to try out that freeze proof stuff. Looks like I'll be testing out the cold hardness of a few plants myself. Hopefully my citrus has put on enough growth, their cold hardy but haven't seen cold like what's coming this week.
Ardesia looks like you'll get your chance
I have been spraying and spraying. Everything tender that is in the ground will stay there uncovered and will be a good test although these temps are really pushing it. I wimped out and moved all my containers into the garage. I didn't want to gamble with everything.
All the remaining citrus got picked yesterday; it has been so good this year. I left a few small fruits on the trees to see what happens.
The next 8 days are jaw dropping! I'm thinking of getting a petition going to bring back global warming.
X
I have yet to pick a Sanbokan, they all still have green on them. About to find out what happens if you leave the fruit on in freezing temps. I picked my last navels today so I'm just down to the sanbokans.
I checked with the folks on the FL forum and they all advised me to pick the fruit. I had already given away 25 bags, about 5 lbs. each before Christmas. Then I picked that large trug pictured above - it's about 20" by 20" and we guesstimated it was about 40 lbs. Last night I went and got all the small fruit we had left on the trees. I was going to leave a few to see what would happen but I couldn't bear to. BTW, the Sambokans taste great when you treat them like any other grapefruit. Cut them in half and drizzle a bit of honey, yum. My neighbor said she broiled hers and they were delicious. I have also learned that I don't care for the Orlando tangelos. They taste good but the fruit is soft and very messy to eat. The Ponkans are definitely my favorites.
32 here at 7 a.m.
I always thought you could run the sprinkler on citrus and let a coating of ice form and it would protect it. Not true?
X
I've heard of that and did consider it but the ground is already so saturated from all the rain we have had and things don't drain well here on the marsh.
Now that it is daylight I can see some damage on the perennials. My remote thermometer still says 32 but I suspect the sensor is in a protected spot, it is probably closer to 30 out in the garden. I suspect it will take some time to see if the FreezePruf worked at all on the tropicals I left in the ground. And, it is only good for "up to 9 degrees" - we shall see.
I was still only 24 this morning at 8:30 and yesterday, it got up to 34. Oh my.
Oh my indeed. Brrrrrrrrrr
It's a balmy 42 here now.
It's a sizzling 34 degrees here and almost noon. GH is cooking along at 74 .. if it breaks 85 in there later on, I may get a chair and go read in the greenhouse.
X
I would X.
Bananas, cannas and a few other look very dead this morning. They'll be back in the spring, citrus trees look fine and I have some fruit on them. Be able to tell you if you should pick it all or leave it on the tree the end of this week.
X, that sounds like a good plan!
This morning when I got up it was 20F on my back porch. Everything that had been holding on pretty well (all the EEs, some perennials, and a few gingers and ferns) are now looking a little like cooked spinach. I imagine tonight will finish them off. Sigh. I'm now toying with bringing in my huge BOP after all. It was looking ok until this morning. If I want to risk a minor back injury, I may be able to drag it into the garage.
We picked our Meyer lemons last week. Only had 18 but we kept half and gave the rest away to friends.
A week of lows in the low 20s. Yech!
Yech is right, there is a lot of carnage in my garden today. On the plants I sprayed with FP, the results are mixed. Some of my hibiscus look fried and others look fine. The directions say to spray to runoff and the rep told me to spray the undersides of the leaves too. It may be that I sprayed some plants more completly than others.
Current thinking is that should leave the fried foliage on the plant until spring; it is supposed to insulate the crowns of the plants against further cold damage. Gingers and cannas are going to have to be cleaned up though, they are a mess.
Now this is strange. I did spray this coleus with FP as an experiment; I'd been told it would not help coleus but I wanted to try anyway.
Why would just one branch live???
Yesterday, I brought in my BoPs, some small palms (contie, lady and majesty) and citrus.
I'm hoping to rework (expand) one garden this spring and plant my meyer lemon in the ground. The less I have to haul in to the greenhouse or sunroom the better....
I used FP (Freezpruf) on several plants, one of which is a tropical hibiscus in the ground. It got sprayed about 2 weeks ago and yesterday I put a chicken wire cage around the base and filled it with pinestraw. Then I covered the top with a sheet. That suckers gonna LIVE! All the rest of the plants I used FP on are in pots so were brought in. I'm sure I could have left some of them outside but since I don't know how well FP works, I didn't want to chance it.
Barb
Wow Ardesia, that's one small microclimate!
Has to be a density issue Ardesia. Apparently you sprayed more on one branch.
29 degrees at 8 am. Hard freeze last night for sure, I guess I should have held off on planting mangos??? Thought the global warming thing was going to help me out. LOL.
Want to sign my petition? All the crinum and amaryllis have collapsed .. I don't think they will survive this along with all the hosta I traded like crazy for to get .. and I'm wondering about the canna and the hedychium/curcuma as well. I feel an epic rethink of my garden plans for this year coming on.
X
X, I think you are going to be OK although things will look messy for a while. WIth the exception of the curcuma, all the plants you mentioned can handle this nasty weather because the ground does not freeze.
We were one degree colder than yesterday this morning. This is getting old fast. Poor dog keeps wanting his walk and I am a wuss about the cold.
Our little dog went in the laundry room rather than brave the cold. Our lab though, has no problem with it!
Our dogs seem oblivious to the cold. I'm with you, Ardesia, a total wimp about cold weather. Thank goodness DH likes to walk the dogs!!
Ok, even the Camelias look wilted this morning!
This is getting old...real fast. :(
My azaleas are looking bad as well .. only thing that seems to like it are the weeds. The greenhouse is only getting into the upper 70's!
X
My roses look very good, almost like they appreciate the cold. The perennials have melted; they really look bad. This was not a good test for the FP at all, it is just too darn cold. Early this morning Wunderground was calling for snow later in the week but, thankfully, I see where that forecast has been lifted, at least for my location.
There is ice on the pond across the road. First time I've ever seen ice there. Brrrr!
You know it's cold when they are calling for snow chances in Charleston, sheesh.
Freezepruf worked great for the first part of the fall/winter. But after hitting 16F the other night, yeaaah - not so much anymore. And with this kind of cold snap, I'm not sure dumping a whole bucket of it on the plants would have helped. We're barely getting to the high 30's this week so far.
It would be kind of funny if it snowed here. It wouldn't last long so I don't think snow would do anything bad.
How cold are they calling for you guys this weekend? The last WIS forecast was saying 10F on Saturday night, 13F the night before. Crazy, I thought last year was bad.
I have been giving serious thought to moving to the Charleston area in the coming years - my girlfriend is from Summerville and I'm always hearing success stories from gardeners in her family as well as from you guys about what grows in the various micro-climates down there. Bird of Paradise comes to mind. I'm sure to some it may seem silly to think about what plants I can grow when I move, but I guess that shows it's the importance of gardening to me ;)
We lived in Summerville in 1973 and there was some freaky weather that year; in late February we had 16" of snow.
Wunderground is once again forecasting a 20% chance of snow on Saturday. Aggghhhhh
What are we doing on the mainland John???????
Brrr, brrr, brrrry McBRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Mid teens here on Saturday night, too. I need a pair of oxen- all I do is haul water. It's supposed to be windy the next couple mornings, too, to make it even more miserable. I have 15 lambs born in the last week, but they all seem to be doing fine.
Well if it's gonna be this cold and miserable, snow would at least make things a bit more interesting.
X
We've had lows from 25 down to 19 over the past four days. Today's high actually hit 40!! Wow!
The plants I was doing the Freezpruf experiment are in varying degrees of "pissed off". The ones not covered with a cloth or FP are lookin': pretty soggy (variegated schiflera ) and just burned (Ti plant). The ones coated with FP are better, but still showing a lot of damage. The ones covered in cloth....well it was really windy, so I didn't check them; maybe if it ever gets above 45 or 50 I will......
Barb
Another week of these temps, it looks like. I'm with you, X, snow would break the monotony of just being c-o-l-d!
Beach_Barbie, I had the same result with a Ti plant. The leaves looked pretty good, but all of them wilted after the temperature dropped below 20 the first time. So it looks like Freezepruf works, but it certainly has a critical point where it seems to stop working. It didn't help my Dwarf Cavendish at all, all of them burned very badly after the first freeze. I decided, perhaps foolishly looking at this forecast, to experiment this winter. I left two White Birds of Paradise out, three Traveler's Palms, several of my Hawaii banana's and a few of my Ti's. I also put some monsterras under the deck - and so far, all are fried - the White BOP's seem to be handling the cold the best though, the Monstera's the worst. I'm sure they'll come back (the one did last year even with a 9F night) - but the leaves can't stand these hard freezes.
In my desperation tonight I took out all my old useless Christmas lights and covered as much of the back yard as possible - proceeded to cover those with frost blankets to try and hold the heat. Doesn't seem to help much, I put a digital thermometer under the blankets and it's only about 2F warmer (not much help when it's 10F).
I reaaally want my GH's back - those saved so many of my plants last year I didn't have room for in the garage.
I wanna live where it's warm(er)!!
I hit 24 where I am. The coast can be tricky, it all matters how close you are to water. I've been solidly under 30 for days now at night and it looks like it wll continue. Here if you want to look around at the difference a mile or two can make. http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?lat=32.36952&lon=-80.88959&zoom=10&type=hyb&units=english&rad=1&rad.num=1&rad.spd=25&rad.opa=70&rad.stm=0&rad.type=N0R&rad.smo=1&rad.mrg=0&wxsn=1&wxsn.mode=tw&svr=0&cams=0&sat=0&riv=0&mm=0&hur=0&fire=0&tor=0&ndfd=0&pix=0&dir=0
quote[/]What are we doing on the mainland John???????
[/]quote
I would have a place for the winter in Dorado beach, if I didn't have kids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorado,_Puerto_Rico
Actually if I was independently wealthy I would have place in the low country for the spring and fall, a place in Dorado for mid winter and a place in up state NY or VT for mid summer.
Sounds like a plan to me. I could get a big boat too, to ferry myself around these places. That would kill a few months in it's self. Upper Hudson river to Puerto Rico would be a long haul with a few month stay over in the low country on each trip. LOL> Chances of that happening in the near future? Zero.
Hey it never hurts to dream. If I had the guts to do it, I'd pick up and move to Kauai tomorrow without a second thought. I have also considered Florida, but the storms worry me, not to mention they've had some freezes as far south as Melbourne in recent years - yikes!
Thanks for posting that link - that's interesting to see the temperature differences so close together like that.
We can be quite a bit warmer than Wilmington, just 10-15 miles to our north. Our island is between the ocean and the Cape Fear river and is maybe a mile wide at it's widest. That keeps our Fall to Winter temps higher and spring to summer temps lower.
Same situation here. We are several degrees warmer than downtown Beaufort which is just a bridge away and when you get further inland around Hwy. 17, they are about 10 degrees cooler than out here on the sea islands.