Using stuff other than fleece to protect plants from frost?

Evening all,

With a predicted frost on the way I was wondering if anyone could recommend anything I can use (apart from fleece I think its called - its white and rips too easy!) to protect my young small gooseberries & roses?

If my memory serves me right(?) I recall using newspaper wrapped around a plant to help protect it from frost?

Thank you for your suggestions,

Samuel

I sometimes use boxes and baskets if the plants are small enough. If you can do some staking, draping a sheet or blanket over that will help protect also. No light really gets through but I have left any of these for a couple days if the temps are going to be at or below freezing and everything comes out OK. Sometimes leaves are enough for small plants....and I'm sure newspaper, enough layers, would work if it couldn't blow away.
I don't like that fleece stuff either...just more trash in the end. We are due for some twenty degree weather in a day or two and I am just going to let it happen...no covers this year.

Just about anything can be used to cover plants from a light frost…..fabric, plastic, paper, mulch, etc. Usually such light frosts come on still nights without wind anyway. Another way is to run a sprinkler all night on the plants….this will form ice and as long as ice is in the process of forming, the temperature under and around the ice won't go much below 32 F. A windy hard freeze is another matter. You need to anchor the covers somehow. Plastic jugs with the bottoms cut out, sunk into the ground over small plants, can work, or hoops over beds with plastic or fabric laid over and weighted down on all sides. I've achieved good protection to quite low temps…..low 20's at least, by combining these techniques….sprinkling on covered plants. If the covers are fabric, ice will harden the fabric into a solid, warm "igloo" which can resist any wind.