I stopped by the forum with just this question. What is everybody thinking? I've got a good bit of plants poking out of the ground, but I'm mainly worried about hydrangas.

I guess I'm pulling out some linens. My "neck of the woods" is supposed to get down to 27 Monday night.

I have a friend who believes "three frosts from the forsythia bloom." If that's the case, this is good news. This would be #3 by my count.

Yep, out here they're calling for 28 tonight & 25 tomorrow. Fortunately most of my tender stuff isn't leafing out yet so tonight I'm just covering up the cold frame that has all my potted babies. Tomorrow night I may throw a comforter over the Snowball Viburnum to protect its new leaves. My Japanese maples & hydrangeas haven't really started leafing out yet so if we can make it to Tuesday I'm HOPING that will be it for the year's cold (fingers crossed).

Danielle

Have too many Hydrangeas and other tender plants that are up and in various stages of development to try to protect.
They will just have to fend for themselves, as they did last year. Lost some plants and a lot of blooms then, but most fared pretty well.
According to predictions, I don't believe the freeze period on Tuesday morning will be of sufficient duration to do a lot of damage. At least, that's what I'm counting on!
Good luck with your plants! :Rb

They've revised the forecast to 30 tonight. It was just at freezing this am. I don't think it's going to be like last year.

Still, I'd bring anything potted inside and try to protect what I could. I'm going to use my shredded leaves on at least the bottoms of my hydrangeas. Last year I covered them, and it didn't help. But they were very leafed out then, now I just have a bit of green.

Does anyone think daylilies should be covered? They've been popping up for about 2 weeks now.

Any casualties? So far I haven't noticed any damage. It was 28 here at 6 am and briefly dipped down to 26 degrees before it started to climb again.

I don't really care anymore. What will be, will be. I didn't cover anything, however, the Saucer magnolias in full bloom are gone. I hope the Yoshinos made it ok. The malus floribunda is still gorgeous and I need to make more of them.
I haven't checked the dianthus buds, too scary.

Had a lot of Hostas up, but none apparently damaged. Hydrangeas show no signs of damage either. Camellias escaped also. Saucer Magnolias were past their peak and petals were already falling, guess that will speed up during the next few days. My only real casualty was Magnolia "Elizabeth', which had just started to bloom and now all of those that were open are damaged. The remaining tight buds will probably be OK and open without apparent damage, I hope! :Rb

Patchy frost predicted here for Wednesday morning. Low 32-37. We had moved a couple of hot house tomatoes outside. They went back inside Monday evening. Wonder when they'll be able to come out and play?

I had pretty good luck with the frosts and only had minor damage to some tender early sprouting perrenials. Luckilly the fig tree had not even broke twig yet and I imagine this year will not be as the last in terms of frosts so late in the year. I ended up covering the tender chamomile late last night just in case something hard had come in in the middle of the night.

I gave in and covered my blue lace cap hydrangea, but not the oak leafs. It looks like everything did okay. None of my hosta are up, but I have iris', daylilies, coral bells (they stayed up all winter), and some azaleas in bloom. I hope the frost tomorrow morning isn't bad if it shows up.

Glad everyone's plants did fairly well!

Beverly

Got down to 25 here last night but I didn't notice any real damage though I didn't closely inspect everything. With the help of a house lamp and some comforters my cold frame plants were happy this morning. Glad the freeze didn't last any longer though.

Danielle

I have been trying to keep up with freeze hours(at or below 32F) this winter for the first time. I had 8 such hours yesterday. I had covered a very small, recently planted fig that was sprouting and that much time at freezing zapped the new growth.

With the 8 hours from yesterday, going back to November 7, the first day I recorded any freezing temps, the total for the winter/early spring comes to 320.5 freeze hours.

I was worried about my daylilies and didn't even realize that my angel trumpets had sprouted up. Needless to say, the leaves are all mush now. I'm remaining hopeful that they might bounce back....ugh!

Day lillies are troopers. Least mine are.... Actually the frost seemed to give them a boost, believe it or not! Never had a problem with day lillies and freezes except last eyar when we got a really late really hard freeze. Day lillies are the easiest( or one of) plant to grow IMO( in my opinion)

All the daylilies in my field didn't seem phased at all except the group I moved a day before those two nights of freeze hit (not a good thing to do obviously, but didn't have a choice). Their leaves look slightly flattened today but color is still good. Nothing like how bad they were hit last year.

Danielle

Some of my rose foliage is now shrivelled up. But nothing like last year.

But if we get another one, it could be bad.

So here we go again. April 7th. Two years later. The forecast? 31F right now, was 35F just yesterday.

The question is now, what do we do with those peach trees that have been blooming for like three weeks now? So they are past full bloom even. Cover branches with sheets and clothes? Spray water? Run a cord all the way from the house to plug a heater in?

Forget about annuals for now. Unless you already planted them of course. :(

This is so frustrating! I have so many tender perennials up now, that I'd have to cover everything! The last two years, I haven't bothered, but I have some special plants now that have buds, and I don't want them to freeze. Wah!

I sure hope it blows north a bit and brings the temps back up. We won't know until 48 hours prior to the front moving in.

This sucks because, literally, I just planted my haricot verts and lemon cukes beginning of this week; when that gets here, it's right around the time my seeds should be sprouting. Good thing all my heirloom tomatoes and peppers are still on the grow rack! Good thing I have one haricot vert growing in the window (just in case). No backup cukes though.

What a great birthday present - April 7.

I'm hoping it will not be that bad. First, it's going to be wet. Nothing is worse than dry cold air. If it's raining or just high humidity, that will lessen the damage. I'm going to spray my roses and hydrangeas and Japanese Maples with Wilt-Pruf. I don't know if it's going to do anything, but it can't hurt.

It's looking a bit better for Tue & Wed mornings for my area.
Only one of the 4 weather prediction websites I checked, indicates a low of 27°F, that's wunderground.com
AccuWeather is predicting 29°F, TWC & Intellicast are indicating low 30's.

Remember, those are official temperatures, which are measured 5ft. above ground level. If the soil temperature is warm, then thermal currents, radiating from the ground will protect low vegetation.

The soil will be moist, a good thing, but the worrisome part is the projected humidity, which is expected to be in the low 20's, not a good thing, except for us humans, who will not feel as chilled.

Hopefully any subfreezing temperatures will not last long enough to cause any major damage to the plants.
Rb

It seems that FREEZ WARNING is a perennial.(haha)
Since it has lived through 2007 and did not die.

Anyway, 29F is not that bad if it does no remain under 33F for longer than 2 - 3 hours. I cannot check hourly forecast that far ahead yet,

Anyway, I have a few anuals like squash, cukes, basil and some gourds wich might be threatend. The rest are cool crop.

I will just cover them with lots of leaves and may put a bulap on top if freezing cold persists for more than 3 hours. I have some parsley, chives, dills that probably 29 or 30F will not bother them much.

It is good to know this far ahead and get prepared. In old days people would have been caough by surprise.

May all your crops and trees survive and do well for ever after.
Cyrus

I'm planning on covering Hydrangas and Angel Trumpets just to be safe!