Quick ways to protect plants from frost

There are many quick ways to protect your plants from frost, and you can enhance the protection you provide your plants with by insulating greenhouses and cold frames. You can use a cloche to protect seedlings, or provide other tender plants with a fleece or hessian wrapping.

More winter gardening content:

• How to make a cold frame
• What to prune in winter
• Tidying the garden in winter (video)

Discover some of the quick ways to protect your plants over winter, below.

Use a cold frame

Young hardy plants, including autumn-sown hardy annuals, hardy shrub cuttings and seed-raised perennials, will benefit from the shelter of a cold frame over winter. Open the lid on warm days to prevent overheating and deter fungal diseases.

Cover with cloches

Giving winter crops protection from the worst frost and wind can make all the difference to their survival, and may even allow small harvests. Use cloches to protect broad beans, curley parsley, hardy lettuces, peas, salad leaves, spinach and Swiss chard.

Bring plants inside

A frost-free greenhouse is invaluable for wide range of plants. Insulate it with bubble wrap to retain heat and bring in abutilons, aeoniums, agapanthus, citrus, echeverias, fuchsias, pelargoniums and salvias. Conservatories and porches can also be used.

Lift and store

Tender perennials that have spent the summer in borders can be lifted as soon as frost has checked their growth. Store the roots in a cool but frost-free place. Do this for cannas, ginger lilies, chocolate cosmos, dahlias, gladioli and tuberous begonias.

Tender palms

Protect palms by tying in the leaves to protect the growing point. In cold regions this can be loosely packed with straw for extra insulation.

Create protective tents

Push bamboo canes into the ground around the plant to be protected, and cover with horticultural fleece or bubblewrap to create a protective tent. Use string to secure it to the canes. For potted plants, wrap the pot with bubblewrap, then drape horticultural fleece over the top, and secure with string.

Protecting bananas

Protect the stems of banana plants with straw or bark, packed loosely into a sleeve of chicken wire placed around the plant. Cover the top with polythene in wet weather to keep the straw dry.