Help! Weather turning very very cold, and plants are up!

Hi Kids --

Where can I go to get help for which plants need to be covered for a 24 degree freeze? Is it even possible to cover things when it gets that cold?

I have 24 glass cloches I can use, but I'd like to know what things would be most helped by this added protection. I also have lots of bed sheets and plastic, but I'm not sure which is better.

What forum does this fall under? I already tried the Ohio Valley Forum, but they don' t seem to know, either.

Suzy

I am guessing that anything that is up for the most part will be ok. My crocus, daffodils, hyacinth they will all make it through this cold spell. My roses have leaves and I'm pretty sure they are going to be fine. Unless you have some annuals out there already I'd think they'd be fine. But I know when I do get the annuals out I'll just throw a sheet/towel over them. Just my two cents

Anything that looks particularly leafy and soft, you could protect with layers of newspaper. I think that emerging bulbs and shoots that haven't leafed out properly should be OK. The forecast for this area says I can expect a night of minus 9C later in the week, and I have lots of bulbs and perennials coming up. Let's cross our fingers that anything that gets cut back by frost will have the strength to recover!

Plastic is not a good choice if it will be touching the leaves (will cause the leaves to burn). I agree that newspaper is a good choice.

I have also used cardboard boxes (with a rock on top to keep them from blowing away) for larger plants.

my rhododendrons are about a week from full bloom (many lil buds about to open)
do these need to be covered somehow? I've never had to worry about them in the past... they've never bloomed this early. I have flannel sheets in the garage i can use.. boxes wont work since i don't have any that big.

and would a mulch do -- to cover the ground growth on my roses? Though they are more sheltered and southern exposure -- so they don't get hit as hard with the cold.

when i saw 20's in the forecast -- that's alarming for all the new growth i have.

TIA,

Terese

How did the plants do, Illoquin? I didn't see this thread until today. I hope they made it.

brigidlily..... though i'm not Illoquin, i can tell you our cold snap starts tonight.

I'm dreading it too.

We don't get but a few short freezes down here. I keep a set of flannel sheets to cover what needs covering.

Y'all need to move down here! We've totally forgotten what winter is like! (I didn't mean that to sound like gloating -- I'll be ready to move up there come July, when it's been hot summer here for four months!)

I'll be thinking warm thoughts for you!

Ann

Yes, It starts in Illinois tonight, and Indiana tomorrow night, both places it will last for 5 nights. Last time I looked, and I've quit checking because it goes from bad to wrose every time I log in to Weather.com, the low will be 20. That is very cold at this stage of plant development.

As far as moving to Texas...isn't that the place where it either floods or it's total and lengthy drought? Where winters are nice, but summers are so brutal? Maybe not where you are?

Suzy

Suzy,

don't they have fires too?? i recall HUGE ones last year cuz it was so dry.

but with TX being so HUGE... i'm sure there's a happy medium somewhere... DH loves the Austin area.
We're yrs away from retirement - so I've got time to find my happy medium.

T.
*who's bracing for the cold*

Glad that I found this thread because I've been stressing too about my plants that are already up. The cherry bushes already have small green cherries. I was viewing the daylily forum and it sounds like that shouldn't be a concern. As far as the rosebushes that I just planted, I could cover with floating row covers or some burlap though they're already heavily mulched. Being in the St. Louis metro area & in an industrialized "steel town", our temps are usually a bit warmer than the outlying rural area--we miss alot of the early fall frosts that hurt the rural areas. I'm hoping that this will make a difference.

T, with the cold weather coming, I decided to make chicken and dumplings for dinner and boy did my family eat'em up! I just hope that the Easter eggs don't freeze this weekend. That's where the plastic ones come in handy. Hoping you all have a blessed Easter weekend and many warm sunny days in the near future.

It's happening here folks .. very unheard of temps in the upper 20's!!!!! everyone in the south is scambling like mad!

X

This is really bad in my area. The poor magnolia blossoms are brown . I have tried to cover all that I could in my yard and am sickened because I know this is going to have a bad effect on things later.

i ferns have keeled over - shriveled to nothing. and my taller sedum (I dont know what it's called) is feeling like wilted lettuce... but everything else seems OK. I was worried about the flowers on my rhododendron, but they seem fine.

so far, my roses, peony, bleeding heart and clematis' (which do not have much growth yet)
are coming thru unscathed.

I covered all I could last night. When I went out this morning to uncover I had a really sick feeling. Most plants look like mush. The warm spell we had in March really got things coming up. My Carolina Allspice has leaves that are just drooping down and really looking bad. We have 2 more nights of temps in the low 20's. I wonder if anything is going to make it.