Friday, December 4, 2009

Preparing for a Hard Freeze

The first Freeze of the season will be tonight and it is gonna be a hard freeze. 28 degrees they say. That means bring in the hanging plants, wrap the tropicals, and pick any green tomatoes.

I didn't realize I had quite so many hanging baskets. Sheesh. Usually I leave the geraniums and cyclamen outside if it is only around 32, but 28?, yeah they are coming inside. I clearly need to hang some more rods in the garage for them though as most of them are hanging off the ladder!:



The Meyer lemon is wrapped in christmas lights to keep it just a little bit warmer. I also will wrap it in a thick blanket and a big ol' frost cover:



And I brought in any green tomatoes as the freeze will abso-tively kill the plants tonight:



And what to do with the green tomatoes? The bigger ones will be fried up 'cause I LOVE me some fried green tomatoes!! And the rest, well, I think I am going to try making that green tomato chutney that Lancashire Rose posted here. It looks delish!

And I will wrap the Aloe Vera that is planted in the ground. It has been so warm the last couple of years that I was able to plant the aloe right out in the yard. It can't take a freeze at all, so I just wrap it up and usually only the tips will be damaged if there is a hard freeze. Plus, it is kinda sheltered by the fence and the Texas yellow bells that grew around it. The aloe is also about to bloom, so I will probably just pick the bloom stalk and bring it inside and put it in a vase. It will freeze outside, so I might as well just bring it in and see if it blooms.



Same goes for the Mexican Tuberose. They are about to bloom, so I am picking them today and bringing them in to put in a vase. They smell so nice and are so pretty:

2 comments:

mss @ Zanthan Gardens said...

My aloe vera is planted out and has gotten very big over the last couple of winters of mild temperatures. I don't have enough things to wrap up everything so it was left out in the cold. I thought it had gotten by unscathed but on the second day after the freeze I did notice some frost damage. The plants aren't dead by any means and I'm not too worried as they pup like crazy.

Lee17 said...

mss,

That is true, the aloe does pup like crazy! If the top froze, I could always replace it with one of the pups that is sure to pop up from the ground in the spring.