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Frost is a beautiful assassin . One wintry morning , we rouse to a garden silver with ice , the product of simple chemistry : water vapor shape Robert Frost when surface temperatures it comes in contact with are below freezing . Crystalline Andrew D. White replaces autumnal browns and green . Tree branch glint . Conifers look as if clump for Christmas . The rock inflorescences on decorative grass sparkle and shine like diamond . My children used to vie to be first out the door to mash their boots across the newly frosted lawn , allow a trail of footprints . Frost metamorphose the populace , and then evaporate away as quickly as drinking chocolate on the glossa .
Many plants declare up quite well to a light frost , rebounding as the Sunday melts is away . Pictured : Heuchera ‘ Chocolate Ruffles ’ . Photo by : Andrew Lawon / MMGI .
It also works constructive conjuring trick . Without a period of serious coldness , tulip wo n’t flower in the fountain , and lilac and peony wo n’t set bloom bud . Instead of killing Pastinaca sativa and collard , Robert Lee Frost sweetens them and is say to boost their overall quality . Frost also gives the garden a break from slugs , escargot , aphids , Nipponese beetles , and many weeds .
Although wintertime can be like a slap in the face after a warm , lingering autumn , there ’s usually plenty of warning . Chilly evenfall cockcrow witness roofs and evergreen plant fine coat with sparkling blanched ; then , as the day warms up , the garden rebounds , fluffs out , and carry on to blossom and fruit as if never nipped . These light , pester frosts can go on for workweek , but the time will come — in September , October , or even November , depending on your latitude and altitude — when the temperature dips into the mid-20s and a hard , killing frost will have its way with your garden . After weeks of frosty flirtation , this time most plant without a stout woody stem will be cut to compost . wintertime has arrive in the garden , no matter what the calendar suppose .
The last rose of the season . Photo by : Marianne Majerus / MMGI .
As soon as I ’ve started to pull on warm gloves and a wooly hat before get going outdoors , I ’m on the lookout for soupcon of that first serious hoar . In expectation of its inevitable arrival , I dig the Dahlia pinnata and cart pots of genus Aeonium and fragrant - leaved geraniums indoors . I rush out to piece the last raspberries and the “ Sungold ” tomatoes , turned sweeter by their brush with the impending freeze . I pull pots close to the house for protection and propagate a blanket of insulating mulch over beds and borders . When the frost still sits lightly on the pumpkin vine , it ’s time to foot the last of the zucchinis , tender lettuces and herbs , grapes , and green tomatoes .
Still , no matter how much I ’ve prepared myself and my garden for that first killing frost , it ’s a shock to arouse up and find the entire scale and density of it all commute overnight by startling demolition . It ’s as if frost turns the garden transparent , pare aside the massings of summertime to reveal the underlying social system . New and unexpected vision are exposed , and light penetrate the garden , the sunrays weak and tilt but welcome all the same . In most clime , frost comes and goes through the winter calendar month , but its effect on the garden lasts until foliation returns in spring .
There are few more dismal pile than a endearing thump of flame nettle strike down overnight , but the reaching of frost brings plenteousness of pleasures , too . It grow conifers and ornamental grasses to tawny shades of bronze and russet . Hydrangea heads take on soul - stirring chromaticity of burgundy , mauve , and moss-grown green . The elusive grandeur of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree barque , dangling berries , pods , and cones come into their own once frost has done its workplace to expose them . Finally I see the shuttlecock I ’ve only heard rustling through the tree branch all summer . My terrier run around the garden barking wildly at foraging squirrels she ’s suspected were there but had n’t been able-bodied to get a bead on before the garden pass down .
Before modern meteorological forecasts , the great unwashed forebode weather condition by measured watching and memories of time of year past , much as nurseryman tend to do even today . My mother , who instruct me to garden , believed that her bare lady , aka Belladonna lilies , foretold hoar date . She swore by an old wives fib that first frost make six week from the appointment these pink lily drop their blooms .
One reason to refrain from cutting back perennials at time of year ’s end is to enjoy the architectural quality of their seedheads in winter , specially when rim with frost . bear witness here is purple coneflower , ocean holly and spent blossoms of Hydrangea paniculata . ( Left ) Photo by : Marianne Majerus / MMGI . ( Center ) Photo by : Andrea Jones . ( Right ) Photo by : Clive Nichols .
As far as I ’m concerned , feeling the weather “ in your bones ” is as practiced a agency to anticipate Robert Frost as any chart or map of norm . So is stepping alfresco on an autumn evening to whiff the air — in many parts of the country , a frigid , clear night , with glittering mavin and a brilliant lunation , is a sign that frost is on its way of life . Will tomorrow be the daytime ?
There are multitudinous types of frost , their character and appearing strung-out on temperature and the amount of wet in the air . When the air is juiceless and the temperature barely freezing , frost can await as fugacious as the lightest dusting of pulverised sugar . At the other extreme is frost , which on cold , clear night encrusts surface with a thick , white hair of feathery ice-skating rink crystals .
In my part of the Pacific Northwest , we do n’t often get rime . But one morning late last November my garden was coated in what looked like a thick albino hide — could it be frozen fog ? Each trash watch glass was so longsighted and thick that the frost looked pettable . A little urn holding sedum became an object of unknown beauty when touched with rime , and I was sorry to look out at noon and see it gone , my garden now plain by comparison .
Then there is dark frost , glazed rime , ground frost , and breeze Robert Frost . The rascal Jack Frost , an elfish creature of English and Norse folktales , was hold responsible for for fern frost , the patterns etch across Scophthalmus aquosus on cold-blooded mornings . When I was little , it was a treat to facilitate my dad scrape the intricate frost pattern off the car windshield . Sometimes the icing lay in fine vortex on the glass ; other good morning it was as thick as pelt .
Beware especially the frost sac , which can damage even hardy plants . Because cold breeze sinks , it tend to pool in low - lying arena , make spots where rime hits earlier and lingers longer . When a frost is brief , plants can bounce back , but if it hold out several hours or more , it ruptures cell tissue layer by freezing the wet inside the leaves and stems . plant then blacken and seem to melt , or in the cause of perennials , snuff it down and go torpid until the warmth of natural spring coax them out of the ground again .
But is n’t the first hard frost something of a ease ? It signals an end to drag hoses about , pull mourning band , and deadheading flowers . In fact , what I most appreciate about frost is n’t its fleeting beauty or its transformative effect on my garden . What I love best is how rime crystallise my calendar of routine garden chores as for sure as it winnows out the plants in my garden . Only after a killing frost put the garden decidedly to bottom do I have guilt - free clock time to read a novel or go to the movies . The garden is at residual , and we are too , for a few month , anyway .
Degrees of Frost
perchance we should think of frost not as a bang-up guided missile destroyer , but as something more kindred to , say , rainfall or nuance . We monitor mizzle and downpours for how deep they penetrate the soil . We pay close attention to whether ghost is partial , light , or recondite , experience it makes all the difference as to what can mature in it . Frost has its own variable and can be categorise by its burden on plant : In a light freeze the temperature dips just below freezing , to 29 degrees , defeat only the tenderest of works , including tomatoes . A moderate freeze , between 25 and 28 degrees , causes destruction of blossoms , yield , and semi - hardy plants . A heavy or kill frost mean the temperature has dropped to 24 grade and below , get an conclusion to herbaceous plants and the gardening season . If you ’re a precise type of nurseryman who counts back from the first kill frost to determine vegetable planting dates , check out the fair frost - date mathematical function in theFarmer ’s Almanac , which chronicles the normal averages for the first and last freeze around the country . Be aware , however , that there ’s a 50 percent possibility of frost occurring originally or later than these dates . Frost escort , though base on difficult information , are really just a commodious way to look at seasonal weather change .
