JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With the coldest air in years on the way to Northeast Florida, horticultural experts are ringing the alarm about protecting your plants from the freeze.
The brunt of the bitter cold will arrive Friday evening, but now is the time to take action.
If you’ve got a green thumb, you’ll want to protect your investment by either bringing in the plants susceptible to the freeze or cover them. News4JAX on Thursday spoke with a professional landscaper about which plants you need to take action on and protect and which ones are hearty and strong enough to weather the freeze.
Liberty Landscaping assistant manager Brandon Voutour said, just like his nursery is preparing for the arctic cold air, you should be doing so as well with temperatures expected to dip into the 20s Friday night.
Voutour says most people know they need to cover certain plants, but they fail to do so correctly, resulting in the plant’s demise. To cover your plants, Voutour says, use a breathable sheet or a frost cloth, which you can buy.
“So what you do is you would lay it over your plants and then you would tuck it underneath and then secure it down with either a pin or a weight like a brick or a paver or something like that, that would help keep it tented,” Voutour explained.
Voutour says one of the biggest mistakes that people make is to use a piece of plastic, rather than a frost cloth, a bedroom sheet or blanket to cover their plants.
A few examples of plants to cover include:
- Citrus, bougainvillea, succulents
- Hibiscus, jasmine, tree ferns
- Any other tropical plants
With temperatures expected to drop the lowest Friday night, he offers a suggestion for Thursday.
″I would recommend you water it the night before, and I wouldn’t water it again until after the freeze. You don’t want to saturate it — just give it a little bit of water. “Voutour said. “And then once the threat of freeze is gone, water it again to make sure it’s going to be OK.”
If you can’t bring the plant inside, Voutour suggests that you move it closer to your house, in hopes the heat generated inside will help to limit the damage to your plants. He says another top mistake that people make occurs after the freezing temperatures have passed.
“If your plants get do incur damage from this freeze, just be careful and don’t be too anxious to already cut it off and clean it up. You want to make sure that if the plant does have a little bit of damage, leave it on there because it will act as an insulator,” Voutour said. “If you open up a new cut when you prune something, it will open up an entryway for more damage to occur.”
Experts say the warm start to December with temperatures consistently above the 70s has led to some plants being confused about the season, and they may be budding early. The freeze could damage the new buds, but keep in mind, not every plant needs protection from the cold.
“Large-scale plants like a palm tree, like that, I wouldn’t consider protecting,” Voutour said. “But something small and young, you’ll want to protect.”
You can also add extra mulch around sensitive plants that you cannot remove from the yard. The mulch helps to trap in the soil’s heat. Also, when the temperatures go above 32 degrees, experts suggest you remove the covering during the day and put it back on at night so the plants can breathe.