Preparing your garden for frost

There's a fall chill in the air, and as we look into the weekend, gardeners might start wanting to think ahead. Yeah, like now, because Friday night is bringing frost chances. Garden Guide DLK sharing a few friendly reminders for the cooler temps. They're just like us. They need more jackets, more clothing. Exactly, and I think the forecast is for 35 degrees, but 35 can get down to 32 really, really quickly. And, of course, the more north you go, the more chance, of course, that's going to be even cooler again. So in that 35 to 32, that's what we call a frost. A killing frost, or what we call the end-of-season frost, is actually at 28 degrees. So depending on where you are, you might have even been close to that. So what should you be doing in the metro or the seven-county metro right now to prepare for those temperatures? Well, the first thing, of course, is the veggie garden. Any warm-season crops, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, get them all harvested. You should rush that to completion before it starts to get chilly here over the weekend. for a cooler season I've got a lot of arugula I got lettuce I got a lot of things growing in my garden so I'm actually going to protect all those cooler season crops that can take those temperatures with a little bit of extra protection like this frost blanket I actually have sections all kind of pre-cut out because of course in the spring and then in the fall here we get those chillier temperatures but still some growing season left before we get to 28 so I'll go ahead and cover all button all that up over the over those chilly nights and then lift the blanket because we're going to get into the 60s again into next week so you could use a bed sheet if your tomatoes are in pots pop them in the garage just get them out of that chilly air is really really key so a quick little note on lawns it's still okay if you haven't fertilized your lawn yet make sure that you go ahead and fertilize your lawn that would be good now weeds when it gets back into those 60 degree temperatures this weed free zone does a really good job of perennial weeds in the lawn. They take all that herbicide straight down to the roots and it's quite effective in cool season. You can see actually on the arborvitaes back here behind me, they've been trimmed up by the bunnies at the bottom there. So anything that you want to get out there and do some yard work, anything that you can protect your evergreens or anything tender, that would be a good time to put some fabric or some poultry netting around anything like that as far as bulbs go i've already bought my bulbs i got these um online but i wait till after those frosty temperatures to go ahead and plant that way if you you can see where all your annuals are where you pull those out it's a great place to put in bulbs plus i wait really to the end of the season to plant because i don't want squirrels and all those other kind of critters getting at my bulbs or them rotting so we'll talk about we'll plant bulbs a little bit later in the month anything tropical or non-hardy you might have a Boston fern you might have i got this little tropical olive here i got this little olive tree anything that's tender you want to make sure that comes in before a frost i usually inspect the plant make sure it doesn't have any bugs on it give it some give it a wash give it a wipe with this neem oil wipe which is really really good or some people will use a systemic insecticide just like this before they bring them indoors but anything tender should really come in if your cannas or anything like that get a little bit nipped uh over over this uh period that's okay that would be your signal let that foliage kind of die down a little bit on your cannas or any of your other summer tropical bulbs and then go ahead and lift them and store them that would be that would be dahlias cannas uh freesias all those kind of plants uh you'll start to dig those out after a light frost and I've actually got this container plant here let's I actually had this in the shade it had some coleus the coleus probably won't make it through a frost some people will actually save coleus and bring that indoors I tend to actually kind of plant coleus every year instead of saving them but what I have here is a nice little tricena so I could just actually transplant this into a different pot I got this white pot over here and some good quality potting soil I might just actually do a little bit of transplanting or you could just leave this as a house plant because a lot of these plants will make fantastic house plants and you'll save some money in the spring if you save them so i'm going to work this one actually now that i've taken that coleus out actually doesn't look too bad in that pot so i think that one's going to come inside but all this right now is what you should be doing between obviously now and then friday morning or where those killing frosts affect you as well with that we'll send it back to you huh good tips i mean Congrats to anyone who's made their plants last this long. I sort of gave up and they still look okay. And I feel like really accomplished. I didn't do anything. And so I'm taking credit for like nothing. Well, here's Dale's for sure. Thanks Dale.