Winter gardening tips: How to protect your plants

With colder air setting in and the first widespread frost on the cards this weekend, here's how you can protect your plants.

As colder air arrives, plants, particularly tender or young seedlings, can be damaged by dramatic temperature drops. Even in autumn, or the first early winter cold snap, it can force more established plants to become dormant.

Clear skies for example, will more likely lead to a ground frost, even when the air temperature is a few degrees above zero. This is particularly the case through winter, once the ground starts to lose its deep stored heat from the summer months.

Cloudier skies are better for protecting your plants, as clouds act like an enormous blanket overhead, preventing too much radiation to be lost back out to the atmosphere.

As for wind, calm conditions prevent air from mixing, so the denser, cold air is able to sink to the surface and make a frost more likely.

Of course low temperatures are also a key factor, but is most important in reference to the dew point.

If there is moisture present, then frost can form, but if the ground or grass temperature does not drop below the dew point, then even if it is sub-zero, it will remain frost-free and dry.

Frosts are likely to become a regular and widespread occurrence for most of us starting this week, so keep a close eye on the forecast and use our above tips to help prepare for a visit from Jack frost!