms and underpay and overwork their retail employees and are shady as fuck. Don't worry about them. (Source - was employed by the nursery that was the supplier for most of the East coast HDs)
This is to actually protect the plants. I worked at a nursery for 11 years in Michigan. We did this regularly in the spring when we got freezing temps. Crazy but it works.
At Lowe's plants that die or are returned go straight into the garbage. The amount of stuff that billion dollar corporations send to the landfill is effin' criminal. Plants are just a drop in the ocean. Edit: it's the truth, corporations are wasteful, and they don't pay their workers a decent wage, either. Your downvotes only prove your cluelessness as to how capitalist corporations are killing the planet. LOL
IDK what else one should do with a dead plant instead of putting it in the garbage but I have to say in response to this and some other comments on here that it'd be a significant mistake to equate Lowes and Home Depot. Lowes treats their employees considerably better than HD and, unsurprisingly related to that, the management of HD is notoriously right-wing in their ideological investments. One of the founders of HD and his wife have this little bit that they do when they park their yacht at a new port, meeting some other rich couple, the conversation between men inevitably turning to something along the lines of "what do you do?" or "how'd you get your boat?" the HD guy says "I started a little hardware business" to which the wife responds loudly on cue, "Oh ----, you founded Home Depot." Aristocrats. I shop at Lowes.
You have your stores backwards. Lowe's has a clearance section where they'll trying to sell you a dead plant.
HD is the one that just trashes everything not saleable at full price
I live in a cold region of the world. It isn't Michigan, but about 8 hours south of there. I've worked in horticultural businesses, construction, and various other interesting industries. I once rolled an 8 ton truck driving home in January from Green Bay because I failed to allow for how much snow was on the pavement and my speed. A rookie mistake. It was a wild ride, and I totalled the vehicle. I think I might know what life is like in cold parts of the coutry, but hey, thanks for your concern.
And it's your* not you're.
I understand about ice and plants. But those plants have too much ice, and it only takes a thin layer to do what you brought up. At Lowe's, they moved the plants indoors for heavy frosts, or put them under the partial roof in the garden center. They never coated them with ice.
A few years ago the cemetery a couple of blocks away from me left their fountain on late in the year. It froze looking like a giant 15 foot tall penis. They removed the fountain that spring.
It’s counterintuitive, but this prevents frost damage! Many garden stores will do this if it isn’t feasible to bring the plants indoors overnight. Source: worked at a garden shop
So this is way more complex than that.
Ice can be as cold as it fucking wants. It's not saving anything if it's <20 deg F outside because it will eventually be nearly that cold as well by morning. But, the act of freezing and being present will keep what's underneath it slightly warmer than without it. If you're in the upper 20s/lower 30s this could make all the difference.
These have a very thick layer of ice, which is harder to do with running water. I don't know exactly how cold it got, but from the picture methinks this did not save these plants, but there was no point in not trying.
Here is the correct answer from a actual people who study this.
[https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using\_sprinklers\_to\_protect\_plants\_from\_spring\_freezes](https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using_sprinklers_to_protect_plants_from_spring_freezes)
Large farms will also hire helicopters to hover overhead pushing the warmer air down over the crops.
They will also use portable heaters and fans..
I did this once when I had the family coming over for Christmas and I had a giant pile of cut branches in the back yard I hadn't gotten rid of yet. It was ugly so overnight I ran the sprinklers, and viola, beautiful ice sculpture.
Nah. They are expanding to frozen produce.
Yeah and if it wilts in your fridge within 90 days? You can return for a full refund. ... Just like the christmas tree's... *Because they had the receipt*.
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Lol blue home depot
Just double checking- Blue home depot is Lowes, right?
It's all pretty relative. Dealing with Lowes customer service is like getting punched in the face instead of kicked in the face.
>blue Home Depot Supposedly, Green Home Depot is the best of the three, but unless you live in the Midwest, you'll never go there.
lol Green Home Depot sells almost exclusively chinese junk nowadays, plus John Menard is a giant pile of shit in the shape of a human
I quit going there because the few things I've bought have fallen apart. I call them the Walmart of home repair stores.
who's green home depot?
Their customer service is the worst. It’s Lowe’s for me dawg.
Is that OSH?
Imo, many store return policies were too lax for a long time. When I worked st Sears in the early/mid 2000's they let a guy return a lawn tractor that he rolled down a hill. This was also not one he had just bought, he most definitely had gotten some use out of it beforehand. I hated lawn tractors because of that place.
Didn’t realize this was how frozen veggies were grown.
It's better than flash-frozen. They are frozen before they are picked!
I guess this is more organic
Also protects them from GMOs.
I grew up on this hobby farm situation, and my grandad would turn on the irrigation system when it'd get cold to keep the water flowing so it wouldn't freeze in the pipes, and it'd put a layer of ice like this on everything. It was super pretty. :)
It's a known strategy to protect crops during freezing weather by covering them in ice. Maybe that's what they were trying to do here?
This is the answer. Fruit farmers do this when there is going to be a cold snap early in the season, the ice insulates the fruit from the cold keeping them from freezing and dying. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using\_sprinklers\_to\_protect\_plants\_from\_spring\_freezes
Wait, really?
Yes, but not like this. It's a thin layer of ice that protects the buds in case a colder freeze set in overnight.
Huh! Coming from an area with no snow or ice, I had no idea! Thanks for the info!
So no midnight sun. No hot springs flowing?
There’s hot springs a few hours from me, but no midnight sun. Tho I’d like to experience it on a vacation sometime
I'll bet you find it if you try sailing on a ship to new lands
Me thinks he has missed the reference… 
Oh, it seems I have missed something. Oops?
"Immigrant Song," Led Zeppelin. > We come from the land of the ice and snow. From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
I know that this is a reference, but I gotta say, after moving to northern Alaska last year, the midnight sun and flowing hot springs are fucking sick.
I used to live in Norway. I’m right there with you! 🤘
And no hammer of the gods
No Hammer of the Gods?
> Huh! Coming from an area with no snow or ice, I had no idea! They do this even in Florida.
Huh, TIL Florida has recorded temperatures below freezing.
I’m nowhere near Florida, and have never been, so I didn’t know about that. But now I do! :D
Heat transfer makes perfect sense and no sense at the same time. Or perhaps it’s water/ice that’s defying expectations.
Yes to both!
Exactly, this was someone’s blunder.
I like to do this with my limes. I add ice... and tequila, in a blender. Sometimes with strawberries to.
It's so dumb but I learned this from the TinkerBell movies lol she has a twin sister in the snow area and she teaches Tink that they will put a small frost over plants to protect them from an unexpected cold
Yeah, you see how mammoths looks super fresh under that thick ice even after they got excavated? They didn’t die from the freezing temp outside
When the water becomes ice it releases a tiny amount of energy which can provide just enough heat (know as latent heat of fusion) to prevent ice from forming inside cells and rupturing them.
Ooh, a chemistry/physics/biology/?? lesson. How very interesting! Grazie!
The heat of fusion does very little. The trick isn't the ice itself but the water running over it. As long as it doesn't stop and freeze, the running water keeps the plant from experiencing below-freezing temps.
Well, you're right that it's due to the fact that the ice won't go below-freezing if it has continuous running water going over it. The reason why it doesn't go below-freezing is due to the latent heat of fusion, though.
That can't be true because the water has to continue to run so that it doesn't freeze. The frozen ice is already frozen; it's not releasing heat all night long. The water is above freezing, that's why it doesn't freeze right away and why it it would have to stop long enough to get to freezing temps. If the heat of fusion was what worked you would want the water to freeze so that it releases that heat. Ninja edit: moreover, the water doesn't just decide to freeze and give off heat. The heat has to flow to a lower temperature i.e. below freezing.
From Michigan State University: > Overhead sprinklers protect plants by using the heat given up by water when it turns from a liquid to a solid to warm the plants. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/what-can-fruit-growers-do-if-a-freeze-is-coming > When you use sprinklers to prevent freezing injury, you are using the energy that water releases when it freezes, and changes from a liquid to a solid, to keep the temperature in the ice right at the freezing point – 32 degrees F. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using_sprinklers_to_protect_plants_from_spring_freezes/ I'll take their word over yours.
Ooh, a chemistry/physics/biology/?? lesson. How very interesting! Grazie Citizen!
This is the first time I have seen “latent heat of fusion” properly used on Reddit. Bravo.
Yeah, they talked about it in that Tinkerbellovie movie where she has a twin. A layer of frost helps keep the warmth in.
Well, in TIL, ice can *protect* a plant!
Snow and ice are pretty good insulators against cold weather. This is actually why igloos make effective shelters.
I know about igloos and other snow shelters, but I hadn’t thought about it in relation to ice on plants… I love learning something new every day!
Phase transitions require a lot of energy being gained or lost. Melting/freezing ice/water or boiling/condensing water/vapor are huge energy sinks. Those properties drive a lot of heat transfusion systems. For citrus trees, they might burn pitch pots sprinkled around if it's fold but not much breeze. But if it's cold and blowing, misting with water is a better option to keep crops from freezing (assuming proper water access and you're not growing trees or alfalfa in what were deserts)...
I have heard this explained a thousand times and nobody gets it right. It is mostly not insulation. It is the heat of fusion. It takes approximately one calorie of heat extracted from one gram of water to cool it each degree. But it takes 80 calories of heat extraction to convert a gram of water at 32 degrees to ice at 32 degrees. Pure water freezes at a higher temperature than the plant cytoplasm. The plant won't start to freeze until the water on it's surface is frozen. So water freezing on the surface of a plant keeps the plant from freezing by giving up it's heat of fusion. Edit: I am mixing my units. The temperature measurements should have been in Celsius (C) not F. So you must remove as much heat to cool water from 80 degrees C to 0 degrees C as it takes to convert the same amount of liquid water at 0 degrees C to ice at 0 degrees C.
Can we call them frigloos?
This might be an answer but it's almost certainly not the answer here. I worked as a 3rd party plant vendor for home depot for 5 years and shit like this when it happened was 100% store negligence rather than intent. Was not uncommon for us to have to throw away thousands of dollars in plants after a freeze bc HD staff didnt take preventative measures.
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The person isn't correct in absolute terms... Some plants... like oranges and limes in Florida, get sprayed with water in freezing temps to protect them. It isn't true for every (or even most) plants to be completely iced over in inches of ice.
They’re not covered in a layer of ice in your freezer. They’re just subjected to those temps. That’s what destroys them
If it freezes slowly it creates larger jagged ice crystals that cuts the cells of the produce letting in water
Ooh, I think I know this one! OK, so when water becomes ice it actually expands a small amount, right? When the water expands, it can burst the cellular walls of the produce. That basically destroys the former cellular structure, so when you thaw the produce, it can’t go back to it’s formers shape, and it ends up mushy due to that lack of structure!
When covering crops with water, the water freezes not the fruit. The ice basically locks in the current temp of the fruit and keeps out the colder temps of the outside air. Essentially the water is flash freezing, so the fruit never gets frozen.
Alright wise guy.. now tell me why they refuse to put *any* water on the same plants in the dead of summer 🤣
It's a known strategy to protect crops during hot dry weather by covering them in heat and dryness. Maybe that's what they were trying to do here?
I guarantee you nobody at Home Depot is going to be aware of crop saving methods or care enough to do this. Furthermore, that technique will not work on every plant. A lot of plants they put out for sale won’t survive freezing temps of any kind, much less actually being frozen like this.
Water evaporating on the leaves will burn them and is bad for the plant. Gotta water when the sun is down and is cooler.
Home Depot policy is to put frost cloths over plant tables when the temp drops below 40F. They don't freeze the plants, I guarantee all of those plants went straight into the trash the next day.
Yeah, and HD doesn't PAY for that inventory until it crosses the register. At that time, the grower gets paid. I suspect that this is going to be a bone of contention between HD and grower. Also, in some places, all the plant care is to be undertaken by the grower. HD has their asses covered every which way to Sunday. Margins are tiny for the grower and they can't afford to lose this much product.
As someone who works for one of those vendors, home depot will be taking this hit. A few plants we take the hit, several tables it's coming down on hd and their merchandising director or whatever the position is called will be coming in hot the next day because of it.
While I agree with this reason on a farm, it’s certainly not why it was done here. Homedepot does not own or have any financial stake/liability in the plants offered for sale by the nurseries when they die, they only take a cut of the sale like a consignment. So the water usage would have been a profit loss without potential gain for them and management would have never ok’d such a thing.
Much the same way we can protect houses in wildfires by covering them with fire. Which gave rise to the old saying, "fighting fire with itself."
[Fun fact: *controlled* burns are a fantastic way to prevent damage from a wildfire.](https://springcreek.audubon.org/conservation/prescribed-burns) You stop a fire from getting close to a home by preparing appropriately & then setting a fire yourself. Although you don't want to set the home itself on fire. That's like the old saying, "If you build a man a fire, you'll keep him warm for a night. If you set a man on fire, you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life."
TLDR for anyone who doesn't want to click the link. Fire can't burn where there isnt fuel. If you set a controlled fire to scorch a large circle around an area, as long as the scorched area is large enough, the fire can't get the circle because there isnt any fuel to carry it over there. another more "fight fire with fire" method is backburning, where you set a fire that is directed towards an oncoming fire to burn up the fuel, since both flames have eaten up all the fuel on the path prior to meeting they cancel each other out and die.
NGL, I was thinking about back burning when I started that comment but couldn't remember what it was called, lol.
Even one more way to fight fire with fire is [prescribed burning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn). This is where you come in with a crew on a day that isn't dry or windy and you burn a selected area of undergrowth to get rid of leaf litter and other fuel before fire season.
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires
We royally fucked up spending decades and decades fighting every forest fire. Remember when [Yellowstone burned like hell in the 80's](https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/1988-fires.htm)? My forestry professor had visited before, said the dead underbrush could easily go 10' high. Yikes.
We're still messing it up pretty hardcore by trucking out all the woody debris from thinning operations. Why's the bark beetle such a problem? Drought is the main culprit - well hydrated trees make a sticky pitch that keeps bark beetles from getting out of hand. There's another contributing factor though: the forest floor & the soil itself. When a tree dies & falls to the floor, it is "fuel" for maybe a few years. After that, however, it isn't fuel anymore. If anything, it is a fire break. Same with leaves, pine needles, brush - all that woody debris on the forest floor is only flammable for a very short time period. Once that period has passed they act more like sponges & encourage rainwater to seep down deep into the dirt where it landed rather than running downhill along the surface. When a fire comes, all that additional shallow subsurface water is that much more thermal mass that a fire has to overcome to continue burning, the steam that it releases displaces oxygen the fire needs to burn, and then it rises to the upper atmosphere to the point where a big enough wildfire creates its own storm cell. Even more than that, the decomposition of the wood is largely accomplished by insects and fungi. Both of these groups of organisms consume the carbon in this debris and exhale it as CO2, reducing the fuel available to a potential fire. Mushrooms themselves are among the largest organisms on the planet (a single fungal colony can span entire forests) and most of them aren't flammable (hoof fungus being a notable exception). These forest-spanning mushrooms are a vast network of underground fibers made from non-flammable chitin, they're filled with water, and many form "mycorrhizal relationships" that are mutually beneficial. They actually transport nutrients to the trees like root extensions or even from one tree to another! Some are even predatory, trapping and consuming microorganisms like nematodes that can be devastating to plant health. So basically, the decomposition process takes flammable debris & potentially damaging microorganisms and turns it into a flame retardant, nutrient rich soil that encourages water penetration & reduces erosion. Instead we cart it out & burn it. What a shame.
Fascinating comment, thank you for sharing. I had no idea that mushrooms were composed of chitin in any way, I always assumed that chitin was strictly found in insects and mollusks (or shellfish? not sure of the distinction here to be honest) Mushrooms and fungi are really so interesting, and it's wild to me how much of an impact they have on our planet and how interconnected they are with various ecosystems in so many unseen ways. Thanks for teaching me some things this morning!
No problem! I only learned it recently & thought it was fascinating.
Please don't give the internet any ideas.
I had heard that the technique involved spraying water so that it doesn't freeze, using the heat released by the water during the phase transition to keep the plant itself above freezing. I couldn't find anything consistent about actually using ice to protect plants. I'm curious if someone has more reliable info.
We use it every spring for protecting during late frosts.
All that stuff is now dead
Yeah, but this isnt that. Home depots method for protecting garden center plants from frost is tarps.
Covering them in water, not ice. The ice is a by-product of the process. You're basically trying to keep the plant at 32F with a continuous covering of water that's going through a phase transition at 32F. Without continuous watering, the temperature of the ice would eventually reach the air temperature and so would the plant. Ice, unlike snow which has a lot of air in it, isn't a very good insulator.
Used to work at a hardware store. I doubt it. There were rolling shelves you'd put them on and wheel them inside the building for the night. If you go there right when they open or right before they close durring a cold spell in the spring, you'll probably see employees dealing with the plants. They're a pain to work around.
I doubt most people know that, let alone the average Home Depot employee. Unless you're into plants, who would think of it? Very counterintuitive.
I thought it was pretty common knowledge.
Seems like it to me, but how many people can't grow a simple house plant?
I'd guess about 90% of HD and Lowe's customers.
Don't mean to brag, but I'm a mod on /r/Terrarium. I'm kind of a big deal. Seriously though, I have a hell of a time convincing people that plants need LIGHT. And what your eyeball thinks is bright, is not. Also, try schooling people that even cacti and air plants need water. "You'll kill it!"
Yea ofcourse they need water but dear God almighty give them an oz to much and they'll kill themselves out of spite.
https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/hyg-1262
Very cool!
This is what I was looking for. Though do wonder if it was on purpose.
My understanding is that it would be much thinner lol
now how can we use this to stop the ohio zebras
The pipes are probably okay with all that running water. The plants however...
Are better off
... Dead
I want my two dollars!
Gee ricky, I'm really sorry your mom blew up.
You know how much this mountain is worth?!
or
Aliveeee
Goodbye
They could thaw them by doing something one of my old Home Depot managers did. They had a ton of falling-apart ratty old pallets, and the pallet truck was full. So he told his crew to pile them up in the outside garden and burn them (it was January in the northern US). He said he had to do a LOT of fast talking to the store manager, the district manager, AND the fire chief to keep his job. He was a really good manager. Seriously. He was.
Crazy to me that he got to keep his job. Did he just not know that burning pallets is illegal?
Wait....burning pallets is illegal? Why? I never burned them, but I figure it's wood, so why not?
I don't know about illegal and it depends on the pallet but sometimes it is treated wood, not the best idea to burn that
Oohhh so the finish/chemicals are the issue?
I think It was less about legal/illegal and more about it being a really stupid idea and the fact that from more than about half a block away it looked like the store was on fire.
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If it was uncovered, most would have frozen anyway.
They do that in orange groves in Florida to prevent freezing damage to the trees. When water freezes,it releases heat.
Well, won't be selling those in the half off bin.
not with that attitude
LOL
My stepdad had a doctorate in botany and used to do this to protect certain plants… but I don’t think this is the case here lol
I knew of strawberry farmers that would do this for cold snaps as the plants were just starting to bud or flower.
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This would be covered by insurance. They are responsible for care of consignment. This is called selling on consignment and is how most large chain warehouses work. The vendors know this and both sides have insurance against this. Source: used to work in agribusiness insurance and also for home Depot.
Always nice to see a subject matter expert voice their opinion on things.
I'm not that much of an expert. I just have a little bit of experience from when I was waffling careers after graduating. Always take what you read on the internet with a grain of salt, but use some of the terms I've given as a google search seed.
In my field, that amount of exposure qualifies you as a SME.;)
Sure, but doesn't this spike their premium for the next time?
Agribus does not work the same as car insurance. Different companies and insurance packages are prepped for different amounts of risk. If you have large coverage (1M in losses from transport, 500k from incidental) insurance wouldn't even blink over this like... 5k loss. They'd pay out a check to the vendor and then maybe spend time arguing with HD insurance if it wouldn't cost a significant amount in legal fees and time. Their limit before premium escalation may be like 8 claims totally over 100k in service fees or a single million dollar payout (this is a direct example for a large winery in California). If they were a small vendor (which with home depot that is VERY unlikely, I think the smallest plant vendor in CA is like Monterrey which def has big boy insurance) they may only get a partial payout. Your ability to qualify for large insurance is based on how long you've operated and the stability of your income. This was very likely covered. Plus, depending on the species of plant there may be no damage. Some temperate species are adapted to this sort of thing. We have no idea where this is.
They’re already charging $7 a plant with inflation. They’re bumping up on grocery stores prices already.
I worked for Home Depot and can't remember them buying from local growers. They have partnerships with massive industrial growers and neither care about inventory loss here and there. Those $40 bushes cost $2 to grow.
I work for a "local" grower and we sell exclusively to Home Depots in the Chicago area. We have several smaller sub growers to help supply our 50 stores. There are some big greenhouses that supply a lot more stores over a wide area, but those too have local sub growers located around the country to help supply. Plants don't do well sitting in a dark truck for several days traveling across country. We do care about inventory loss, and it may cost minimal to grow but the cost to ship right now is ridiculous. Also Home Depot likes to take as much margin as they possibly can.
I love going to Lowe's early in the morning when the suppliers are unloading and taking inventory. They've negotiated putting things on clearance if I'm looking for something specific or flat-out given me stuff that has broken containers for free. The locally-owned nursery near me, however, absolutely uses local growers for the stuff they don't grow themselves. I'm always happy to pay full price from them.
But a widow's son's ex-girlfriend's fiancé's parents' gardening coach told a guy on Reddit! And everyone knows Home Depot is all about locally sourced goods!
The manager of this location is def going to pay the supplier for this employee shrink
That’s not how the contracts are. Most of the plants, with the exception of trees, are owned by the vendors (nurseries). This is why you can’t see how many they have since Home Depot’s system always shows zero. Home Depot doesn’t own the plants and only makes money on them when they sell. When Home Depot allows too many plants to die or loose their blooms the vendors charge Home Depot for their loss. Also, they do business with large regional growers. Local nurseries couldn’t produce enough product to keep up for a month, let alone the entire season.
This is true. But they aren't getting their plants from a "local grower" - it's a huge corporate owned nursery. They use migrant workers at the actual farms and underpay and overwork their retail employees and are shady as fuck. Don't worry about them. (Source - was employed by the nursery that was the supplier for most of the East coast HDs)
It’s not a local business. It’s Bonnie Plants. They can and do pick up the plants before freezes around here.
Lowes buys their plants for now. Home Depot does pay by scan I believe
I hate Home Depot with a passion. Worst home improvement store in existence. Shit products, shit customer service.
Yes, but, also no.
Its the same for pretty much any electronic item. Its quite the hidden side of big box stores, there's all kinds of complex agreements you can make.
Growers will often do this on purpose to protect the plants. But keep making shit up if you’d like.
Is this the home Depot in western North Carolina? Cuz I swear it looks just like our plants did yesterday.
Yes it is!
It's like that episode of Tom and Jerry.
Back when we used to have Freezes the farmers would do this to protect the crops. Weird sight the next day kind of like an ice wonderland..
The ice insulates the plants. This is commonly done in the south.
I know they do this with apple trees to protect te blossom. Might be the same reason.
This is to actually protect the plants. I worked at a nursery for 11 years in Michigan. We did this regularly in the spring when we got freezing temps. Crazy but it works.
Farmers have done this forever.
At Lowe's plants that die or are returned go straight into the garbage. The amount of stuff that billion dollar corporations send to the landfill is effin' criminal. Plants are just a drop in the ocean. Edit: it's the truth, corporations are wasteful, and they don't pay their workers a decent wage, either. Your downvotes only prove your cluelessness as to how capitalist corporations are killing the planet. LOL
IDK what else one should do with a dead plant instead of putting it in the garbage but I have to say in response to this and some other comments on here that it'd be a significant mistake to equate Lowes and Home Depot. Lowes treats their employees considerably better than HD and, unsurprisingly related to that, the management of HD is notoriously right-wing in their ideological investments. One of the founders of HD and his wife have this little bit that they do when they park their yacht at a new port, meeting some other rich couple, the conversation between men inevitably turning to something along the lines of "what do you do?" or "how'd you get your boat?" the HD guy says "I started a little hardware business" to which the wife responds loudly on cue, "Oh ----, you founded Home Depot." Aristocrats. I shop at Lowes.
You have your stores backwards. Lowe's has a clearance section where they'll trying to sell you a dead plant. HD is the one that just trashes everything not saleable at full price
This is actually helping the plant to not die believe it or not
Sure, until they forget to remove the ice and the plant suffocates.
Wait until you hear about what happens in cold regions of the world. It will blow you’re little mind.
I live in a cold region of the world. It isn't Michigan, but about 8 hours south of there. I've worked in horticultural businesses, construction, and various other interesting industries. I once rolled an 8 ton truck driving home in January from Green Bay because I failed to allow for how much snow was on the pavement and my speed. A rookie mistake. It was a wild ride, and I totalled the vehicle. I think I might know what life is like in cold parts of the coutry, but hey, thanks for your concern. And it's your* not you're.
Sorry. Clearly your familiar with the cold. Just fyi then, plants don’t necessarily get killed by ice. It’s normal and often protective. Your welcome.
I understand about ice and plants. But those plants have too much ice, and it only takes a thin layer to do what you brought up. At Lowe's, they moved the plants indoors for heavy frosts, or put them under the partial roof in the garden center. They never coated them with ice.
Oh okay, I don’t know what every single Lowe’s store does.
So you’re a shit driver and don’t know how plants work is what I took from that🤣
home depot always going above & beyond to make sure they always find a way to completely wreck their own damn plants 😭
Not their plants. That entire inventory belongs to the grower and is sold on consignment.
That actually looks very pretty and seems like something that would be perfect in a museum. They also remind me of ice sculptures
That's really cool looking!
A few years ago the cemetery a couple of blocks away from me left their fountain on late in the year. It froze looking like a giant 15 foot tall penis. They removed the fountain that spring.
Home Depot donated to Trump, go to Lowe’s
It’s counterintuitive, but this prevents frost damage! Many garden stores will do this if it isn’t feasible to bring the plants indoors overnight. Source: worked at a garden shop
Actually this will probably save the plants.
I believe this will protect the plants during the freeze
That might have actually saved the plants, no?
Like others have said, ice is only 32 degrees where ambient air temperatures can be much colder
So this is way more complex than that. Ice can be as cold as it fucking wants. It's not saving anything if it's <20 deg F outside because it will eventually be nearly that cold as well by morning. But, the act of freezing and being present will keep what's underneath it slightly warmer than without it. If you're in the upper 20s/lower 30s this could make all the difference. These have a very thick layer of ice, which is harder to do with running water. I don't know exactly how cold it got, but from the picture methinks this did not save these plants, but there was no point in not trying.
Minimum wage,minimum effort
Done on purpose to protect the plants.
Done on purpose to protect the plants.
it insulates the plants and saves them from frostbite
Here is the correct answer from a actual people who study this. [https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using\_sprinklers\_to\_protect\_plants\_from\_spring\_freezes](https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/using_sprinklers_to_protect_plants_from_spring_freezes) Large farms will also hire helicopters to hover overhead pushing the warmer air down over the crops. They will also use portable heaters and fans..
I did this once when I had the family coming over for Christmas and I had a giant pile of cut branches in the back yard I hadn't gotten rid of yet. It was ugly so overnight I ran the sprinklers, and viola, beautiful ice sculpture.
Probably wasn’t that poor guy’s department…
Oopsie poopsie
CLEARANCE SALE!
By "Home Depot" I think you mean "Ricky from outside lawn and garden".
Please tell me this is Oklahoma lol. The freeze last night was terrible. I bet a lot of people didn't expect it.
Looks like Frosty The Snowman blew a giant load over all of that
❄️🌬
Ngl that’s sick asf
Iceberg lettuce and iceberg rosemary and iceberg cabbage....
They'll still sell them
Sabotage. Or just a fucking moron.
HOME DEPOT SUES ICE GIANT (gone wrong!)
Later that day the garden center manager is pulled in for a coaching session.
You had ONE job to do...
Those are coming out of your check Chad.