Covering plants is an important thing to do when the freeze warnings go out, but how? If you throw a sheet over the plants, your cat or another animal might lie down on the soft surface, crushing the tender plants below. Cloches are a solution to the problem. You can buy elegant, expensive, bell-shaped jars, or you can recycle available materials. We use cut half-gallon milk jugs and juice cartons to make inexpensive, temporary cloches. Cut 2- or 3-liter soda bottles work really well in climates where you leave the cloche on during the day, and a transparent bottle lets light through. You can even unscrew the top for air circulation. Here we'll only need protection tonight (and maybe tomorrow night), with a high of 54 tomorrow, so I'll remove the cloches tomorrow morning before work, and keep a close eye on the weather through the day. Hopefully I can plant Wednesday, because the beans and tomatoes need to go into the ground. We will see.
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