How did your garden fare through the cold events?
Damage is beginning to show on tender tropical plants in my area after spending 6 hrs below freezing with a low of 27f.

Same over here on the east side Scot! I have Croton shrubs on the east side of the house that look really pitiful right now and I sure hope we don't have any more extremely cold temps in the coming weeks! The ground didn't freeze so I'm hoping they will leaf out again. I'm leaving the leaves laying on ground around them and not pruning until mid March! Although temps at the airport were recorded at 28º for a few hours, we are a bit farther southeast from that location and our weather station thermometer showed our low at 31º for a few hours.

My semi tropical island this winter.






Various Gingers - probably OK, the rhizomes still look good, foliage is gone
Duranta - gone
Odontonema - gone
Cordylines - mush, but roots look OK
Salvias, top growth gone but roots salvageable
Begonias - gone
Sansieverias - gone
Philodendrons - foliage gone, trunks looks OK (except for Pink Princess, I think that one is history)
Monsteras - foliage gone, trunks look OK
Crinum & amaryllis - bulbs seem firm
Mandevillas - gone
Bouvardias - ????
This is too depressing......

So beautiful but so sad. I had two beautiful Blushing Philodendron (Philodendron erubescens 'Pink Princess') that I lost to winter temp's a few years back along with some hoyas and other tropical's. When we moved back to the Daytona area a couple of months ago, I left many container plants out around the property and on the deck at our Sebastian house and I heard that it got real cold down there a couple of nights too; I'm hoping all the tree cover protected things somewhat ... we may drive down there in the next week or so and I sure hope it won't be too depressing.

I really busted a gut covering things in my yard for Wed. and Thurs. nights and I guess it paid off because I haven't seen any plants with any but a few fried leaves. Phew, I can do without much more of that effort though.

Over at the school garden, it is more exposed to the wind, so we did suffer some losses. We had wonderful Glass Gem corn that was just starting to fill out the cobs, and it is toast. All the bush beans are fried, and the frost cloth we laid out blew off some of the tomato plants so we have about half those plants looking very sad with ripe and almost ripe tomatoes on them.

Alice, I am colder than you and my firespike has come back each year for the last 4 or 5 years. So, yours should be fine. The same with most of the gingers. The crinum and amayrillis should be okay as well. I had a friend (now deceased) who had a duranta that came back from the roots yearly. Hopefully your loses are not as great as it appears to be.

Thanks Debbie, good to know the Firespike will come back. That one had never completely fried before. I think the Duranta and the Senna will come back from the roots but they will be much smaller for a few years. Things sure look messy, hope things are looking better in O'berg. .

Nope, not really. Although we didn't get as much snow as on the coast, we didn't get the ice storm either. (Thank God for that). We did have several consecutive nights in the teens. That's wherein came the real damage.

Some of my crinums and hymenocallis still had green leaves, and I was preparing to dig some to send to someone in California. Now I can't even tell them apart. Everything looks toasted. Fortunately, most of my tropicals are kept in pots, which I was able to place in my garage. So they are okay. I did have some frost cloth to cover newly planted daylilies and irises. They look okay as well. But winter is now over yet.

Glad you did OK.

Just heard and saw my first sandhill cranes of the season. Glorious Boy did I need them today. Springs a coming

@ardesia Somehow I missed this winter thread, your photos are beautiful, but as said, a bit hard to imagine, all that snow. How is the weather there now?

I found a pop up greenhouse at Old Time Pottery on sale last spring 2017 since we had such a mild winter, it came in quite handy this year. Unfortunately I took it down towards the end of February since the weather was so hot, and all the plants had been back out in the garden. Wish I had left it up, didn't know we'd have such cold nights in March.

I had to toss covers over plants again last week, we went down to 39, and looks like this week coming up, when they say low 40, I figure it will go lower. So far though all the plants seem to be holding their own.

Thanks Sherri, we are fine now, tee shirt weather during the day. We are due to have another cold night this week in the 39/40 range then mid 40's for another few days. By Friday we should be back to summer weather. The azaleas are blooming but otherwise we missed spring this year. Lots of dead looking foliage out there but I can see new leaves on most of it like the bougainvilleas, odontonomas, sennas and the tender EE's.
Now we badly need rain. I hate to turn on the irrigation system but we are super dry.

Aldi has little greenhouse this week, perfect for my seeds that are getting cold at night. Cheap, but at least have a couple of shelves. 19.99

Very very dry here as well. Daylilies looking so sad after a good start.

I've been watering a lot through the warm spring weather we had in February. Little bit of rain yesterday, and more predicted for tomorrow, thankfully.

I got a bunch of new daylilies last year, and took half of them to my daughter's in Utah. The ones I kept got potted up a couple of weeks ago and are going crazy with new growth. They sure are thirsty! I water them every sunny day.