Protecting your container garden from frost
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Nanine Hartzenbusch
If you live in the mid-Atlantic with Garden Variety, you might have some time before the first heavy frost.
And if you keep your container gardens on the deck or otherwise close to the house, you might have even more time before you must attend to them.
But attend to them you must, or you risk cracked pots, frozen plants and complaints from neighbors about unsightly debris!
My personal container garden guru, Kerry Michaels, of about.com gives these steps for protecting your container garden from frost.
- To protect tender plants from cold or frost, first give them a big drink, Kerry says. Soil retains more heat of it isn't dry. And plants have a better chance of survival if they aren't stressed by drought.
- You can move them inside at night and out again when the temperatures warm up. Kerry puts hers on a wagon and drags them in and out of the garage.
- Cover your plants at night, when the soil releases the heat it has collected during the day. You can do this with something as handy as a bucket or a milk jug with the bottom cut out.
- For larger gardens that can't be moved, make a tent with a wood frame, heavy plastic, fabric or burlap.
- Or make a cold frame -- which is nothing more than a small greenhouse. You can use old windows, or simply line up bales of hay in a square around your gardens and put clear plastic over the top.
- You can buy cold frames, too, Kerry says. From simple to elaborate.
Comments
Thank you, this is always a tedious task to manage during our fall/winter months, and perhaps this could be the solution!
/Liz
Posted by: Hyra Container | November 24, 2010 5:41 AM
Our solution was to add on a conservatory when we added on to our house. All the pond plants are now inside in buckets or pots and they are very happy (so far--there is always some plant pouting before Spring arrives).
Posted by: Dahlink | November 24, 2010 11:43 AM