Cold Weather Garden Protection

Welcome to HortTube. My name is Jim Putnam. In this video we're going to talk about cold protecting or cold protection in the garden here in Raleigh, North Carolina. We don't get the kind of severe cold you may be experiencing out in the middle of the country somewhere where you might get 10 below Fahrenheit type temperatures. We tend to stay above zero for the most part. There are a couple exceptions of that in my entire lifetime where it's gone below zero degrees here and most of the time in the teens or higher in a typical winter. But this next week we're going to have temperatures in the low 20s and then by next weekend temperatures in the teens and several days not coming above freezing. So there are some things out here in the garden I need to do. I've actually received some plants for projects we have going on later in the season and a lot of them are right here together. I have put lots of different kinds of things together in this space. So I have very cold sensitive things in this little gathering of containers. I have a palm, I have oleander, lorapetalum, camellia, several things that you would consider pretty cold sensitive. But I also combined it with every other container I have. Like boxwoods are not particularly cold sensitive in any way shape or form. There's a rose in here and that rose could stay frozen for a week probably and not have any issue. There's a blueberry in here and I'm never that's one of the only things I did not cover or worry about at my nursery with blueberries. I don't know what amount of cold would actually harm a blueberry in a container during the winter time. There's a rhododendron, lots of non-cold sensitive things. But the reason I put them all together like this is because the more mass you have the better. So the more containers that I can consolidate together up here by the house the better off they'll be and that's just from experience. The larger the beds were and we all we did at the nursery was you put everything pot tight you know right up against one another and then we put some sort of frost protection blanket over it, shade cloth over it, something that usually that'll offer about an extra five degrees. So if it drops currently supposed to be 16 is our lowest temperature which I get. 16 Fahrenheit which I get is quite a bit warmer than many of you watching this video but I have plants that 16 degrees could hurt especially in containers. But that's that's our strategy. Get them up near the house, put as many containers as you possibly can together and then pull the cover over them. The way I arrange them is also kind of important. I have the most cold sensitive things back here in the back. I put little tiny pots right in the center so they're kind of in the center of the mass of all these containers and then the least cold hardy things you know are back are the most cold hardy things sorry are back toward the camera with the exception of that palm which is I thought about last but it's got some other pots around it and that that it's in a big container like this so I don't think it'll freeze solid as long as I have it tucked back up in here. This is also the spot I'm filming this in the morning and it's quite cold out here. By one o'clock or so this is actually in the sun or earlier than that probably by 11 or so this is actually going to be in the sun so with this black frost protection blanket on the top of it I think it'll allow the plants under here to thaw even if it stays slightly below freezing during the day even if it only gets up to like 30 I think everything will still thaw under here in the direct sun you know with the you know with the black cover over the top of it. So it's just some of the thoughts I have on if you have a lot of container plants is about getting them gathered together and as much mass as possible and getting some sort of blanket over them having them out of the wind but hopefully you know getting a little sun on them so that they can possibly thaw out the sooner the better because that's one of the issues with these leafy evergreens is when the pot's frozen the plant has no access to water whatsoever so the dry air that's around it is going to have a very negative impact on it when it can't get water. A couple more very important things one is water so water is a great insulator these plants are very very well watered it rained like crazy a couple days ago they're finally kind of dormant unfortunately we're still growing as of about a week or two ago but they finally I've left them outside long enough that you know they've gotten enough cold on them without severe cold to get themselves to sleep so they're not actively growing they'll stop using so much of that water now so we water them extremely well this frost protection of either a frost protection blanket one of the white frost protection blankets I'll link one down below the video so you can just look at it you know over on Amazon what what I mean by frost protection blanket versus a shade cloth both of them work fantastic a lot of the nursery industry has gone to the shade cloth protection because what they actually do is when it gets down below freezing at night they can turn their irrigation on and actually put an ice layer over the top of this shade cloth and that prevents the air from actually getting through these little tiny holes that are in the shade cloth it's a pretty cool technique the next day sun comes along melts the ice off it can all breathe again everything thaws out and that's the strategy that they use with the shade with the shade cloth it's not getting cold enough here for me to I'm not going to worry about it all that much again I've got this I got a lot of protection going on by putting them in this sunny corner but that is the strategy folks use with frost protection or with shade cloths like this this is a 50 shade cloth meaning if I put this on top of a greenhouse or something it'll block 50 of the sun from making it through here but it allows for when it rains for water to get through here and water them during the winter so we just left these on we would leave for we put all of our plants together put the shade cloth over everything and leave it for four or five weeks if we could as long as we can get water through here either irrigating or you know falling from the sky you can get water through it you can put an ice cap on top of it really kind of a pretty cool system for protecting plants one thing we actually did this winter because we were going to be out of town for a long time in the fall was we put all of our container plants we actually planted our kind of display container plants into the ground so these need quite a bit less protection uh in the with their roots protected in the soil than they would otherwise and then I put some pine bark soil conditioner around them so it has a bit of mulch any kind of mulch uh would work but it protects this ground from freezing solid for any length of time uh out here there are some cold sensitive things in this group though so I want to cover this entire group I did find one uh let's set this rake down if I can okay I'll just lay it down there I did find one frost protection blanket that we have the main difference between that black shade cloth is obviously you know used for uh for shading plants during the summertime in a nursery setting and then it can be used as I just described for uh winter protection typically we'll use these kind of row crop covers or frost protection covers when we're actively growing something during the winter time I used to use something more like this before I switched over to the shade cloth system this if you had lettuce you were growing or you needed to protect some sort of winter crop from the cold where you still wanted to get some sunlight through it this would be the best material to use in that they're either called row crop covers or frost protection blankets and you know we get you know frost can be as damaging as cold so that ice layer that you get on your windshield in the morning that you have to get off of your windshield also forms on the leaves of these plants and that icing of the leaves can be damaging uh and have less to do with temperature and more to do with that ice farming on them the other thing we can do is don't forget how good leaves are as an insulator so I have a lot of leaves we leave all our leaves in this garden they're actually kind of in reserve back here if I needed them if I felt like we were going to get again I see 16 on the um is what our low temperature is predicted which is thank goodness way above many of the folks that are watching that going to be watching this video so I'm pretty thankful for that but if I saw something if I saw six instead of 16 I would likely go out here into our areas where we've left the leaves on the ground and before I put my frost protection blanket on here or my shade cloth on here or a towel on here or a sheet on here there's a lot of other things we can use non-plastic things that we can use before we put those over it I could pile the leaves up in here just temporarily I could put six to eight inches of leaves around all of these plants which would be help be a very helpful insulator I could also put the shade cloth over them and then throw leaves on top of that if I was really concerned you know if I saw something below zero that's probably the next level for me is I'll be gathering leaves and just trying to pile them up around everything sometimes a cold sensitive plant maybe like this mahonia if I had a foot of leaves down here at bottom of it I might just lose the very top of it only you know if I got to down to a temperature that was going to kill it that that those leaves being piled up around it you know people will do that with crepe myrtles you know out in the midwest they'll just pile hay or leaves or something up around the base of them and they'll just get killed down to that level during the winter time but the roots and the very bottom of the tree are still in good shape you just need to get them out of there as soon as you can get them out of there you don't want that stuff piled up on them permanently we planted container plants in the ground the container plants I had remaining went pot to pot and we were able to cover them then we have some individual plants throughout the landscape which you know we can again use sheets blankets pillowcase covers containers work absolutely fantastic this agave which this can I've got bigger containers than this but I'm just kind of showing you that I could put this seven gallon container over this agave put a brick on top of it that will offer it probably five degrees of protection which is probably you know frequently going to be the difference maker between we're getting damage or not getting damage one other thing I'll think about is I'm going to get the hose over to that grouping of plants that I showed you at the beginning of the video have it laying there but disconnect it from the house so when I'm ready to water I'll be able to uh you know to get the water hooked back onto the house and water pretty quickly once I'm able to if I don't move the hose over there sometimes the hose can end up you know with water in it it's a really frustrating operation to try to water things so I'm going to get the hose right there beside of it if I happen to be out of town and I needed to ask somebody to water it would be easy instructions reconnect it to the house you know water the plants right where the hose ends um you know pretty easy instructions I've got some individual plants out here that have gotten a little large to protect this Indian Hawthorn is an example of that and unfortunately the flower buds are already coming out on it and I'm pretty sure 16 degrees is probably the temperature that um and I'm expecting it to trend down the temperature to trend down because we get the white ball effect where once we get snow out in the midwest the cold is either is able to creep further and further down so typically when they're forecasting 16 degrees 10 days from now 7 days from now we end up at 12 you know just because it's going to trend colder so I think these flower buds will be damaged interestingly the same plant is over at the Ralston Arboretum and it's several years older and it never gets damaged so you know this will grow out of this in time but where I won't have to worry about it quite as much but I do believe that having these flower buds on it right now will create some damage I could try to cover this but I'd have to use so many of my resources you know of my covers and things to try to protect this that I'm probably better off taking the towels and blankets and things around to the other plants that that require some protection this is the thing about being a zone pusher right and there's a lot of plants in this garden that have the potential to be to be damaged during the winter time but as a zone pusher I'm also prepared with the covers and containers and things like that to protect most of it but eventually they grow out of being able to be protected so we have bags with all of our blankets and you know sheets and anything else that we've collected for this and then they at the end of the season they'll get washed and then stored again for the next year luckily so far this year we hadn't had to break them out until now so just several several groupings of these you know blankets and but it can be blanket sheets anything I put the plastic pot over the agave out there I don't typically use plastic but that plastic pot has holes down at the bottom so even if that black plastic pot started to get hot during the day it would have vents for the for the for the heat to get out of it the agave certainly wouldn't mind it was being on the warm side but any other plastic you're using make sure you're getting it off very quickly especially any kind of clear plastic it's going to heat up super super fast and you may run the risk of starting to wake your plants up or you know cause some other type of damage so make you know plastic is not the best but certainly if you it's better to put a sheet of plastic on overnight than have the plant get damaged so put a piece of plastic on the next day as soon as it gets near freezing or above freezing get that piece of plastic off very quickly these shade cloths frost protection blankets sheets all these things they can stay on for a long time the plants aren't actively growing and so if I need to leave these things on for three weeks I'll leave them on for three weeks prefer not to and we'll likely just take them off we'll just fold them over to the side water them again well normally though once you get as wet as we are right now we won't have to do any additional watering I doubt very seriously I could check we'll check these pots in two weeks and they'd be dry at all but that's what I'll do I'll check them I'll pull the cover back occasionally stick my finger down in one of those containers see if they need any water and water them if needed and that's it that's what we're doing to protect a few things here in the garden the marginal things that are in the ground will get individually covered luckily for us we're able to group a couple of other things together this winter that normally normally I have those big giant containers all over the place I'm happy to have them in the ground and I may start this just as a practice you know using my vegetable garden in the winter time to put things that are cold sensitive all together like that and then I can gauge how to protect them you know based on how cold it's going to get I could fill that whole thing up with leaves over there and then put the cover on it if it was going to be extreme cold since it's just kind of mild cold honestly for us I think the cover will be adequate so best of luck out there to everyone with this you know with this you know big cold that we're having we you know normally I wouldn't be talking about having a 16 degree night during the winter time we just haven't had any cold you know as I'm sitting here looking I'm looking at a lorapetalum that's got lots of new growth on it I've got things we just did a tour video around the neighborhood and I was looking at things that were not only either not only flowering early but we're in the process of literally leafing out so those plants are definitely going to take a setback in these conditions I can see a boxwood over there actively growing so it's kind of normally not that big of a deal but the problem is just nothing has gone to sleep it's a similar event to what we had last in 2022 December where the plants just hadn't gone to sleep so they don't they're not prepared for it to take this type of instant cold that we're about to get so good luck with everything in your garden and don't forget to subscribe to the channel we're going to have a lot of a lot of activity going on here in the garden during 2024