Ouch, that is cold. I'm on the East Bay, and I think 33 degrees F was the lowest. They have been talking about it over on the Calif forum. I lost begonias and a few other things... mostly new plants that were still in pots. I managed to get my guavas covered. A cutting of S. ges, Tequila that I recently rooted went black, but is already sprouting new leaves at the nodes, so salvias may be tougher than I thought. I will see if I have the same luck with some of the others.

I missed last year's freeze as I was living in Germany, but I could tell that we had one, due to plant losses (namely, my guava!).

Hey Voodoobrew I guess you haven,t lived in the east bay for that long . I was living in Danville from1985 till 2006 .In 1989 or so it got down to 17 degrees which I believe is a record to this day. I hadn't discovered Salvia's back then,don't know why because my wife and I used to frequent Navletts Nursery all the time. My point of this post is for you to be prepared for that one cold snap.
John

Yeah, I lived in San Francisco (close to the ocean) for nearly a couple of decades, so this is an entirely different gardening experience. I had sand, now I have clay. I prefer the former! Though, I do prefer having sun in the summer (rather than FOG). :)

No outrageously cold temps here in the south (Temecula). A forecast of 27F a couple of days ago never panned out, because the clouds stayed over. Only got down to 36F. I've been following Seattle, WA, and they've been suffering with sub-freezing days.

Not from California but we did get down to 26 a few nights back which is early for us. These temps don't show up until Febuary Mara who lives out in the hill country gets 10 degree's colder than we do. Hope your Salvias came through ok.
Art

Voodoobrew I am astonished that your Salvia's thrive in that dank SF climate. But what do I know. My 40 year old hobby has been growing cactus. I have a Salvia that I bought about 2 months ago in Scottsdale Arizona,I decided to keep it in the 1 gallon pot in my greenhouse till next spring, Its a large red flower but don't know the name. When it flowers next year I will upload a pic for you guys to ID.
PS: It looked just a bit too exotic for me to take a gamble on growing it outside up here.
John

It got down as low as 29º for a couple of nights and is suppose to go there again. We only had actual frost out in the fields and driveway. We have a lot of heat-mass so things on the patio didn't get hit.

I'm amazed that Yvonne's Salvia is still going strong. I had the impression that she wasn't very hearty.

I am bit surprised about your Yvonne's too. Mine will take a light frost but once temperatures fall below freezing the plants are done.

We live close to Elk Grove. All the soft wood type of salvia's, such as pineapple salvia, were killed by the frost. It got down to 26 degrees here and it stayed that cold for a few nights. The other woody ones are doing ok. There are hummingbirds living in the garden. It is sad to see that they lost all those pretty flowers to feed on so early in the season.

My West of Austin Tx freeze got down to 22 and my salvias are blackened but I expect all of them to come back. Maybe not my Coccinea Molly Ivens. I put her in a bit late. She was not able to make seed. I did cover her with a pot. She is still green in her stems so I am hoping that I can keep the plant alive through the winter. My seedlings seem to still be doing well. I am thinking of putting some of them in the ground. They are small. and covering them with some fallen leaves. I am always taking chances.

Does anyone know the parentage for Yvonne's Salvia? I know it was "discovered" growing in a yard and just "passed along". I am assuming it may have coccinea or greggii in its background? Perhaps a sport of one the other?

Sorry to get OT but someone mentioned it so thought I would ask.

Susan

Yvonne's Sage is a selection by Yvonne Theroux of Chicopee, Massachusetts. She started collecting seeds off of a "mutant" regular red splendens and kept reselecting it year after year until she had 6 foot giants. The tale was reported in Birds & Blooms by Emily Huntington of Springfield, Massachusetts, and she took up the cause of distribution of the sage by mail as a pass-along plant.

Coccinea Molly Ivens is new to me. What is it like?

I picked this up late in the fall. I knew it was chancy. I guess I should have kept inside over the winter. It is a new variety that I saw in the spring here in Austin and they wanted a pretty penny. I passed on it and saw a small plant of it this fall for much less. The color is a little closer to lavender than the pink in the photo. I think it was collected in south Texas as a wild specimen. Or this is what i heard. I like the character of the leaves.

That could be a Stachys species. After Salvia, then Scutellaria, Stachys is the largest genus in the Lamiaceae. There are a lot of Stachys from Californis (like bullata) that look somewhat like Salvias. Stachys coccinea is often mistaken for a Salvia.