Get ready for frost

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By Alma Gaul | Thursday, September 28, 2006 1:12 PM CDT | () comments

Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES Vander Veer Botanical Park horticulture technician Jennifer Meyer, left, and seasonal gardener Tasha Bolden demonstrate the proper way to protect plants from frost using burlap. In this case they are covering an agrave, which is a tropical plant.

If you’re a gardener hoping to get a few more weeks’ enjoyment out of your annual flowers such as impatiens, you might want to throw a blanket over them tonight. The same goes for tomatoes and peppers if you want to keep harvesting them.

And if you have houseplants on your deck that you want to keep alive, bring them indoors.

The National Weather Service in Davenport is forecasting an overnight low of 34 degrees with “patchy frost possible after midnight,” which could nip those tender plants and produce if they’re not covered.

The average first frost date in the Quad-City area is between Oct. 10 and 15, so if we get one overnight, it would be roughly two weeks earlier than normal.

“We’re getting there,” Linda Engebretson of the Weather Service said in regards to the cooler weather.

The caution about covering outdoor plants or bringing in houseplants comes from Duane Gissel, Iowa State University-Scott County Extension horticulturist.

Covering plants with a blanket, piece of burlap or an old sheet protects them because it keeps the warmer ground air around the vegetation. “You’re not really keeping the plant warm because a plant is not a warm-blooded creature,” he explained. “What you’re doing is preventing radiational cooling.”

Although Gissel said he personally is at a point in the season when he’ll let his garden freeze, others may want to preserve their produce and blooms a little longer — especially since the possible frost is an isolated incident with temperatures expected to warm up again over the weekend.

Horticulturists at Davenport’s Vander Veer Park, for example, will be covering tender and tropical plants in their Old World Gardens so they can keep them looking good for a special event scheduled in the park Oct. 8, horticulturist Jennifer Meyer said.

Hardier plants such as mums, pansies and flowering kale likely won’t be affected until temperatures reach the “hard frost” level of about 28 degrees, said Mark Skinner of The Green Thumbers in Davenport. Greenhouses aren’t selling tender annual plants at this time of year, so there are no special precautions they need to take, he said.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com.

Law of Averages

Although the first frost in the Quad-City area generally falls between Oct. 10 and 15, there is a wide range in terms of when it has happened over the years.

Earliest frost: Sept. 20, 1956

Latest frost: Nov. 12, 1946

Source: National Weather

Service, Davenport