Quote:
Originally Posted by harveyc
Patti, you're in zone 10 and near the coast and had 60 nights in the mid to lower 20s???
Do you have other varieties that withstood temps where daytime temps remained below freezing? I've got over 30 varieties and very few looked in good shape after our 35 nights with frost this past winter with one morning getting down to 22F.
|
I'm really not in zone 10 we are more like zone 9 now and the new ag map is suppose to refect that.
That year I was working for a tennis court, the courts were clay they were frozen solid for 5 weeks, when they thawed they were like goose poop, stepped on them and I hit so hard and fast I thought I broke something...took 12 pallets of clay, a week before tournaments started to try and get them right.
We hit record temps day after day after day, I lost allot of stuff that year that was in the ground, my 1000 fingers, my praying hands...gone didn't recover other stuff not related to bananas crispy, I was surprised to see my curcuma poke it's head up THIS YEAR thought it was long gone...I was sick at the site of the yard I worked so hard on in FLORIDA!
We had plants piled in 2 sheds heated, in the porch boarded up, in the RV and plied in my house, now try and understand I also have a pet rescue here, I think we had 20 cats and 4 dogs plus my Mom and her cat (her heat gave out) I do not have a big home...all of us and plants in the house!
We put the easter lily vines in the bathroom because they were insistant on blooming and there also huge but not pet friendly. My entire yard was covered in christmas lights, towels & blankets. I took cuttings of my 7 types of vanilla vines just in case they froze and piled towels on the rest, but surprisingly they made it just fine (wheew) but like the cactus I think they get some protection from the tree they guest upon, it's a living thing and they continually generate heat to a degree. The orange groves were beside themselves to water or not to water trying to find a balance, citrus doesn't like to be over watered but Ice is an insulator, citrus starts to ripen in winter here. My Avacado made it with a sprinkler raining on it also the guava with the water spray frozen on it as well and the staghorn fern with a cover and a lamp that's what I remember off hand I was surprised we managed to keep after that winter...Lost my red jade vine but the blue jade and other Mucunas made it threw without any more protection other than a good mound of leaves piled on them...had to dig up my Marcgravia Trinitatis and bring that inside it would have froze for sure. My older planted (20 years) tangerine tree had sever damage with bark splitting tried to save that to no avail, but my Black Money orange not only made it just fine it snubbed it's leaves by growing the entire time and thats a south african true tropical orange tree. That's what I can or choose to remember of that horrid winter.
There are times we go threw periods where there will be a few years of really bad winters, that's historical here...in 79? Ft. Lauderdale got snow..I was there. In 1893, 1894 & 1895 between the hurricanes and 2 years in a row 3 inches of snow fall all the orange groves in the area were completely wiped out and some of those groves were on Merritt Island for the most part surrounded by water, merritt island is 12 miles south of me...so yep, it does happen even here in Florida
Long winded but I hope that answed your question