Thrifty Frost Protection – Misfit Gardening

Learn cheap frost protection methods and see how you can keep your garden growing with freezing weather on the way!

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What Is Frost Protection?

Cold weather vegetables will start to flourish as the weather starts cooling down but some of the fall garden vegetables will continue to grow by protecting them from the frost.  In this post, I’m going to share some frost protection options for homesteaders on a budget! 

Freezing or frosty weather can make gardening more challenging at times, but that doesn’t mean certain death to your plants! There are a number of easy and inexpensive ways to protect plants from frost in your garden.  That’s what frost protection is.  It keeps the frost off your plants helping them to keep alive, keep growing, or be harvested.

Cheap Frost Protection Methods

There’s a lot of options for homesteaders and gardeners to protect vegetables and plants from frosty weather.  Cold frames are great for protecting starts or more tender herbs and flowers but require some time to build.  Hoop houses are another great option and can be relatively inexpensive to make as well.  For fast frost protection, cloches and row covers are the way to go!

Cloches

This type of frost protection is perfect for small individual plants.  Think baby lettuce or spinach plants or small brassica starts like cabbage, kale, or broccoli.  A cloche is a frost protection structure that is placed over a single plant.  Victorian gardens had glass bell jars or other small glass framed boxes. 

Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash

A cloche protects from not only the weather but marauding munchers like slugs or snails, even rabbits.  Glass is obviously cumbersome in the garden, especially if you are clumsy like me!  Luckily, large clear plastic bottles make a great glass cloche alternative!  To use it, carefully cut the bottom off the bottle, place the bottle over the plant and work the bottle into the soil a bit to help anchor it down.  Voila!  You have a cloche! 

Take the lids off the bottle to allow air to move especially on a warm day.  If it looks like it will be a very cold night, screw the lid back on the bottle to help keep your plant warmer.  Just remember to take the lid off in the morning.  The plastic bottle acts as a mini-greenhouse so things can get hot in there quickly.  On very mild days, remove the cloche completely.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In a pinch, cardboard boxes or even upturned buckets will work to cover your precious plants on a night!

Be sure to cover your plants late afternoon, early evening to trap the warmer air then remove the cloche in the morning when the sun is up.

Cover Up

If you have a lot of plants for your fall garden, not enough plastic bottles, plants are too big, or you just simply want to avoid using plastic bottles then consider row covers for your garden frost protection.

Row covers can be made of plastic like row poly tunnels or a layer of frost fleece or floating row cover.  Thicker plastic or row covers will protect your plants from colder temperatures but they let in less sunlight which your plants need to grow.

The stuff professional growers use is pricey so what’s a homesteader on a budget to do?    Clear plastic sheeting, the thick stuff from the hardware store for painting.  Not the flimsy plastic (like produce bags at the grocery store).  The thicker stuff works well for a season but isn’t a long-term option. 

The plastic helps to warm the soil and act like a greenhouse.  Each layer of plastic moves you about 1 growing zone south.  So if you live in a zone 5 area and you use 1 layer of plastic as a row cover, you have provided your veggies the conditions of growing in a zone 6 area.

Frost fleece or floating row cover is usually spun polyester fabric.  Old white or light-colored sheets from the thrift store work well.  You need light colors to allow the sunlight in so your plants can keep growing but if it is going to be a very cold night, use what you have!  We have covered tomatoes from late snow using tarps and even a quilt to keep them happy!  Just be sure to remove those in the morning when the weather has warmed up.

You need to keep row covers so they are not touching the plants.  Hoops, poles, or stakes work well.  If your plants are touching the row cover, they will get wet and will freeze.  Use clothespins, pegs, or clamps to secure the cover to the supports.  Make sure to secure the row covers at ground level.  You can use stone, brick, or pin them down.

Learn More

Dig in and learn about frost protection and winter gardening in these related posts:

Build A Cheap Cold Frame That Will Save You Money This Year

How To Build A Hoop House For Raised Beds

19 Classic Winter Storage Crops To Grow This Season

What’s your favorite DIY frost protection for your garden? Let me know over in the Facebook group 

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