The Liquid Fence® Pro Division introduces Ecologic™ FreezePruf™ – a new foliar/floral spray that acts like an “anti-freeze” for turf and plants, helping extend both the growing season and the USDA Zone rating for your area.
As temperatures fall, a dose of FreezePruf can buy growers and turf specialists more time and save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in damage.
“What’s really exciting is that it extends the early spring growing season by a few weeks and will extend the growing season by a few more weeks in the fall,” says Dr. David Francko, a botanist at The University of Alabama and lead developer of FreezePruf.
Its breakthrough formula and mode of action add approximately a half-USDA Zone equivalent to the cold tolerance range of major ornamentals and crops.
“For example, a plant that is normally hardy to the low teens Fahrenheit (Zone 8a) can be grown with little or no damage in Zone 7b if treated with FreezePruf,” says Francko. “It’s like moving your temperature zone about 200 miles farther south which is highly significant.”
Improves plant cold tolerance
This easy-to-use, biodegradable frost/freeze protector spray increases plant resistance to both cold damage and cold mortality. FreezePruf improves a plant’s cold tolerance in both foliage and flowers of monocot and dicot plants up to 9.4°Fahrenheit, depending on plant variety.
Francko explains: “A plant’s ability to tolerate extreme cold depends on two groups of mechanisms – one prevents water in tissues from freezing at temperatures at or modestly below freezing; the second increases tolerance to tissue ice when it gets so cold that ice does form.”
FreezePruf addresses both, by enhancing a plant’s natural “anti-freeze” properties and reducing the damage to plant tissues caused by ice crystal formation.
“This is an important distinction,” says Francko. “Products before FreezePruf only helped with freeze avoidance- good for tender plants but not cold hardy plants. FreezePruf protects both the plant and the flower so plants can, in some cases, be frozen solid and still be viable.”
How it Works
Francko developed the novel spray along with scientists from Miami (Ohio) University. The proprietary mixture combines five ingredients – two cryoprotectants with different modes of action, a surfactant, a cell wall reinforcing compound and an antidessicant that work together to protect the foliage and flowers, both systemically and externally.
With mechanisms proven to work well on ornamentals and turf, fruit and vegetable plants, it’s been successfully tested on a wide variety of plants like bananas, palms, tropical foliage and flowering plants, perennials, vegetable and fruit crops, including citrus.
“This past spring we had a very late freeze that made my young tomato plants literally rigid with frost. Because they were treated with FreezePruf — before the freeze event — they thawed later in the morning with only minor foliar and floral burning!” Francko enthused.
EcoLogic FreezePruf is non-toxic, inexpensive, and can be applied once per season or right before a freeze event and its guaranteed protection lasts up to 6 weeks.
It’s available in quart, 2.5.15, 55, and 260 gallon concentrates through Liquid Fence® PRO Division.
