If you garden in areas that get a cold winter you will be familiar with a number of winter protection schemes that are used in the garden. Humans get cold, so we think that plants also get cold and need a warm blanket, but a lot of winter protection practices are a waste of time. Many are poorly understood, so people keep doing them.
In this blog I will review what should and should not be done to protect plants in winter.
As winter approaches, we worry about our poor plants making it through the cold. All manor of wrapping devices are used to protect them and Styrofoam cones, also called rose cones, have become popular in recent years. Do these contraptions work? If they do, how much warmer do they keep your plants?
There is a lot of talk on the internet about Styrofoam cones. Many extension offices recommend them, and suppliers certainly tell you they work, but I was unable to find a single source of information that actually provided data to support the idea that Styrofoam cones keep plants warmer in winter.
So I decided to do some testing of my own.
In a previous post I discussed wrapping a tree to keep it warm. I looked at the physics and concluded that wrapping a tree, or any other plant, does not keep it warm. I had never seen any data to support this position, but it certainly follows basic laws of physics. I decided that this winter I would measure the temperature under a wrapped evergreen.
Why do we wrap trees and shrubs in winter? It seems to be a northern tradition. Every fall we go out and wrap plants in burlap to keep them protected from winter weather. All the books and all the web sites tell us to do this, so it must be right? Let’s have a closer look.
It is that time of year again – cold and frost are coming to the north (I live in zone 5). Think about your poor plants – they will get cold – you must do something about this immediately – right?? Common advice all over the net is to wrap your trees and shrubs in burlap to protect them from frost and to keep them warm. Plants in containers on your porch and balcony need to be wrapped in bubble wrap to keep them warm. Let’s have a closer look at this common myth and try to understand the issues.
