Protecting Potted Plants From Frosts (Video)

How to Protect your Outdoor Potted Plants from Frosts

Now that we're beginning to get November frosts, you will either need to bring your potted plants inside, or cover them in fleece to protect them from the cold weather.

You will need string, a knife or scissors, and horticultural fleece.

TRANSCRIPT

Today we’re going to protect this Bay Tree as it's being left outside. We’re just going to protect it against frosts, we’ll wrap it in fleece, wrap the stem, wrap the head and protect the pot as well. The first thing to do is to lift it off the ground. You can just use ordinary bricks, or buy the proper pot feet. Right, so the pot you put your plant in, make sure it's a decent quality frost-free pot that can stay outside all winter. If it's not a frost-free pot, probably the best thing to do is you can still wrap the tree. You could probably wrap the pot as well, but it might be better just to put it into a cold green house, porch or shed over winter. That way it won’t break apart if we get a real hard frost.

Get yourself a ball of string, a knife and some fleece.

So the first thing to do is I'm going to wrap the stem. Start off from the bottom, tuck one end in, and start wrapping around. It doesn't have to be really tight, but just make sure you cover the whole of the stem. Once you’ve covered the whole on the stem, get a couple of bits of string and wrap them around the stem. And that just stops the fleece slipping down over winter. And then the head, put the fleece on the top and wrap it around. Then once you've got it around the head, tuck it in. Try and leave a little piece at the top that's a little bit open overwinter. So just get yourself a bit of string, wrap it round a couple of times, and then tie it up.

Leave the top open a little bit and then just kind of fold it in a little bit, just a little. That lets any moisture escape. You can do this to tender shrubs. So you've got bananas, bay trees, tender geraniums, anything really that you want to keep outside, just wrap them up, like that, be creative with a bit of fleece.