Another Freezing Thread

Same with me Corky, I get tired of dragging out the sheets and blankets. Last time they said freeze I covered everything up and it didnt happpen . R eally I am thankful it didnt ha. I wonder how many more time they are going to say that. Thought you were too far south to have freezes. Fran

Even Ft Lauderdale will have a bad freeze about once every 10-15 years Fran. How long's it been now?

Molly
:^(((

It can and does freeze in lakeland and tampa. I have made some of my best icecicles. First time I ever saw 'snow' was in tampa. Interesting how the cold will drop farther down the west coast than the east, altho a freeze still rare. I bet the strawberry growers are stroking...almost time to start picking and here comes cold.

Pam,

It's the gulf stream on the Atlantic that keeps things a little warmer over on the east coast than the Tampa coast. Same thing that keeps London in the fog.

Molly
:^))))

BRRRRRRRRRRR. I am going out in a few and check the thermometer on the carport. I managed to cover all except my huge shooting star bush and of course it is trying to bloom--in fact one of them is. I would love to send pics but-my dang puter program for sending pics wants to send the whole file to daves garden-- I can e-mail pics in reg. e-mails but not to Daves? I guess I will have to get a puter tech. over as we have tried everything else. By the way today is my one month anniversdary for the brain surgery. I am so happy to be "on the ball" and plan on getting better every day. OHMS to all. Corky

31 under my carport at 7:30 corky

Im at 26 right now. I really need to go outside and feed the 4 legged critters, but I REEAAALLLLYYY dont want to. Besides they are all running and playing and acting the fools, trying to get warm Im sure. I think Ill wait a little bit.....

weather.com says 48 here right now. I have a painter showing up here at 9am or over 50 whichever comes first. Trying to finish the painting I started several years ago so I can get some serious gardening done around the house without everything getting trampled. LOL

This message was edited Feb 17, 2007 8:25 AM

we have been under freezing for 10 hours now, im finally seeing the pentas laying down...the firebushes are down, im afraid i didnt bring much in. its still only 26...sure hope it got the fleas, along with my plants. Went out and got my cymbiniums in about 3..was tossing and turning. Wasnt sure what they could take. Crinums down it appears...boy were they pretty this time of year..perfect leaves with no spots. Sure hope the daylily seedlings can take it.

Covered all I could here, looks like I got damage to my Little Tab tree & pygmy palm. My bird bath was frozen over. Hope no damage to my orchids on the trees, covered some but couldn't cover all. Hoping for the best!!! Lorine

Waahhhhhhh, all the plants in my greenhouse suffered. Down to 10-11 degrees early this morning. Greenhouse 24-25. At 2 am it was 25 in GH. Way too many hours of cold!!!!!

Everthing in there was doing so well. I sure hope they come back from the roots.

Molly
:^((((

Cold - darned cold - geez !!!!!!!!!!
I just walked around - got upset and am now hiding in my house - hoping this is all a bad dream :-(

All I see damage on is a couple of brugs, so far. A few things got nipped alittle. We ran the microjets in the orange grove last night, and had a few icicles. Quite a bit of frost all around. The low temp registered in the grove was 29.

~Lucy

Well, nanners bit--they come back--to early to tell if orchid trees hit--shooting stars nipped-- forgot to cover dutchmans pipe vine oopsy woopsy. methinks it will come back-- i think another freeze sun.? or mon.? here and north of here. Mowwy I sorry about u stuff. Cork.

I am about a mile east of I-75 at the Manatee/Hillsborough county line. At first I thought everything was fine. Papaya near the house had no damage, bananas looked good, etc. I had been watching the temperatures in the area on weather underground... http://www.wunderground.com/stationmaps/gmap.asp?zip=33601&magic=1&wmo=99999 and it looked like we were hovering just above freezing. I no longer keep a thermometer outside - I just let whatever is going to happen, happen.

I ventured farther afield this afternoon (I have a couple of acres) and there is some, although not total, damage to some Cuban red bananas, cannas, and Antigonon leptopus. They are all clustered around my pump, pool filter, and aerator tank. It seems to be a little cold spot in the yard.

Hopefully Sunday night to Monday won't be worse.

Diane

Yes indeed. This afternoon showed a different sight than this morning. My brugs looked fine this morning....at the most..like they were a little thirsty. By this afternoon..complete freezer burn to the leaves.

I am so sorry to hear of all the damaged plants.
We had a low of 21.7 in Spring Hill, my greenhouse maintained about 38 degrees so all my tropicals are OK.
It got down to 29.1 in New Port Richey, looks like just some tip damage to some of the hibiscus.
Molly, did the papayas make it?

Dave,

I am hoping they have only suffered from some frost on the leaves. They are all in the greenhouse, not outside. I was giving them an extra winter of growth and protection before putting them in the ground outside.

Tomorrow I will check their stems and trunk. If no mush, I expect they will come back.

Molly
:^)))

Wellll--Gonna freeze again tonite here in Polk County--Lakeland area. Good thing I left a lot of stuff covered and just made air holes in them yesterday so only have a few to recover. Wind is the problem when you are using sheets. A couple of times I thought I was gonna set sail. Tropicals as in orchids stag horn fern and other tender stuff on car port covered and little heater set on low. I am considering putting fan on front porch to save shooting star bush/tree. Methinks it may work? Corky

For what it's worth, I'm told that bananas almost always recover, and canna and gingers can be cut right down to the ground. As long as there's no root damage, they should come back OK.

I hope so.

My garden looks like there are bats hanging from every plant - the foliage is shriveled and black. If I didn't already know, I wouldn't be able to tell which plant is which.

Steve

One brug on the East side of the house looks so sad, and all its leaves are hanging sadly , but not sure of another one that is under a tree. I've been pre-occupied with house things, so didn't get a chance to cover this time. The ones in my lanai look OK, as does the Jade, and my Desert Rose. I was lucky this time.

We're expecting another freeze tonight, so will take precautions.

It sometimes takes several days to see just how extensive the freeze damage may be, but so far I don't think I've totally lost anything. It is surprising to me that some plants have only partial damage -- 1/2 the plant looking fried, the other half looking green and healthy (that's what happened to a Tibouchina out front), and the elephant ears are the same way with some leaves blasted while other leaves are fine on the same plant. I am accustomed to seeing things get frozen here, and then most of them recover (makes Spring worthwhile to see things coming back from the root crown that were frozen to the ground!) Tonight is predicted to be colder than last night. I didn't use any sheets or coverings on most things last night -- the Ficus benjamina look fine as well as a row of Zone 10 tropicals I have on a north facing wall of my garage -- so the damage was spotty and unpredictable. The more sustained freeze with lower temps for longer hours may do a lot more damage.

I think it might be interesting if we start a thread sometime around April to each provide our coldest temps of the season and then list the plants that seem beyond hope of recovery, those with damage that survived, and those that came through with no damage. I think we might have some surprises with what is usually considered the minimum temperature for some plants.

The difficulty, though, is knowing when a plant has truly been frozen beyond recovery. I had a Musa basjoo banana tree last year that was frozen brown at the growing tip and all the leaves were dead and I thought it was a goner. I got too busy to ever get around to chopping it down, though. Sometime around July or August of this year, it sent out new leaves! I'm not sure if I was rewarded for my patience or for my laziness, but it was amazing to see it come back to life after so many months of looking like a dead stalk. So -- my message to those of you with frozen 'naners (especially your unusual cultivars) -- let 'em be for a few months, if you can bear the sight of a leafless stalk, before deciding they are kaput!

Jeremy

Molly, a sympathy card is on its way to you! I'm so sorry to hear that your babies got hurt by the cold. {: > {

Michele

Michele,

Thanks so much!!!! :^)))))

Spring will indeed be here soon.

Molly

At midnight, outside temp is 34.5, greenhouse temp is 50. It's so full of plants, I literally can't take a step inside.

Steve

I removed all the coverings today. It is 48 at 1AM
Fred

PS those light covers I bought in the plumbing dept at HD worked out just great. The regular plant coverings were all wet but not these.

4 a.m., outside is 33.5, greenhouse is 47.

Fredrump, I've been telling my wife all along that we didn't move far enough south.

Steve

It's 19 outside and 30 in the greenhouse. Hopefully this will all be over soon.

I just came back in from "the unveiling." I hadn't really inspected after the deep freeze over the weekend -- just went back out last night to reinstall the Bed, Bath and Beyond bomb, but now I see that the durantas suffered damage, and the tips of the oleanders are flopped over and mushy. The little bananas, ditto. Pentas frozen back to the ground, tropical hibiscus and tropical sage, ditto. Many of my neighbors had azaleas in full bloom, but now the blossoms are thawed out mush. Mine, for some reason, hadn't really started to bloom yet, so I only have a few mushy blossoms. Hopefully the buds will open. I feel like I've been frozen too, and am looking for a patch of sunshine to lie down in.

Molly, I sure hope this is the last of it. I just looked at weather records for March, and let me tell you -- if you haven't looked, don't look. Anything could happen.

Clearly, Steve, I didn't move far enough south either!

Michele

Michele, I am so sorry about your gardens too. Although most of the ones you named will come back even after the frost. I guess we'll both see about the bananas though.

Molly
:^((((

It hit 28 here last night which was a whole bunch better than the 23 Friday. Michele - are you sure you aren't talking about my yard?? No bananas but I had the rest of them with the same results. I've also got a bunch of black mexican petunias, cape honeysuckles, Alabama crimson honeysuckles, jasamines, and lantanas. The petunias and honeysuckles get nailed every year but they always have come back strong. I think the roots on the mexican petunias are safe and warm somewhere around China. They sure go deep.

I hope this is it for this year, but we got nailed here in early March last year with a 21 night. I'm not even going to do anything with all the damaged stuff until the middle of March. There shouldn't be any more freezes after that.

Jeremy -- You got that right on the delayed display of damage. When we had that 21 night last year, I checked everything out in the morning and everything looked OK. I was all excited that everything made it (except for the cape honeysuckle and the jasamins--they are like instant brown at 32). The next day some black leaves showed up but they day after that it looked like a bat invasion hanging off all the plants. I need to make a greenhouse like yours---lets see, that will be number 1297 on the todo list. LOL Ed

Up until Friday, this colocasia Fontanesii was 8-9 feet tall, with large, beautiful foliage. Such a waste.

Steve

Man....I just went out. All my bomeliads are history. Thats is a bummer...never happened under the screen. I think the combination of the two nights...to much. I feel you in wesley chapel. I was just out with my clippers....came back in...to much work and to depressing right now. As KK says, might as well wait. I had the biggest most gorgoes pathos growing up my tree...looks like that picture. Very sad. But will be back..phoneix will rise from those ashes..but like you say...what a waste it seems.

I will wait to prune back freeze damage on my plants. To prune now back to live wood might encourage new growth that might get blasted by a freak freeze (like the one Ed mentioned from March last year) and be more likely to totally kill the plant. The only trick is to be sure you prune off the dead wood back to the point where live wood exists before the warm temperatures come to stay. Otherwise, any disease (virus, bacteria, fungi) that infect the remaining dead wood over the next few weeks can travel down through the plant vascular system and kill the entire plant. I can live with the sight of "hanging bats, "limp dishrags," and brown, shriveled plants for a few weeks until I feel it is safe to prune.

It is sometimes difficult to tell just how much of a plant is actually dead from freeze damage. I generally wait until I see some green buds emerging -- either from the root crown or at some point along the stem -- before I decide where to prune. No need in cutting off viable stems if they only appear to be damaged and actually are not.

Jeremy

OMG! I already cut off some of the freeze damage -- or at least what I thought was freeze damage. I'll have to keep my fingers, toes and eyes crossed now. % ^ {

Michele

Jeremy,

I've been talking to some of the old-timers here, and that seems to be the concensus - give it a few days, see what shakes out.

However, that's NOT the recommended plan for bananas. Damaged tissue gets mushy, and if left alone, can spread to healthy parts of the plant. The recommendation is to trim the damage from the plant as soon as possible.

Steve

Thanks, Steve, for the correction. I would definitely agree to trim the bananas because it is obvious, generally, what is damaged and what is not and the mushy leaf stems could be a harboring place for diseases and fungi. When pruning off the dead leaves, however, I don't think you should cut past the point where the leaf stem joins the main stem. As you know, the new banana leaves whirl out of the top growing tip and cutting off the top part of the stalk could interfere with new leaf development, but I only have limited experience of growing my own dozen or so bananas and could be wrong about that as well!

Jeremy

I already cut my banans back the next morning..i cant stand to look at them. Same with the pentas, firebush etc. that have no stems and the leaves are laying flat out on the ground. They are things I would cut back anyway before spring.

As for the banans..I only take the leaves off. 99.9 percent of the time..new leaves will grow back from the trunk. Only if it feels soft would i take it down. Only ones I take down are the ones that have had bananas. They make plenty of babies anyway.

This message was edited Feb 20, 2007 8:16 AM

Michele,

You mentioned weather records for March? What/where were you referring to?

Molly

Headline in sundays paper was that it hit 23 degrees on friday night. A record held since 1920. You can bring up the gainesville sun online and read it if you like. Its just a mess here..im really depressed at the moment...overwhelmed. It was looking the best it ever had, with the warm weather. So much to clean up..so tacky looking.grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Dont mind the stuff is dead..it will come back...but the work bums me out...lol