I live in the same zone, more or less, as you. Late blooming sasanquas will bloom during warm spells through December here. If it begins dropping well below freezing every night (Jan. & Feb.) there usually isn't enough warmth during the day to get the buds to open and they will eventually drop off. The shrub itself will live down to -10 but not the blooms.

It would be very unusual for there to be three separate plants in a three gallon container. Are you sure it's not multiple stems from one plant (which would also be unusual)? If it truly is three separate plants I would divide them now and plant them but you're going to have to wait years and I'm talking at least 10-15 years for the plants to get anywhere near the sizes they describe. Our climatic zone just doesn't have a long enough growing season for camellias to put on a lot of growth per year. In the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, etc. they grow much faster and larger. Good luck, I have about 10 camellias in my garden and I love them all.

Howdi, I know exactly about Oklahoma City because I was there before.

For your first year, please don't rush to plant it. You can keep it indoor in a "cool and bright area" just before any cold blitz is coming. So you can enjoy the bloom this year.

The hardiness is referring to kill the plant or possibly to destroy the open flowers. Mostly the flower buds will endure the icy cold and will produce nice flowers later.

When weather is warming up in spring, you need to select a shelter area or build an protected garden structure to prevent blowing wind. Your plant would enjoy nice warm envirnment to grow. You can use a large sheet of bubbled plastic to cover your plant to prevent cold damage next winter as mentioned by Dr. Ackerman.

Thanks so much for the advice. With the holiday just a few days away, I was not to sure any advice would come in so soon.

I checked again today and found that there are 4 instead of the 3 I previously thought were in the pot. They each seem to be growing too far apart from each other to be multiple trunks growing out of one clump root.

I guess, since longriver suggests I wait until next Spring before planting them outside; the number of shrubs I actually have should still become clear in a couple days when, I separate and plant each into its own 3 gallon pot. In those pots, should I use a mixture of well draining potting soil mixed with some peat, or maybe potting soil which has peat already mixed in along with pine mulch added on top of the soil?

Yes, it will be nice getting to, inside the house, enjoy their beauty in January and February when all my other shrubs at that time are either dormant or evergreen but not blooming.

We recently had the worst icing and snow event that OK as seen in the last 100 years. The 9 inches of snow covering a base of 3 inches of ice accumulation actually took down a metal carport at a mid-town house we own. That carport had been build since the 60s, and it was so sturdy that this is the first time it has been damaged by an extreme weather event.

A few Good things, though, did come out of this extreme weather event. One of them at my home happened when the wind pattern, which blew while the 9 inches of snow accumulated and drifted, mapped out indicator areas in the snow for me to better visualize the best winter wind shielded place to plant two of my clematis this next spring.