Protecting Plants: Farmers, Florists And Residents Prepare For Fall Snow

DENVER (CBS4) - The sharp dip in temperature we're expecting in Denver has many working to protect their plants. For Deborah Robertson at City Floral and Garden Center in Denver, it's a big job.

"All of this is going inside," she said, "sometimes we can get away with just covering our stuff but this time I'm not going to take any chances."

Before closing up shop on Wednesday they were moving everything with a bloom someplace warm. Her best advice for gardeners during this short storm is to bring what you can inside and cover what you can't.

"Your best option is to kind of double up on the frost cloth and then, even then, who knows when it drops to fifteen... so harvest what you can and make the best of it," Robertson said.

Scott Miller, the farm manager at Rock Creek Farms in Broomfield, has one hundred acres of pumpkins -- and right now a similar mindset to Robertson.

"We can't box all those up so we are kind of taking our chances with some of those," Miller said.

His team spent the day loading pumpkins into boxes and moving what they could into the barn, while he says they'll have plenty of pumpkins to pick from, his first reaction to the timing wasn't positive.

"I probably can't say that on television," he chuckled. "It was definitely frustrating... especially because it's this one-day window and then it's back up to the sixties."

Inconvenient is one thing but unexpected both Robertson and Miller say not in Colorado.

"That's mother nature and that's farming you just got to be prepared to deal with it and that's what we are doing.