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OTTUMWA, IOWA -- Quick, protect your gardens and plants! Chilly weather and frost are just around the corner.

So, what can you do to protect your hard work?

Ottumwa’s Earl May Manager Jim Bremer said blooms are the part of the plant that are most delicate.

“Your tender annuals that you find in the Spring, like impatiens and petunias and that kind of thing, use cloth, don't use plastic, and just throw something over it to keep the frost off the blooms and they'll be fine. Plastic will burn them. The plastic doesn't allow any air through. Plastic gets against the bloom and will freeze just as hard under it as it does above, and it doesn't provide any protection, like the cloth does. You want to use something that lets air through.”

What about your garden? Bremer said most gardens in the area are finished for the season, due to heavy rains this year, but he does have advice if yours is still blooming.

“If you do get a frost, if you go out early in the morning and if it has frosted, if there's frost on the plants, if you take a garden hose, wet everything down before they sun comes up, before the sun hits it, the frost won't hurt them a bit. If you have a large area like that, that you can't cover, just watering it real well, early in the morning will take the frost right off and you won't have any frost damage.”

Now, frost on your lawn just means you won’t have to mow as much. But, Bremer does have a few tips for your grass during this season.

“It's a good time of year to put on the weed and feed now. It works real well, and you can fertilize your lawn now and it will make it thicken up and not make it grow any faster.”

Earl May also sells products, such as Liquid Fence’s Freeze-Pruf, which will prevent frost-damage.