Will Frost Damage Your Potatoes? How to Protect Your Harvest

So what does cold weather mean for our potato crops?

Potatoes are frost tolerant to some extent but cannot continue growing throughout winter. Consistent cold temperatures will kill off their green leaves before dormant tubers lie dormant before producing new sprouts in spring.

Will frost damage your potatoes? Continue reading to gain knowledge on how to shield your potatoes from frost, extend their growing season, and protect their delicate stems.

Are Potatoes Frost Tolerant?

 One of the great characteristics of potatoes is their frost tolerant qualities, up to a certain point. Light frosts won’t have too much impact on them; however, once we reach hard freeze in autumn or winter time, green leaves could die back drastically, leaving nothing but tubers left standing.

Before we continue, it is important to distinguish between frost and freeze. A frost can occur even at temperatures not dropping to 32 degrees, visible on the leaves of plants.

As late summer transitions into fall, you can expect some frosty mornings that quickly warm up by midmorning – but potatoes are resilient enough to withstand this kind of frostiness.

Hard freeze temperatures occur when temperatures fall below 28 degrees and remain there for an extended period. At these levels, your potatoes and most other things in your garden will die quickly.

Will frost damage your potatoes? How Late Can You Harvest Potatoes?

 In order to accurately ascertain when and if the best time is to harvest potatoes, it’s essential that you know when the first regional frost date occurs in your area. Depending on what hardiness zone you live in, your first frost date could occur either earlier or later in the fall season.

Are you having difficulty determining your local frost date? Enter your zip code into this website, and it will tell you! For optimal harvesting success, harvest potatoes before the ground freezes solid as this will make retrieving them much harder.

For my own benefit, I like to harvest all of my potatoes before Thanksgiving. If you live somewhere warmer, the harvest date can possibly be moved forward by two weeks.

If you leave them in the ground over winter, there is still the possibility that their tubers may survive and produce new shoots come spring; but this can be hit-or-miss and they could rot before producing new potatoes.

How to protect potatoes from frost

When frost appears in the forecast, there are certain strategies you can employ to extend the season and protect your potatoes from becoming frostbitten. Will frost damage your potatoes?

Row cover:

 Frost cloth (reemay) is the go-to method of protecting plants from cold temperatures, providing warmth while simultaneously keeping out any potential cold drafts.

Fabric should never come in contact with plants as this could cause serious harm. For best results, place metal hoops over rows so you can drape the frost cloth over.

Once your cloth is on, it’s important to find some weight to secure it against wind-blown elements. I use bricks lying around but many others use sandbags or anything heavy as an anchor point; any solution will do.

Frost cloth comes in many different sizes and thicknesses to provide insulation to plants, keeping them 3 degrees warmer than their surroundings.

If it’s projected to get extremely cold, consider layering on another frost cloth for increased insulation.

Frost cloth does have one drawback – it makes sunlight harder to reach your plants, so use only for short-term solutions such as protecting newly planted seeds or seedlings from frost damage.

If night temperatures are only cold, then covering potatoes overnight could work; then uncover them when morning arrives once temperatures have warmed up again. I wouldn’t leave frost cloth on plants for more than 24 hours as they might damage plants over time.

If temperatures become consistently colder, it’s wise to harvest what crops you can while the opportunity exists.