Kathy’s Gardening Guide: Winter Wonderland — Protecting your North Florida landscape

"Christmas, my child, is love in action."”

— Dale Evans

North Florida is not known for ever resembling a winter wonderland ... but this weekend could bring us closer to a white Christmas than we are dreaming of! It’s time to protect your landscape, especially tropical plants!

In preparation for this weekend’s freeze:

• Bring potted plants inside if possible.
• When temperatures drop below 40 degrees (but not sooner!), cover tropicals, sensitive plants, and citrus trees with frost cloth (available online or at a local hardware store). Without frost cloth, linens and blankets may work, but they can weigh down plants and block sunlight if left on for multiple days. Do NOT use plastic to cover plants as it can worsen a frost burn. Use clothes pins, stakes, rocks, etc to hold cloth down to the ground… form a tent by securing the edges of the cloth to the ground to hold warm air around the plants.
• If you haven’t mulched lately, a new layer of mulch can help protect plants from the freezing temperatures.
• After the freeze, remove cover as soon as temperatures will be over 40 degrees. You may need to recover plants if evening temperatures drop below 40 degrees again.

Tropical plants are the most sensitive to freezes; they do not like temperatures below 40 degrees. Be sure to protect crotons, Hawaiian ti, arbicola, ginger, bird of paradise, hibiscus, Roebellini palms, Adonidia palms, lady palms, bougainvillea, mandevilla, gold mound, sea grapes, stromatha, tibouchina, philodendron, xanadoo, crown of thorns, kalanchoe, sunpatiens, etc.

Below 32 degrees, be sure to protect sensitive plants such as blue daze, pentas, geraniums, bush daisies, gold dust, sedum and salvia.

All citrus trees should be protected/covered below 30 degrees!

Winter annuals such as snapdragons, pansies, petunias and supertunias should manage the freezing temperatures even if they get a bit frost burned. Covering them can help but is not necessary.

From our family to yours, we wish all of you a Merry Christmas!

Please email Kathy at kcg.pvr@gmail.com for any questions or gardening tips you would like to see in the future. For more information & ideas, visit Kathy’s Creative Gardens & Nursery, 196 N. Roscoe Blvd. The phone number is 904-655-7373.