This is the time of the year we may have a hard frost or freeze and I have noticed that many of the yards here in the Villages got hit really hard in past years, but they would not look that bad if you do a couple of things that I am about to tell you. When you here that there is a chance of a hard frost or freeze
"TURN YOUR IRRIGATION OFF" Let me explain, say there is going to be a frost or freeze tomorrow night. Turn "ON" your irrigation tonight and let it run through the entire cycle this will put moisture into the ground, this is what you need to retain some of the heat in the ground. Then turn your irrigation
"OFF" tomorrow and keep it off until the freeze is over. Our cold spells usually last 3-days so leave it off until it has passed then turn it back on. You still have to cover your sensitive plants but there will be less damage to your landscape if you do this. If your irrigation runs during a frost or freeze it will ice everything up and do serious damage to the plants tissue. I know some of you are thinking I notice on t.v. the farmers turn on there irrigation when it freezes down here to ice up the crops. The reason the strawberry farmers do this is to try to save the berry which can tolerate iceing for a period of time. And the orange growers do it mainly to save the tree, if the tree gets a coating of ice on it then the tree has a chance of no damage to the wood on the tree, and the oranges can still be saved if it does't stay below freezing for to many hours. When covering your plants
"DO NOT" put plastic over them, it will kill the plants. Use old sheets or quilt's or even better yet a cardboard box if it's big enough, then take it off during the day so sun can get to the plant and then cover it up at night again until the freeze has passed. I have noticed some real bad damage to the Queen Palms here in the Villages, and alot of that damage is from the freeze we had in 2010 that is just now showing up. I have seen it happen 3-times here in this area, I can remember not seeing a Queen Palm alive until you got south of Tampa Florida. I tell all our customers they are taking a chance planting Queens here, we are really to far north here for them. If you notice you will not see a Queen Palm planted anywhere on the Villages common grounds because they know they will get hurt bad from a hard freeze. If you go on our web site at
Rons Landscaping Inc and click on trees I will post a picture of what the damage on Queen Palms looks like, just give me a few days to take a picture and put it on the site. You can also just click on our ad at the top of this page which rotates each time the page is changed, that will take you to our site also. The water that is inside the tree freezes and damages the wood inside the tree which causes it to rot from the inside out, I hope this article will help some of you, thanks again for all of your business.
Thank You
Ron