In freezing temperatures, you should take steps to protect your outdoor plants.
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Glad. At least it warms up during the day time every day. And we don’t stay in those awful temperatures. But with the colder temps on the way, it’s certainly time to start thinking about protecting the four P’s. That means protecting people, your pets, your pipes, and your plants. And of course, protect
Yourself too. So this morning, our Denise Middleton is live at the Houston Botanic Garden with ways to keep your outdoor plant safe. Denise Yes? Good morning. Definitely want to keep them safe. Just in case. And so we have Brant Moon here with the Houston Botanic Garden to help
Us out. You know, stores have been packed with folks looking to get some material to cover their plants. But what if you can’t get to that type of material? What’s an alternative that you can use? Yeah. So if you can’t find a freeze cloth that’s commercially available, you know, you can use things
Like an old sheet, an old blanket, a towel if you’re trying to cover a small enough plank, use like a big beach towel. Uh sort of. The important thing to remember there is if it gets wet, the added weight from things like that could sort of smash your plants. So sometimes
It’s good to stick some little bamboo stakes or something in there to hold the blanket or sheet up just above the foliage a little bit. Um, but some using something breathable is key. Don’t use plastic or anything that’s not breathable like that because it could heat up in the
Sun. The following day and then cook your plants. Now is covering it enough. Tell us what you guys are doing here to prepare. Right? So it really all depends on the extent of the cold. So and how long. So covering can help a lot of things or some things that are
Super like tropical and tinder safer. This, um, uh, the pitaya here, the dragonfruit, like, that’s probably going to get damaged no matter what we do, even if we cover it. So we’ve already taken some cuttings off this that we can restart this plant if we need to. Um, last
Year I think we mostly lost this one and we restarted it from cuttings. You can see how much it regrew and then we have other plants like our blueberries here . So we’re in our culinary garden. Almost everything you see here is either edible or medicinal in some way. So we
Have blueberries. These will be fully hardy. You know, we’re probably going to lose the foliage. We’re probably going to lose these blooms. These are already blooming. But the plant itself will survive. Same for the Mexican plum. We’re not going to do anything to protect these plants. So there are
Certain plants that can weather it just fine. And you’ve been watering them ahead of time, correct? Yep, yep. You always want to make sure that your soil is really well really well hydrated. You don’t want to go into a freeze with dry soil because warm soil always retains, uh, warmth. Better than
Dry soil. Now, what should you keep in mind if you decide to bring some plants inside? Right. So, as we all know, plants outside usually harbor some pests lots of times, things like aphids, um, spider mites. So one of the best things and quickest things you can do if you don’t
Want to bring any kind of harsh pesticide inside, just give it a blast of water. You know, with a nozzle blast it off really good. Hit that foliage really hard and that’ll knock off 8,090% of your pests before you come in. You can also do a quick treatment with insecticide or soap, but
You can look up how to do on the internet. Very easy to make from dishwashing liquid and a little bit of water. Okay, great advice . Thank you so much. Hopefully that helps you guys. Uh, that is the latest. Here we are live from the Houston Botanic Garden.
Denise Middleton Fox 26 news. Oh such good ideas. We got some work to do. I got to get