Well, though it’s too cold to ship most plants for us here at The Growers Exchange, we’re still hard at work sowing and growing for the spring season. Neither wind nor rain nor sleet nor snow have kept us away (someone has to be here to stoke the wood stove that heats the greenhouse!), but it sure makes it worth while to see such wintry natural beauty! When we braved the roads to get to the office after a recent heavy snowstorm, we were greeted with a row of glistening icicles hanging like a frozen curtain from our porch roof.
The recent frigid temperatures have made it hard on any plants left out to fend for themselves, so how can you protect them when the forecast is calling for snow? Cold frames, hoop tunnels and extra mulching are great ways to protect your plants during the cold months. We use cold frames and tunnels to keep the frost from killing herbs like Rue, which we grow in one of our fields for medicinal, culinary and cultural usage. Many supplies needed to build these season-extending protectors, like old lumber or discarded window frames with the panes still intact, can be found laying around your garage or barn. Otherwise the necessary resources can be bought fairly inexpensively at your local hardware store.
Other easy cold thwarting tricks are to plant large, shrubby evergreens or a tough perennial like Rosemary ‘Hardy Hill’, around your garden to protect smaller, more vulnerable plants from icy winds. Positioning your gardens along a south facing wall of your home will also ensure that it gets lots of warmth from the sun as well as heat escaping from your home. For more information on building cold frames or hoop tunnels, check out some of the educational videos listed on YouTube.com, like this one that we found from gardenfork.tv: