Freeze is coming....what night...don't know yet!

23° here ~ I guess we now know what night the freeze was coming!

Yes Sheila, glad you remembered.
I just came back from taking a few pictures of mine, it didn't happen in the more sheltered areas, but on the slope it did.

23º here too. Everything in the garden that was uncovered is gone including the cauliflower, cabbage & broccoli. It was below freezing just too long of a time. I'll know more about the stuff that was covered with row cloth and straw later today when I uncover everything.

Oh well, such is the live of a farmer. Just can't beat Father Nature. Too many wars and too many bombs being exploded that's causing the Earth to tilt to irregular angles to cause sever weather. Or... maybe God is trying to tell us something!

Jerry

Even the MW I covered looks like it sucumbed to the cold. I had taken in a couple of plants and a few cats, hopefully they will be enough for them to make it to chrysalis.

This is the best of about a dozen displays. So cool the way it bursts.

That is so cool! I've never seen that before. I did a lousy job covering stuff and everything is dead. I can barely stand the aroma of frozen foliage when I walk outside. I never cover the roses and usually they are fine, but they looked pretty awful this morning.

That is very neat Sheila, I had some too but they were not very big. Glad you got to see it.

Sheila_FW, Thanks for sharing your photo of frostweed doing its thing. After going out at 3:30 to see why the temperature in my little greenhouse was down to 33ºF, I didn't want to go out again this morning to look for frostweed. It got down to 25ºF. I wish we had had rain. That would have given my plants a great frost blanket.

I covered my roses and my orchid cactus, but totally forgot about covering the begonias. Bummer.

We were supposedly down to 26, but the two (2!) frostweed plants in our recovering oak mott didn't go at all. They're just sitting there exactly like they looked last weekend.

On the other hand, my potato plants froze to mush. Wasn't expecting that...


All in all, I'm still good with a cooler wetter winter to reset all the plants back to where they're supposed to be after 2009's weather wackiness.

Veronica...how did your inground brug fare? Did you make it a little gh?

Sandi, I made a little greenhouse for it, but DH balked at having to run electricity to it right now. So I used pip insulation all the way past the first "Y" on 2 of the 4 main trunks. The other two were partially covered when I had to quit because my right hand was hurting. I took one of our cats into the vet's office for some blood work on Tuesday. He didn't want me to take him out of the carrier and went for my hand tooth and claw. By Wednesday morning the infection had spread to the lymph nodes in my neck. I didn't quite follow doctor's orders until my hand was really hurting and I began to feel feverish. We packed bubble wrap around the exposed parts of the two remaining trunks, shoved as many buckets inside the little greenhouse and filled them with water. Without a heater in there, the top is toast. I was hoping to get a windless day so I could spray with the Freeze-Proof I bought, but that didn't happen. It's been very windy for the past 1-1/2 weeks. Since the Freeze-Proof is only effective for 6 weeks at most, I wanted to wait as long as possible before spraying. :-) Now, I'll have to wait until next year before trying that experiment. LOL. I'll find out in March if the pipe insulation worked on the trunks and first "Y"s. It got down to between 23 and 25ºF last night. I still have to replace my outdoor temperature sensor. I'll post a photo later.

We fell to 29 and stayed there. From 2:30 am on we ran sprinklers, we have them set up in zones and had to change zones every 10-15 minutes. The garden was a sheet of ice, the plants were encased in ice. The temps didn't get above freezing (at ground level) until around 8:30 this morning. The only thing I lost was two rows of sweet potatoes! The plants thawed out and are just fine, even the green beans and tomatoes (which have big tomatoes on them). I had to leave and get to the farmer's market, I was already running late, so we set the timer to shut off the sprinklers at 9:30. I didn't know what to expect when I got home.

Here is a photo taken around 8:00 this morning. The white "line" around the garden is an electric fence covered with icicles.

(I'm writing this while watching the game, so excuse mistakes!)
That's terrible about your hand. The things we do for our plants and pets....geez. Looked like LaGrange wasn't as cold as we were last night. the difference may have been the stillness, no wind here. ..and we're on a hill.
DH;s plane broke in Chicago, he got home late and after dark, ..so I just let rest of plants fend for themsleves. I did cover one of the big brugs on the side of the house with bubble wrap...and shrink wrap tape (no idea why we had it in the garage)...but I forgot to go back and trim the branches above the wrap. Think they're toast. But where the wrap is the branches look great. I hung lights in all the ghs. Thought I'd use the lg. round ones that we hang from trees for parties...to give off more heat. DH walks out on the patiio after dinner last night, and asked if I knew the round lights are bright, but cool. all my hard work, and no heat from the lights! I also added a couple of oil radiator heaters to the big ghs out back....and cut up a sheet of foam insulation to line the bottom 12" of the patio gh. Tomorrow, I'll go inside and see how everything fared. Just didn't have the heart to do it today....
Take care of yourself. Hope you're on the mend. All those brugs are depending on you!
BTW...your husband woulld faint if he saw my set up....extension cords everywhere.....criss-crossing the yard and patio.....I'm sure that my DH will try to "refine" everything once he rests up from the trip...

Bettydee ~ please do be careful. I am compassionate to cats but that can be one serious infection.

Realbirdlady ~ your potato plants should come back from the roots. The tops can get nipped back by frost and the tubers will be fine.

Bigbubbles ~ I am glad you (and your DH) survived the trip to/from the airport. I know he will secretly admire all your efforts.

Love to see the frostweed explosion ohotos. Nature can be very interesting.

podster, I couldn't believe how quickly the infection spread. I've seen the doctor twice and go back for a final recheck Friday. I'm diabetic so I have to be extra careful, but I just couldn't leet my Brug down.

Sandi, I stayed up reading last night. At 3:00 AM, I glanced at weather base unit and saw that the temperature in the smaller greenhouse was down to 33ºF. I ran out to see if there was anything wrong with the space heater. DH strikes again. He'd set it to the lower wattage and cranked down the thermostat. I wasn't supposed to set the heater at the 1500 watt settings or I'll trip the circuit breaker. That circuit also supports the propane heater in the larger greenhouse. I wasn't thinking about that when I changed the heater wattage and threw the thermostat dial over. After I had thawed out, I thought I'd better wake DH and check with him. He grabbed his meter and spent the next half hour checking the heater and other paraphernalia in the greenhouses. Turns out the small electric heater has aged and isn't putting out 1500 watts of heat. It had lost enough wattage that tripping the circuit wouldn't be a problem, but even at the highest setting, it only raised the temperature up to 36.5ºF. And that was before the temperature had hit bottom.

Calalily, I'm glad your veggies came through with a minimum of damage.

You had quite a night's adventure! I just kept looking out the window to make sure I hadn't set something on fire with all my extension cords.
I couldn't find the remote thermometers for the ghs, and didn't want to bother DH with it as soon as he walked in the door. So today, he got them out and will set them up tomorrow. It's probably a good thing that I didn't have them to look at every hour during the night. I'm fairly sure the brugs are okay. That's a small house. DH did tell me we'd have to get another heater for the big gh along the fence, as the one wouldn't heat the entire space. Sounds good to me...

I have a huge ceramic pot with a hibiscus that had grown thru the pot into the ground. I went out at dark Thurs. to cover it with a blanket.... and tell it 'good-bye.' I knew I couldn't possibly move it by myself. I felt so bad about it that I turned the yard lights on after 9 and went back out. Tipped the pot a little so I could get it on the cart, and pushed with all my strength to break the roots. I managed to wheel it down to where the big fern and ginger were housed....and got it covered. That's just whacky....I could have wound up in the pond with the pot on me, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.

What we put ourselves through to save a beloved plant!

We have a sprinkler system but it has a sensor that won't allow it to come on if it is freezing. We did water the day before to give the roots a good insulator.

It's official now. Yesterday morning's temp broke a 111 year old record low by 3º.

Just came in from removing the heavy duty ground cloth from the garden. That stuff is great. The uncovered cole crops I thought I had lost perked up as soon as the sun hit them yesterday. Everything under cover survived. Guess this freeze came so early in the year that there was still enough warmth in the soil to keep everything under the cloth from freezing.

Other uncovered stuff....Greek Columnar basil gone, coleuses.. gone, eggplants..gone, pole limas..gone, 4 o'clocks..gone, marigolds...???, panseys..OK. strawberries..OK, parsley..OK, sage..OK, lavendar..OK, sweet marjoram..OK, satsumas..OK, garlic...OK.

Jerry

My roses perked back up. They were protected by snow and ice though. The rain that followed the snow washed most of the snow off the other plants.

Marilyn, I left my begonias out one year and they came back. Took a while for them to be pretty again though.

I've wondered why I learn nothing from year to year, but it's b/c there are too many variables. These two plants that are like a miniature monstera freeze every year even though I cover them. This time, I didn't cover them at all and they have no freeze damage at all. Only difference that I can see is that they are under the Sycamore tree. That tree usually looses leaves early, but this year, it had almost all of it's leaves, so I guess the tree canopy protected it.

Other plants that never freeze like the night blooming jasmine froze. Can't tell why. I'm pretty sure it got just as cold last year.

I noticed that plants in full bloom were more susceptible to freeze. One that didn't freeze last year at 25 degrees froze this year, but it was in full bloom this year.

Usually I cover the pentas and they freeze anyway. This time I only covered one group and didn't cover them until midnight when it was already 30 degrees, and they didn't freeze. See, no rhyme or reason.

I think many plants need a more gradual transition to winter cold. We had our first freeze of the fall this week and a couple nights later it sank to 20.3°. Just too low too soon...but then too, this year we also had the worst summer I've ever seen.

I think the horrible summer, the cool fall, and this bad freeze all come from the same thing. It's weather from the far north pushing all the way down here when it normally is stalled further north by warm weather pushing up from the gulf. Where is that gulf breeze when you need it?! Our summer was oven hot instead of sauna hot. Most people didn't notice the dip in humidity but it was definitely dryer, hotter and came with a lot less rain.

Jerry, I have a guy I work with who's from Plant City, FL where they grow TONS of strawberries. He says that a few freezes and near freezing temps makes the strawberries sweeter.

We covered our lettuce an they've been okay. Not sure about the garlic; we didn't cover it. It doesn't look dead!

Garlic will survive freezes just fine.

Wonderful! The little bulblets I got from Josephine haven't sprouted yet. I hope they're okay and that they'll poke their heads out at some point in time.

Those probably won't come up till spring Stephanie but they eventually come up.

Gardening is really growing my patience! LOL

Thanks for that info, Josephine. I'll continue to wait since I can't really do anything about it. LOL

I finally worked up the courage to peek into the little greenhouse covering my Brugmansia. Audrey Hepburn is alive and well! It doesn't even look like she lost any leaves. I was amazed..

I lost all my tomatoes - darn. I had them up against the house in big pots and with a plastic tarp hanging over them to try to protect them, but they were on an elevated shelf as opposed to on the ground and maybe the added exposure made the difference.

Other plants (parsley, basil, broccoli, kohlrabi, oregano, carrots, chive, rosemary, few asparagus ferns) did fine in pots on the ground under a tarp, although the peppers look pretty bad.

Strawberries that were not covered at all did fine.
Ditto looseleaf lettuce and chives.
Ditto roses.

On the bright side, I picked the green tomatoes and tasted my first batch of oven-baked green tomatoes (same coating/seasoning as fried green tomatoes, I guess, but just not fried). It was actually pretty good. Not as good as a fresh tomato, in my book, but still good eating.

One funny thing -- I had stuck a long leggy "dead" branch into one of my tomato pots to use as a stake because I ran out of other stuff, and today when I was pulling out all the dead tomato stuff, I see that this branch now has new leaves and buds and survived the cold. I think it's an esperanza. Who knew? I sure never expected that. So, another little gain in the midst of a little loss. Not that I need another esperanza, but maybe I can gift it to the neighbors.

Texasrockgarden - a 111-year record, huh? I feel better. Gosh, we had 60 days of temps over 100F with no rain this summer (wasn't THAT a 100-yr record or some such thing?!), and now the coldest Dec 5th in 111 years. It certainly has been a challenge to try to learn how to garden this year, but I figure that it can only get better from here, right? LOL

I forgot to cover the rootbeer plant...darn!. It looks bad...but maybe it will be back.

Veronica, glad that your gh house worked for the brugmansia!
......and rootbeer plants always come back.....and bring their extended family!

I made notes in my garden journal this morning. Here's a sum of what I learned this year:

1) tree canopy helps a lot. Where there isn't sufficient canopy create a false one perhaps with garden umbrellas.
2) use sheets or frost cloth but not plastic.
3) cover even if the leaves are wet or have a thin coating of ice. Also still helps even if its already dropped below freezing before you can cover.
4) Good covering of snow or ice will protect plants. However, if only partially covered with snow, knock off the snow and cover with sheet. If possible knock the snow, sleet or ice into something, so you can cart it away as it will reduce the temp under the covering if left on the ground.
5) Flowering plants are more susceptible to freeze so cover even if they don't usual sustain freeze damage.
6) Plants that did NOT freeze even with 10+ hours of below freezing temps and low of at least 25: pyracantha, irises, abutilons, cassias, shrimp plants, roses, honeysuckle, ivy, sweet olive, horsetail, lemon tree.
7) Plants with significant freeze damage if not covered: brugs, night-blooming jasmine, pink and red giant turk's cap, pentas, rubber tree, pipevine, peppers, torenia, ginger, bishop's cloak, plumeria, carnation of India.

There are more plants that could be listed under 6 and 7 but I can't remember their names! I'm hoping this will help me to know what to do next year, so I thought I'd share.

This message was edited Dec 7, 2009 9:30 AM

LindaTX8, I wouldn't worry about your root beer plants, mine die back every year, and sometimes come back with a vengence!

Elphaba ~ not to throw a monkey wrench into the lessons learned but moisture levels of the plant tissue can also skew those results. As in how dry or how recently the plants received water.

Podster, you are so right. I need to add that to my journal too! Thanks.

Yeah, I've decided the pattern here is not that the flowering plants across the board were tenderer, but the plants that were flowering out of season. For the ones that restarted like it was spring when the rains came, this freeze was like a May freeze. Some asters and such that were still hanging around didn't seem much affected.

Except the potatoes, I still have no explanation for that. 8>(

What I need to know is how do you get rid of Rootbeer plants. I may be forced to get out the roundup.

Why not dig them up and trade or share them? They were much in demand at the plant swap where I got mine!

I'd love to get some. I agree, save them for the swap!

Decided I need to amend one of my notes for next year. Seems snow covering did not protect some plants like the Mexican Petunias. They usually don't freeze, but the ones that had snow on them are brown now.