The saga of my lantana continues. I've been trying to get some lantana established in my front yard now for quite a while, but I keep getting stymied by the occasional overnight frost in the winter causing them to die back. I'm pretty sure that once they manage to get a few good years in, they'll be vigorous enough to outgrow the damage, but it's a bit of an uphill battle to get there.
The photo below shows kind of 3 phases of this issue. In the back is a relatively new specimen that hasn't seen any frost damage yet, in the middle is one that got kind of minced last winter, and in front is a tiny little puffball that died back, didn't totally exit this mortal plane, and is now a very compact plant that's slowly getting back into actually growing.
Now I'd previously tried shielding these from the cold by using cardboard boxes, and this had somewhat limited success. I'm sure it saved the plants from some frost damage, but it was a huge pain to deal with the cardboard, and the cardboard itself would eventually get soggy after sitting out on cold, humid nights and eventually fall apart. It turns out, however, that you can get this nonwoven fabric to spread out over the plants, and it's supposed to at least be designed for purpose.
I don't know if that'll translate into actually working well, but I guess we'll see. I just spread it out here to test to see if it would fit and the answer is "yes, just barely." I probably could have gone one size up. When I put this out for real I'll be weighing down the edges with some boards or rocks or something to keep it from blowing away; there isn't really any wind overnight here (usually, especially not when there's a frost), but I'm sure I'll occasionally forget to pull it in first thing in the morn.
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