Creative Plant Protection From Freezes & Frost

I looked at the calendar last week and determined that since it's getting close to May, it's safe to go ahead and plant flowers.  Last Friday, I took Madison to the nursery to pick out flowers for the flowerbed.  She wanted to buy everything she saw.  I picked a few plants that I've had great success with the past few years. I'd let Madison pick out the exact plants we would buy.  When we checked out I realized that our cart was filled almost entirely with purple flowers.  Hmm...I wonder who's favorite color is purple.  Here's a hint, she's almost 39" tall and cute as a button.

I spent Saturday morning planting flowers and was pleased with the results.  Now all I needed to do was periodically weed the garden and things should be fine.  I'm not a big gardener so low maintenance is my thing.  I knew we had been getting a good amount of rain with more in the forecast.   No worries about drought yet.  I thought the temps are warmer now.  It can't possibly get below freezing again this far into Spring. Everything should grow well till July when it just gets crazy hot and some plants just don't make it.

I THOUGHT WRONG!

We had storms move in Monday night into Tuesday morning.  Our beautiful high 70's temps were rudely shoved out of the state and replaced with temps in the 30's and winds 20 - 30 mph.  It was a misty, gray and windy morning Tuesday.  Our high that day was 38!  I felt like checking the calendar to make sure it didn't suddenly say February.  Depending on what news station you watched, the low was predicted to be from 28-34 degrees Wednesday morning.  That meant that I needed to cover up my plants or I'd be digging them up and replanting new ones soon.  I wasn't going to waste that time and money.

After work Tuesday evening, I took a roll of fabric stuff (not sure the technical term) that is used to prevent weeds from growing in your garden.  Then Dan and I started raiding the garage for things to hold the fabric tarp stuff down since the winds were screaming at that time.  Let's just say we got creative.  We grabbed all kinds of stuff; a bocce ball and horseshoe set, 2 rolls of soaker hose, two flower pots, a brick from my flower bed border, 2 bags of potting soil, 2 cans of fence stain and one box from Dan's washers game set.  Oh and I also used to Rubbermaid bowls to cover flowers that we couldn't cover with tarp.  Yep.  Bowls from the kitchen.  Our plant protection just reached or dropped (depending on your opinion) to a new level.  Check out the pic of one of the flower beds to see the pitiful looking creative solution we came up with.

Don't the plastic bowls ad a touch of class to the flowerbed?

My Mom and Aunt Mary gave me a few tips for the next time we have to cover our plants.  They said to use  sticks to prop up the tarp.  They said that if the plant touches some coverings during a frost or freeze, that it will still kill the plant. It looked like our tarp worked the first night, but I thought that a little extra care wouldn't hurt if we had to cover them again.  If.... I should thought when not if.

We got a frost warning for Wednesday night.  So that meant covering them up again.  If you know Central Oklahoma, you know trees are not in great abundance in some places.  In other words, we don't exactly have a lot of sticks around here.  How would I prop up the tarp off of the plants????

 

Skewer sticks!!!!  Yep. I used a bag of wooden skewer sticks we've had for ever.  You can just make out the sticks on either side of the plant in the above picture.  Just when I thought our plant protection couldn't get anymore white trash creative, we reach a new level.

The great news is that I haven't lost a single plant.  We are in the clear on freezing temps for the next 7 days. I watched the forecast today and it looks like another cold front is moving in mid-week next week.  Guess I will keep my protection kit sitting out in the garage and wait till July to put everything up.  I think I'll be in the clear at that point.  I think I'll cross my fingers just in case.