Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Happy Holidays, 1 by vossner

vossner wrote:
Like many of you who live in milder climates, we still need to cover a few plants. The aggravating part is that we are faced w/ covering and uncovering plants, because the weather fluctuates so wildly.

I noticed my neighbor covers her tender plants in Dec and she doesn't uncover until mid-feb. Her plants look great. I always thought the lack of sun in the warmer days would be detrimental but it didn't affect her plants. I decided to experiment with some plumies and other tender tropicals and was pleasantly surprised. The dwarf plumie retained all its leaves, the regular plumies, including the one shown in the very first post of this thread, lost all leaves but branches were firm. Small tropicals were mostly OK, with only the top leaves damaged.

I think that in the future I will do like my neighbor and cover for the entire winter season. I did not use any heavy blankets, just light colored bed sheets. I don't know if this will work for you, but if you get tired of the cover/uncover bit, you might want to experiment with a couple of plants next winter and cover long term.

Here is a pic of my sea grapes. I hadn't protected in the past and it died to the ground. This year I covered long term and this is how it looks today, about 8" tall with only the top leaves damaged.