Tropicals & Tender Perennials: range of Temperatures, 0 by hcmcdole

hcmcdole wrote:
At my other house I had a greenhouse that I heated with kerosene. That was two years ago and kerosene was about $3 a gallon then. The last winter I had several nights where I did not light the heater and the indoor monitor got down to 33 several nights and 28 one night. All cacti and succulents had no problems as well as a lot of other houseplants (calatheas are not as forgiving I found out). Anyway almost all my begonias had no problems except for the tropical ones like exotica, brevirimosa, and luxurians which all bit the dust, and the finicky 'Escargot'. In other words begonias are hardier than most information you read. Maybe the minimum temps cited are for keeping begonias looking their best?

One year (this was before the greenhouse) I took cuttings of my canes that I had in the ground and successfully rooted all of them except for one that I can't really ID (At PHOE this past week, it came close to 'Flamingo' maybe 'Di-erna'). Anyway the next spring, one cane came back from the roots in the ground and it was the one that I lost. Amazing. Temps in Atlanta get down in the teens some years and always low 20's.

One more story - I didn't start bringing in any begonias this past year until early November. Usually our first frost is around Halloween but it actually frosted the week before. My front yard had some hard frosts (about a whole week) which wiped out the leaves on any pots in the yard (the ones on the porch were okay). The rhizomes are fine though and new leaves are coming on while waiting out the winter in a very cool garage.

Butch

Here is 'Caribbean King' after a week of hard frosts.