Anti-freeze for your plants

    Kathleen Hassinger contacted me last month about trying out a product from the Liquid Fence Company called FreezePruf. The spray – said to be eco-safe – is  a frost protector that the company describes “like anti-freeze, for your plants.”  Kathleen ended up sending a whole case of the spray – which will eventually be going bottle by bottle to Homegrown blog readers – that arrived the day of our first hard frost here in Cedar Rapids. For best results, the spray is supposed to be applied when the temperature is above 50 degrees F and a minimum of 8 to 12 hours before an anticipated freeze. Because I was working that day, it ended up being applied at night, in the cold. Not the greatest timing, but I thought I'd take a chance. My gardening buddy, Dave, also tried it out on some of his plants.  Results weren't spectacular, but then, the temperatures that night dropped into the low 20s. FreezePruf is said to improve plants' natural cold tolerance up to 9.4 degrees, depending on the variety. So if temps dipped to 22 degrees, that would only improve to 31 degrees or so – still too cold for the plants I was trying to protect.  My petunias survived, but I think those are generally more hardy. Dave wasn't impressed with his mums, though I saw a difference in those that were protected. The biggest difference I saw was in a portion of some snapdragons that didn't get doused with FreezePruf that were definitely bitten by the frost. The rest were fine. I'll test it out again next gardening season and will have a contest or some way to get the rest of the FreezePruf out to you, so you can try it out, as well. Read more about FreezPruf here:

www.liquidfence.com/FreezePruf.html