Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tropical Plants and Gardens #116, 0 by ardesia

ardesia wrote:
Marths, those petals are sort of transparent. LOL

My experiment..... Back in the fall of '09 a new product came on the market called Freeze Pruf. It was supposed to provide, depending on the plant, 2 to 7 degrees extra cold protection. It does this by changing the cellular structure of the plant material sort of like blueberries do naturally. It seemed like a no brainer for me, just a few degrees can make a huge difference to those of us on the cusp but the winters of 09/10 and 10/11 were the coldest on record and we needed a lot more than a few degrees extra, I did not see any effect at all. This year however was perfect for testing it. Carefully following the directions I sprayed a number of tropicals that have shown little or no damage from the cold but in order to really test the theory, I purposely only sprayed one of these two Furcraea foetida 'Medio-pictas'. They were identical in size and the pots were in the same conditions as to esposure and protection. The plant on the right was heavily sprayed the one on the left was left to it's own. We never had a hard freeze but it did get cold enough to do some real damage. I am true believer now, at least the unsprayed plant is still alive but it will have some catching up to do.