In southwest Turkey, temperatures have dropped to unusual lows of minus 2°C and that’s been causing headaches for greenhouse growers in the region. Growers in the areas of Fethiye, Karaculha and Camkoy have been spending their nights stocking wood burning stoves from 7pm to 8am the following morning, in an effort to stop their crops being damaged by the frosts. Growers say that they are burning around 100kilos of fire wood each night. Not much compared with what we might get through over here, but it’s a big deal for an area that is not used to it. 

One grower estimates that, to date, he has burnt a ton of fire wood in three greenhouses with nine wood burning stoves between them. Concerns are growing about how this is going to affect prices as firewood is hard to come by.

Burning wood is familiar to most of us in the UK now, however we tend to integrate biomass boilers, with existing heating systems, to make sure we have ‘clean’ heat. Without good air movement and well installed flues, I suspect the uniformity of temperature will be far from ideal and lead to uneven cropping. Even so, that’s still better than losing the entire crop.