How to Protect Your Plants from Cold Weather? A Guide for Gardeners

Winter weather with snow, cold wind, and severe frost can damage plants in your garden. Without proper protection, they are likely unable to survive the harsh winter. Check out this post titled to find out useful tips regarding how to protect your plants from cold weather to keep your plants strong and healthy despite severely cold weather. 

How to protect your plants from freezing temperatures?

How Can Weather Affect Plants?

Cold weather may harm a plant's whole body, including its roots, stems, trunks, buds, flowers, fruits, and leaves. The plants that are least resistant to cold damage are fruits and flowers, as well as the leaves and stems. Because they can adapt, plants can withstand a gradual decrease in temperature better than a sudden one.

Additionally, wind may harm plants by drying them out. When the ground is frozen, desiccation may occur since the plant's roots cannot absorb as much water as they would otherwise, and wind causes the plant to lose water above ground. 

Cold weather may damage plants

How to Protect Your Plants From Cold Weather?

Understand Your Plant’s Needs 

Regarding how to protect plants from cold temperatures, you should first make clear how much protection the plants in your garden need by considering factors like the location of your garden, the stages of plant growth, etc. 

The ways that different types of plants adapt to cold weather are not the same. As mentioned previously, while some plants don't need much care to survive the winter, many others do require a lot of extra attention. 

For instance, hardy plants can generally withstand a brief period of freezing temperatures. Common cold-hardy plants are euphorbia, clematis, honeysuckle, buddleia, rhododendrons, etc. 

Understanding your plant’s needs is crucial

On the other hand, tender plants (sometimes also known as semi-hardy or half-hardy plants) can’t usually survive hard frost and severe cold weather, so they require significant protection. 

Common tender plants are canna lilies, begonias, tree ferns, fuschia, and more. 

However, it’s worth noting that a hard freeze of -2°C or less has the potential to damage most plants, according to growingfamily.co.uk.

So, if you are not sure whether your plant is tender or hardy, how well it adapts to cold weather, and what the lowest temperatures it can tolerate, do a quick online search to find out.

Watering Your Plants

You still need to water your plants during the winter

You should keep watering your plants during the winter. They lose a large amount of moisture from their leaves during dry, cold weather, particularly on windy days.

Meanwhile, the roots of many plants are still active in the winter, and of course, they need water to survive and grow. 

Furthermore, moistures in soils also help protect plants during cold snaps. Since moist soils retain heat better than dry soils, the potential damage to the roots of your plants during cold winter increases when the soil is dry. 

Should you water plants when the temperature is not too cold? You’d better watch the weather forecast and make sure to water your plants at least 24 hours before the freezing weather arrives. Also, be sure to not overwater your plants.

Add a Layer of Mulch

Add a layer of mulch

When it comes to how to protect your plants from cold weather, it’s a very helpful tip to add a layer of mulch on the ground around the plants’ roots. 

Think of mulch like a comforter or a blanket around the roots, protecting them from the harshly cold weather. Mulch plays the role of an insulator. It retains soil heat and keeps it warm, which in turn protects the whole root system.

Cover Your Plants

Another best way to protect plants from cold weather and frost is to cover them up. Use frost blankets, which are widely available at home improvement stores or garden centers to cover up your plants and protect them from frost. 

If you don’t have frost blankets already, bedsheets, pieces of burlap, and drop cloths also make suitable covers for your vulnerable plants. 

Cover your plants

It’s recommended to apply the covers in the early evening or at night, and take them off in the morning or mid-morning the next day when the temperatures increase. This way, your plants will get full exposure to warm sunlight. 

It might not look pretty, but it does help ensure your plants, especially the vulnerable ones, keep protected when the temperatures drop at night.

So, at what temperature should you apply the coverings for your plants? According to growingfamily.co.uk, as frost occurs in temperatures below 0°C, the freezing point is also the tipping point beyond which it’s necessary to protect plants in winter. 

► See also: Common extreme weather conditions

Bring Potted Plants Indoors

Bring potted plants inside when possible

While taking the proper precautions can make gardening safe in cold weather conditions, not all plants are resistant to freezing temperatures or frost. 

So, how to protect your plants from the cold? Bring any hanging baskets or potted plants you have outside into your house. It will also be advantageous to relocate to the garage or sunroom since they will raise the temperature by at least 10ºF.

Consider arranging your plants as decorations around the inside of your house.

Use a Cloche

Use a cloche

A cloche is an insulating bell-shaped covering for plants. It functions like a little greenhouse. Making a cloche is as simple as cutting out the bottom of a milk jug. Next, put it over the plant.  

To prevent it from blowing away, press it an inch into the ground and secure it to a stake. When it regains its warmth, take off the cover, leaving it on for the night.

Build a Cold Frame

To assist in keeping frost from accumulating on vegetables or other plants, structures, like grow tunnels, cold frames, and floating row coverings, can capture radiant heat from the soil. 

Before the temperature drops below freezing, the covers on these structures should be drawn over or closed. They should also be opened or removed throughout the day. But it will take some work to construct them.

Build a cold frame

Wrap in Burlap

Burlap may be a great way to add an extra layer of protection for bigger plants and trees. To make the plant look walled in, put several stakes into the ground surrounding it and wrap burlap around them. 

For further protection, cover the area with hay or leaves.

Wrap plants in burlap

Which Plants Need the Most Protection From Cold Weather?

Generally speaking, the most sensitive plants to frost damage are annual flowers with vibrant colors and vegetables and herbs that harvest in the middle of summer. 

A plant will be more vulnerable to the cold if it fruits or blossoms when the weather is warm. Your plants require protection because they haven't naturally developed defenses, especially if they are only found in tropical climes.

Perennials, on the other hand, are more resilient to abrupt temperature changes since they return every year—that is, if they are plentiful where you live.

Which plants are most in need of cold weather protection?

Moreover, certain edible plants actually taste better when they are covered with frost. A small drop in temperature (around 26°F) is ideal for vegetables, including onions, cabbage, radishes, broccoli, peas, lettuce, and cauliflower. 

Even lower temperatures (in the low 20s) are sufficient for some vegetables to thrive, including beets, Brussels sprouts, spinach, parsley, kale, carrots, and collards.

Wrapping Up

These are some basic guidelines regarding how to protect your plants from cold weather. It’s true that cold weather with icy winds, freezing temperatures, low humidity, frost, etc can cause damage to your plants. Without proper protection, they are likely unable to survive the winter, especially if your plants are more prone to cold weather. We hope you found this article informative and helpful.