Remember the devastation? Were there any happy endings in your yard?
I was so miserable thinking I had lost my 3 tibouchina urvilleana trees that were growing across my front garden for they are the perfect backdrop to my front garden and also their backs show several feet of purple over the fence to be a backdrop to my courtyard also right thru to December every year!
Well here they are, in full bloom and several feet higher than my fence. I never would have thought it last winter.
Beautiful, Kell. Have you put that one in the plant files?
That's awesome Kell! They really came back great!
I had a Tib. heteromalla in a pot which I left outside all winter, and I thought it was dead but fortunately I'm really lazy about getting around to throwing out dead plants, and it decided to come back to life. It's very small though since it had to come back from the roots, so I don't think it'll bloom this year.
My other success story is that I had a Jasminum sambac planted in the garden (one of those plants that I really had no business planting outdoors in the first place!) and it managed to come back. Of course it's 4 inches tall right now and is showing no signs of wanting to bloom anytime soon, but at least it's alive!
Hi there. Last winter we had quite a freeze in San Diego and lots of plants took a hit. This plant (Blackeyed Susan?) froze and looked completely lost. We were told to leave the damaged leaves alone because they were protecting the plant from further damage. Looks like we did the right thing. I took this picture this morning after reading your post. Not only is the plant thriving again, it's being allowed to expand into new territory!
I have shrub and vine lantanas, and have noticed the shrub types are much more susceptible to cold than the vine varieties. I was attempting to establish a red shrub lantana and thought it croaked in the freeze, but to my surprise it has managed to return.
My T. heteromalla is really planted in the wrong place. In 4 years it's only bloomed twice. I love it, but I think it's time to rip it out. I need to have my gardener move some big shrubs for me, and I'm thinking I will take this one out and either plant it elsewhere or throw it in the greens cart.
I lost my 'Emperor 1' Japanese maple and have yet to replace it. The bed it was in looked absolutely perfect, I had it just the way I wanted it. Wouldn't you know that was my one big loss from the freeze!?!? I'm still uncertain if I want to just plant a smaller bloodgood and let it grow, or spring for the mucho $$$ it will take to get a more sizable replacement.
Everything else came through just fine, including the aphids. We are just beginning to see ladybug larvae everyplace, so the cold seems to have really set them back. By the time the ladybugs hatch themselves out, it'll be winter!
I've found the same thing with the Lantanas, the shrubby ones always take much longer to come back the following year than the trailing ones.
I'm surprised you lost your JM to the cold--they are hardy to climates much colder than ours, so I wonder if it was something else rather than the cold? Unless it was newly planted, I lost a couple things that should have been hardy here because they were planted only a few weeks before the freeze and didn't have time to get established at all.
I'm trying NOT to think about what I lost last "winter". LOL
My biggest loss was a Voodoo fuchsia which I had espalliered and took me years to get it shaped just right.
One of the sadder losses were all the monarch butterfly pupae that apparently froze...they turned black overnight. So sad. I have lots of them now, though!
I have to keep reminding myself that plants don't feel pain...especially when you see ones that look like they went through a night of agony !
Jasper, I'm glad to read your Monarchs are back. I am trying to get them to enjoy my garden. I have lots of skippers this year and just one Monarch who thinks he is king of the hill.
How are your plants doing in this heat?
I am so glad your plants came back. I was so depressed last winter I really thought I had lost most of my tropicals, but to my delight alot of them came right back. I had burgs I started from seed that died to the ground and came back. Some of them have even bloomed this year although they are smaller (shorter) and not trees but more like shrubs. I left a red ti plant in a pot outside and it died to the soil and came back recently. I just never got around to tossing it, glad I didn't. All the citrus are fine. I have been delighted with the recovery. I have lived in my home for almost 30 years and last winter is the first and only time our swimming pool froze over.
Linda
It seems like now we're having just the opposite problem...too much heat and humidity.
I have daylilies that are burned around the edges before noon.
I've even noticed deciduous trees starting to drop leaves already. My fruitless mulberry tree is about 1/3 into leaf drop.,,,this doesn't usually happen until October.
Roses are singed, too.
I've been watering twice a day for weeks.
LOTS of Monarchs though !!!
Hey, JD...I got lots of monarchs too! I have to keep checking my baby asclepias' daily because there are cats eating them up. I move themover to the larger established clumps. I think this is my second round of cats and I still see more monarchs laying eggs. I always start worrying that I'll run out of food for the.
I'd give anything to see that winter weather down here instead of what we've got. I only lost one plant in the freezes.
The tibouchina really surprises me. It's always great to find out just how much tougher something is than we thought it was. Now you know if we have those winter temps again, you won't have to be quite so worried about it.
Sherry...what do you do with the asclepias plants after the monarch larvae have devoured them? Today I cut back 5 of them to about a foot tall...they do resprout quickly, though.
This is the most monarchs I've ever had in going on 20 years. The asclepias are reseeding everywhere, so I just leave them. I did a little experiment with the larvae: Since I have Zinnias blooming next to many of the asclepias, I find the "lost larvae" and put them on the zinnias. They head straight for the asclepias and can't be bothered with the zinnias !
I also am seeing a lot more swallowtails around here, but I have never seen their larvae or their pupae. They must be out in the garden "somewhere".
This humidity is also bring out a ton of huge spiders!
JD.....My asclepias have all still lived after being munched on..they did get set back either by age or this last winter so I was worried about not having as much for them to feed on. I have young ones that I've planted with them and sowing more seed as soon as it cools off a bit. I recently planted a. speciosa, a.purpurascens, a.physocarpa for them also. Wish I'd waited tilnext month to plant them , though. Everything is struggling in the heat, hope they make it. Have a couple of struggling seedlings of a. fascicularis and a.cordiofolium. I also have noticed more swallowtails than I usually get, so I've sown seed of aristolochia in hopes of being more hospitable to them. It's not the native aristolochia though, so we'll see how it goes.
Most of the plants I thought I lost last winter actually came back in better shape than they were before winter.
I was trying to remember what I lost that was special to me. I lost a ylang ylang tree, in a pot about 3 feet tall under the patio cover, also a papaya tree that was about 6 feet tall.
The papaya got to wet and cold and rotted.
Linda
Let's see, a banana, several epies, several large salvias, a large ceanothus, a large and a small fremontodendron, four plumeria trees - I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I refuse to start a list for the stuff lost to heat this summer. :-(
Be glad when fall sets in good so I can replant some things. Things will look better then and all the bad will be behind us for the moment. :-)
hi,group,i have a garden full of heliconias,bananas,gingers,travelers trees,orchids,well you get the picture!,all tropicals.i live in culver city,and was the first to bloom heliconia rostrata[the red and yellow hanging one that you see all over HI],and also the blue jade vine,all outdoors.
i have been here 17 years,and never been below 40!
this year i got down to 28!
like other people have said,i was SO DEPRESED!!,as ALL got zaped to the ground.
i lost only one travelers tree,but every thing is about 6 weeks behind normal,and although most heliconias,of which i have over 40 varieties,have resprouted,i estimate,they have been set back at least 4 years!!,as even now,the more tender ones are only 2feet tall,where as before the frost, they were 4-5 feet,after 4 years.
OH WELL,i guess this is the price and challenge we pay,for trying to push limits on growing tropicals?,but thats the fun?,just so devistating to lose all those years of hieght and structure.
Check out the threads Tropicman has on the Tropical Gardening forum - and look at his location. The work he puts into his gardening is amazing! Do you have things in pots or in the ground/both? You might think about a temporary greenhouse for some of the delicate things in the winter, if you have room. I'm getting a pop-up one for my plumerias and epiphyllums/orchids - I don't have that many, but don't want to lose them all again.
Gosh I forgot I started this thread. I have about 100 threads in my watch folder when I sign on and I just can't seem to keep up with them all.
Lauriegayle you were right, for your plant looks so great now. I used to grow the yellow one and it vined up into the purple flowers of my Tibouchina urvilleana trees but it went too nuts and then I was pulling out seedlings from it for 2 years.
Liz, guess what I found last week!! 4 inch pots of Tibouchina organensis. And since I killed my big one dead, I thought I would try again small and cheaply. LOL
Gee jkom51, I didn't know lantanas came in vines. Are you taking about that light purple one that can grow up into things or be pruned as a hedge or scamper along the ground? My lantana in pots came back fast. I thought they were goners too.
Have you looked at Regan's for a new Japanese maple? They always have some great ones. What a shame what you loved so much died. It is odd though as it didn't get that cold here.
Oh JasperDale, that is so sad your espaliered Voodoo fuchsia bit the dust. All that love and work!
jltbaw you are so lucky your brugs came back. They may send up a sucker and then you once again can have a standard. I lost so many and was so shocked they did not come back. I can only think I had no nodes under the ground so they had no where to sprout from.
Gosh tropicalgaza, I want to come live in Culver City. I just love the Jade Vine. Do you have pics posted of your heliconias? I just saw a huge clump in Oakland and I thought I need to try those. And immediately after I went to a nursery and there was a heliconia!! I rarely see them around here for sale. So I took that as a OK from God, well actually as a command from God and had to get it.
By by any chance do you know the name of this one?
Thanks
Glad you found your Tibouchina organensis! I was at Magic Gardens about a month ago and they had a big giant one for $150, but not only do I not want to spend that much money on a plant I'm going to probably kill, but there was also no way I was going to be able to lift it or fit it in my car! I didn't see any smaller ones, probably a good thing because I'm not allowed to buy any more of those, I have a rule that once I kill something 3 times I'm not allowed to buy it again, so unless my plants from last year resurrect themselves again, I've had my third strike!
