4 Tips to Prevent Frost Damage on Your Plants This Winter

There’s a nightmare scenario among gardeners: you spend hundreds of hours ensuring your plants are happy, healthy, and growing strong, only for your work to be usurped by an unexpected drop in temperature.

When temperatures hit 32 degrees Fahrenheit, a light frost can kill some plants and hurt others. A hard freeze, below 28 degrees Fahrenheit, can cause ice crystals to form within the plant’s tissues, at best wounding them and, at worst, knocking out an entire crop.

Thankfully, there are tools at our disposal to ensure that even the nastiest cold fronts won’t ruin your hard work or harvest.

It seems obvious, but it’s worth repeating: before you garden, check what plants can handle in your area of the woods. This doesn’t mean checking the weather app on your phone every morning, but consulting something like the USDA’s Hardiness Zone Map. This interactive tool helps gardeners figure out their first frost date and use it to prevent frost from freezing and killing your plants.

After you’ve consulted a tool like hardiness zone map, you’ll want to figure out exactly what kind of plants your temperature can handle.

Some plants can handle frost and not freeze, while others can barely handle a slight temperature change. For instance, young and newly planted plants are particularly vulnerable to the cold because the new growth is sensitive. 

Once your plants are planted and your garden looks the way you’ve always hoped, you’ll want to take some steps to protect plants from frost during the winter. Applying a thick layer of mulch around the base of the plants helps to insulate the soil, regulate temperature, and reduce the impact of frost on plant roots.

You’ll also want to make sure that all your plants are well-watered