How to Make Frost Covers From Fabric

Save your perennials from late frost by making your own frost cover.

Even when you wait until mid-spring to plant your summer garden and flowers, a late spring frost can take you by surprise. If the frost is late enough in the spring season, and the low temperatures are sustained long enough, it is possible that a frost will destroy not only the plants you just planted, but the buds on any perennial shrubs or flowering plants in your landscape. In order to protect plants from a late frost, use frost covers, which you can make on your own from fabric.

Things You'll Need

• Fabric
• Measuring tape
• Sewing machine or needle and thread
• Ladder or step stool
• String
• Garden stakes
• Hammer

Instructions

1. Get a non-woven, light-colored fabric to use for your frost covers. Like the non-woven, polypropylene used by most garden blanket manufacturers, a thin light-colored fabric permits sunlight to pass through during the day, while still providing frost protection.

2. Measure the area of the plant or plants that you want to cover. If you have a garden or flower bed with small seedlings in the ground, create a frost cover that goes across all the plants. Measure all the way across the garden or flower bed in both directions, adding 6 to 8 inches around the perimeter. If you want to create an individual frost cover for a shrub or tree, measure the height of the tree from the top to bottom and multiply by two. The cover should be this length in both directions for the plant.

3. Place as many pieces of fabric together as it takes to get one large piece of fabric in the dimensions you measured. Sew the cover together in all the places where the separate pieces of fabric meet with either a sewing machine or by hand. Don't leave gaps or open seams, which can let cool air in.

4. Cover a shrub or tree by using a ladder or step stool to get above the plant, holding the center of the fabric cover over the plant and allowing the sides of the fabric to fall around the shrub or plant. Once the fabric covers the plant, either allow it to hang to the ground or, to provide greater protection, cinch the fabric up just under the crown of the tree or bottom limbs of the shrub and tie in place with a string.

5. Lay the fabric frost cover over a garden or flower bed by placing stakes around the perimeter and throughout the bed. Drive the stakes into the ground so the top of each stake is just slightly taller than the tallest seedling in the garden or flower bed, as the fabric should not touch the seedlings. Lay the frost cover across the stakes, making sure enough fabric hangs off on each side of the garden or flower bed to go all the way to the ground.

References

• Frostproof: Outoodr Gardening -- Frost Control
• Surya Textech: Agri Fabrics
• Tomato Dirt: Frost Protection