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JOHN A. STARNES JR.A bucket of hot water or a strand of Christmas lights under a sheet or blanket can mean life or death for delicate plants.
Winter in Central Florida is subtle but real. And as the chill brings a sweetness to ripening citrus, winter can be a trusted friend and occasional foe.
A long hard cold spell gives our nectarines and apples a better chance of blooming and fruiting. Roses also appreciate a bit of rest, all our cool weather veggies and annuals glory in those nippy nights and the goldfish and koi in our ponds love the refreshing cold water.
But a hard frost or freeze with temperatures in the 20s is common enough for us to have several no-fuss strategies to protect our tropicals. (Even that can be a blessing, forcing an overdue pruning.)
One of the first things to do is to give your yard a deep soaking in the daytime. Well-watered plants resist freeze damage better, and thoroughly dampened soil holds more latent heat. Citrus and strawberry growers take this one step further and run sprinklers at night to coat their crops with ice as an insulation against temperatures lower than 32 degrees.
Another strategy is to place plastic garbage cans, 5-gallon plastic buckets or cardboard boxes over plants before sundown to trap the heat released from the soil.
Another variation is to cover all your tropicals just before sundown with sheets and blankets (not plastic because it conducts cold into the plants) to trap the day's warmth. Use bricks and stones to hold down the edges and keep cold air from oozing in. You can add a heat source beneath the covers. This will do wonders to get tropicals through a hard freeze.
A gallon jug filled with hot tap water and tucked beneath a cover just before you hit the sack can make all the difference between your begonia making it or not.
Some folks use strands of Christmas lights (not the twinklers) as well as water-bed heating pads to quickly warm up plants. That huge staghorn fern you've nurtured for years can be saved by placing a blanket around it and hanging Christmas lights near it to provide extra warmth. But how do you protect trees and other plants too big to cover?
Again, remember the wise citrus farmer. A box fan aimed into a citrus, papaya or banana tree, on one of those perfectly still cold nights, will keep the air moving, plus the electric motor releases some waste heat.
A barbecue grill loaded with charcoal and lit can send a precious column of heated air up into a treasured palm or citrus for a few crucial hours. But make sure all the coals are extinguished before you turn in for the night.
Use your imagination to generate and trap heat and ward off cold, knowing that as you savor citrus sweetened by the chill our northern friends have months of snow and ice ahead of them.
- John A. Starnes Jr., born in Key West, is an avid organic gardener and rosarian who studies, collects, cultivates and hybridizes roses for the diverse regions of Florida. He can be reached at his new e-mail address: JohnAStarnes@aol.com