AN unexpected freeze during the winter months can quickly devastate your garden.
While keeping an eye on the weather forecast goes hand in hand with gardening, here's some tips on how to protect your garden from frost.
How do I protect my garden from frost?
There are various ways to protect your plants from frost.
Firstly you could try a cold frame.
Young hardy plants, including autumn-sown hardy annuals, hardy shrub cuttings and seed-raised perennials, will benefit from the shelter of a cold frame over winter.
Open the lid on warm days to prevent overheating and deter fungal diseases.
A greenhouse provides invaluable benefits for plants, particularly when it comes to protecting your garden from frost.
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Or alternatively, you can bring your plant pots inside the house.
It may seem counterintuitive but keeping the soil moist can help protect plants from the cold.
Moist soil has an insulating effect, which radiates heat upward come nightfall.
When watering plants before a cold snap, be sure to do it in the midday when temperatures are still somewhat warm.
Just like slipping on a sweater when it’s chilly, adding a layer of mulch to your garden beds will help protect the soil from sudden swings in temperature.
Use straw, wood chips, leaf mold, or even just a heap of leaves to provide crucial insulation for the plants’ root systems below ground.
Mulch heavily, to a depth between three to six inches, to create a good barrier.
What should I cover my vegetable garden with for frost?
Giving winter crops protection from the worst frost and wind can make all the difference to their survival, and may even allow small harvests.
Use cloches to protect broad beans, curly parsley, hardy lettuces, peas, salad leaves, spinach and Swiss chard.
Alternatively, you can push bamboo canes into the ground around the plant to be protected, and cover with horticultural fleece or bubblewrap to create a protective tent.
Use string to secure it to the canes. For potted plants, wrap the pot with bubblewrap, then drape horticultural fleece over the top, and secure with string.
What plants need covering from frost and what can I cover them with?
Hardy plants can generally cope with a short spell of freezing temperatures. Do bear in mind though that a hard freeze of -2°C or lower has the potential to destroy most plants.
Popular cold hardy plants include clematis, honeysuckle, heuchera, euphorbia, hydrangeas, buddleja, rhododendrons and some rose varieties.
Tender plants (also sometimes called semi-hardy or half-hardy plants) are usually unable to survive hard frost, and need to be protected or brought indoors over winter.
Popular tender plants include fuschia, dahlias, pelargoniums, tree ferns, canna lilies, begonias and some succulents.
To protect a larger group of plants, simply cover them up with blankets, bed sheets, towels, or drop cloths.
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