Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

It's suposed to be 31 at 7am here. I've done all I can to keep some warmth in the gardens and will wake up at 5am, boil some water to refill the buckets and place some fans out.

Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

We are expecting 28 to 32 degrees from 3 AM to 9 AM. I spent two hours last night filling the greenhouse. All the plants are on heat mats. Tonight I spent two hours covering plants with plastic. This will teach me to have over 330 varieties of tropical plants. My Guava, papaya, pineapple and bananas are fruiting. I have many types of heliconias, gingers, alocasias, colocasias, bromeliads, plams, anthurium, Star fruit, Cacao. Oh well. I am planning on moving to Hawaii in 3 to 5 years. Less plants to take with me.

We also moved the chickens in the house for the night. Two of them are molting and are naked. They are sleeping in a large dog crate in the family room. My kids think this is cool.

I hope everyone makes it out safe!

Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

It was pretty ugly. About 20 stalks gone: Rose, Ice Cream, Cardaba, Mona Lisa, Pisang Ceylon, Pitango, Hawaiian Apple, Lady Finger, Thousand Fingers, etc. But 5 bunches of Misis Luki are standing tall and hangng high. Bunches of Fhia-18. Goldfinger, SH-3640, Praying Hands, and some others are good to go. A lot of trash cans to fill this weekend, with the debris, oh, except for the rain we are expecting all weekend. 45F last night, and maybe 40ish tonight, so OK there.

Here are some samples of the mess:

Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

So sorry about that, Jon. I don't suppose that that fruit will still develop if you leave that last one bent over or if you upright and stake. If you tied a rope around a big mat, would that help the individual stalks to stay upright in wind storms? I fear that I will have the same problem in the not-to-distant future. We get a lot of wind where I am.

Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

55 mph winds here. I lost a polycarb panel in a greenhouse, it blew right off. Luckily it's one I'm not heating right now, just storing dormant perennials in. It was a panel 6X12 and lucky for me it didn't make a large hole in the plastic of the greenhouse right next to it. wind lulled for a minute and I was able to get it inside the greenhouse all by myself while my hubs is at work. So I have the best of bad luck. I hope some of those perennials don't go Permanently dormant with temps expected to get to be 15 degrees tonight though and not good cover like before. I guess time will tell. At least I watered them all well this am before all this happened. That usually helps. I've checked the heated greenhouses 5times so far this morning. So far so good

Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

Clare,

The best course of action with a folded banana plant, if it has fruit, is do absolutely nothing. Don't try to straighten it, don't move it in anyway. If the flower stem has any continuity between corm and bunch, it will ripen fine. If you move it in any way you risk breaking what little conection will remain.

You cannot do anything to make it better, but you can definitely make it worse. Under Growings Tip at my We Be Bananas site, all the folded bananas shown successfully ripened fruit. The plant, in time will tell you if it is OK, by what dies away (leaves, fruit, etc.)

Re: Forget the rain, WILD WIND today.
 

Terrible damage to your bananas Jon! Hope this is the last of the windy weather for the year.

Sid