Oh my gosh, Peter. That's really quite amazing. Especially the Key Lime. Brilliant to plant that one right up against the house. My goodness. Let's hope for more normal winter temps this year for sure.

Patty S.

how awesome is that. I agree with patty about the Key lime, amazing that it made it.

What were the temps and for how long?

mike

Those are beautiful trees! Glad most of them were able to pull through! The lime tree is really amazing! How bad was the freeze?

Kristopher

Here is some info about the freeze:

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The trees were wrapped in frost cloth, 250 watt halogen work lights (available at Home Depot for $7 each) and C7 Christmas lights. The lights were left on continuously to make sure it was warm enough. One graphic I didn't have is the wind speed which on the 17 degree night was 20 mph gusting to 30 (which is why the cloth blew off two of the trees) and the rest of the days was 10 mph gusting to 20.

Brr!

P.

Sheesh, I didn't know it could get that cold down there, all the way down there...Is that common or even normal?

I guess if I ant to live where I don't have to worry about a freeze all winter, it's not there..Great come back and congrats!

MIke

Those are some amazing before and after shots! Even here in Orange, Texas about 45 minutes from the coast I got several consecutive nights in the teens. It knocked most of the leaves off my Ponderosa Lemons and it froze a blood orange almost to the ground. The following summer was a drought and I didn't even bother to water the orange. I was totally amazed when it started sprouting leaves when it started raining again. Maybe it's a sign I planted it too deep but I had a mixture of trifoliate orange and blood orange leaves. I pruned out the trifoliate growth and the tree is still growing. Hoping to get some fruit some day since it is apparently quite capable of handling local weather extremes. The blood orange is the little tree on the left. I'm going to have to invest in a new camera....or maybe a tripod if I'm starting to get shaky hands in my older age.

Hi All:

No, this is not SUPPOSED to be normal. However, after talking with a number of long-time Tucsonians, it is clear that the climate is changing (at least based on their 40+ years here). The summers are getting hotter and the winters colder. While some might argue that this trend has not had enough data for a long enough period, even our local utilities (esp. the Electric Utility) is beginning to get concerned.

And, one of the reasons we picked Tucson to retire to was because of the mild, non-freezing winters -- none of which have transpired since we moved here 4 years ago.

Finally, the lemon and lime trees were purposely planted next to the house with the Moro and Washington navel planted towards the outside based on heat requirements that I read about while planning my mini-orchard.

Have a great week everybody!

P.