Yeah, depending on forecast, 36-40 here in SW Broward.

I wonder how my newly planted Chempedak will fare.... As well as a couple of tiny Jackfruit female flowers/fruit .

Hope this winter temps stay above 35-36..

40 here. That the hardiness of my guanabana. :-(

Alexi, be prepared for total guanabana defoliation.....its coming, without question :-( But, the leaves will re-sprout once the cold is through. This cold is bad for the ultra tropicals, but very good for the lychees and longans. The proverbial silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. It will be interesting to see how Sleep's champedak does. I would hope for the best but expect the worst. Clint, are you going to do any protection of it? I think...or at least am hoping that the jakfruit fruits and bloom will not be affected. However, this is very much a tree by tree issue and can be grossly affected by rootstocks and general cultivar hardiness. For example, Black Gold and its progeny, virtually no damage with a heavy frost. Tabouey x J-30 had significant damage with frost and died back to the ground level with a freeze. Let's kkep our fingers crossed. Good luck and warm wishes to all.

Harry

Harry,

I did some deep watering of the Chempedak this morning, along with my Jacks and young mango's. Other than that, I think I'll just leave it alone and see what happens....

I would rather not worry about protecting it every winter, so hopefully it fares well :)

Harry,

My J-30 has taken a beating this winter. It's been in the ground since late Oct. but it does not like it when the temperatures drops to 45 and below. I'm hoping it survives but it does not look like it's too cold hardy. BTW, it has no protection it's going to have to tough it out. Her is how it's looking, what do you think? The temperature has warmed, for the last two weeks, up to the mid 70's and low 80's but the nights are still in the low 50's mid 40's.

JF

Tabouey x J-30 has poor cold tolerance. I lost mine when the temps dropped to 40 degrees and there was a freak hail storm. On the plus side, I have been working on sprouting Mai 3 seeds. So far I have had 3 seeds emerge leaves. These seeds were germinated in the fall outside, despite the nights in the 40s and the recent cold temps 2-3 weeks ago (high 30s), all seedlings appear healthy.

JF....your tree looks pretty well, all things considered. I am not sure about the J-30 hardiness level. I know that my J-30 x Tabouey seedling is not cold hardy at all. But, that may be because of the Tabouey parent. If the slight leaf edge burn is all you get, I think you should feel pretty good about it. Keep us posted.

Harry

Null

it's funny because all of my other tropicals have had no problem except for this tree. My gut feeling is that it will survive but will it ever fruit? I'll report next month to see if there is any other damage.

JF

It has been through its coldest month but we will still hit temps below 40's a few more times this winter so I'm keeping my fingers cross.

JF

JF,

Not sure if it will ever produce fruit. I would try the MAI 3, it seems to have decent cold tolerance.

Null

I'm experimenting with the J-30 at this time next year I'll know if it's worth keeping.

JF

Yep, it starts...I spent yesterday putting up my frost shelters. Let us know how it goes with your in-ground trees you aren't protecting bluepalm. Which trees do you still have in ground that you aren't protecting? I think you had inground lychees & atemoyas right? Still have any mangos? Or did you give up on those? I have mangos, lychees and atemoya and have them all under shelters. But would love to hear how big your trees are and how much cold they can endure without assistance. Putting up shelters is a lot of work! At least yesterday the weather was pleasant and not windy while I was assembling them.

Thanks Harry. The lowest temp I'm going to see here is 36 degrees tonight. My other fruit trees should be ok. It's the guanabana that's going to defoliate like you've mentioned. Will that delay the age the tree starts to fruit?

Alexi:

That's a good question. I can't say for sure as how would one know. My best guess is that as long as there isn't limb damage, I wouldn't think there would be any significant delay in fruting, but that's a total guess on my part.

Harry

Here are a few pics of my fruit tree shelters. I'm protecting mangos, lychee, atemoya and young citrus:

sun worshiper you are squared away! Very nice, and quite decorative!

Angela--- I am very impressed with those individual shelters!! How tall is the most height each one can accommodate? I think that is more practical than the one large greenhouse I bought. I dread moving everything and relocating it into the greenhouse and then having to move them back. I like your idea better!!! Did you buy them or make them?

Sun Worshipper - you are hard core ready! And such cool
looking shelters - very alien ....you will be the envy (and curiosity!) of your neighborhood....

Buena Suerte!

MangoDogDays

Sun worshipper-

Don't be surprised if snowbirds from the north move down and take up residence in your nice little climate controlled condos :)

lol - thanks all! My yard has certainly become the neighborhood curiousity in winter. People come by to gawk at the "alien pods", "igloos" and "ghosts". My neighbors like them, and last year they were sad when we took them down. They missed seeing them lit up on their early morning drives in to work, like warm happy friends.

Marin, the pods have an 8' square base and are 8' tall at the center. They can hold a tree 8' tall and 6' in diameter. I am carefully training all my trees to stay within those bounds. My husband and I designed and built the shelters last year. Here's what they look like without the plastic:
{{gwi:1304263}}

To set them up, we drive in 2' rebar posts into the ground for the corners. The pvc pipe slides over the rebar. The cover is made from heavy duty plastic bought in big rolls at home depot, cut out and put together with gorilla tape. Each bottom corner has a grommet, and we run a zip tie through the gromment and through a hole drilled in the pvc at ground level. Then there is an eye hook on top the shelter that we run tie down lines through that triangulate off and tie on to wooden stakes pounded into the ground. Each one has a 250 watt trouble light inside for heat.

Not a setup for the faint of heart. It was a lot of work to construct them, but now that we've got them, we were able to put up everything at a pretty leisurely pace in one day. It really is a 2 person job to put them up though. Getting the plastic up and over the 8' pipe structure needs two sets of hands when it is windy. They do take some upkeep as seams sometimes pop loose. They work great though. Last year, I had multiple days of hard freezes, some with freezing temps for 12 hours at a time, and my overall low was 23. After all winter, I only had about an hour where the temps dropped below freezing in the shelters. Last year I protected 10 trees, and only lost one - a very small, newly planted mango out on the coldest edge of my property.

So far so good this year, everything looks fine today.

occupy your front lawn?

LOVE your set up Angela. You and your husband can come over anytime and set up mine for me,lol...GREAT job to you both!

It was 28 degrees here yesterday morning(spotty frost), and 28 degrees again this morning with LOTS more frost than yesterday. Its almost 8 in the morning and its still showing 28 degrees, I'll assess the damages later this afternoon when it warms up a little.

The trees are getting larger/wider and harder to protect every year.

Good luck to us all!

Nancy

Nancy: frost here in St. Pete today also. The wind kept it away yesterday.

I don't believe it got below 40 where we are (close to Tampa Bay.) I grew up in Central FL and have lived in North FL but don't recall seeing frost in the 40's like I do here in our current neighborhood.

Nice to see you back on the forum, Nancy. It's been too long not seeing you post.

Tim

Thanks Nancy! My low last night was 29. There was definitely more frost this morning than last. But no wind actually seems to have helped my microclimates - heat pockets held in by lakes and my house. This morning, not even my bananas were showing much damage. Of course, damage might not have showed up yet. My hubby is taking down the shelters today. I'll see how things look tonight when I get home.

Interesting...

Its 70.2F right now in Rapid City, SD while Miami,FL sits at 66F...

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/unr/?n=rsois

Frost shelters came down yesterday. All trees look fine, including blooms forming on my mangos. Just the bananas have some minor leaf damage (and I did not protect them).

Irun5k, I wish we were only 40 degrees those 2 mornings...much colder here in the center of the state unfortunately for growing tropical fruit trees :o(

Thanks Tim!! I haven't posted in a while but do stop by once in a while to see what everyone is up too...

Angela, SO glad to hear you made it through with very little damage. I think I did pretty well here too. I sure hope we don't get any thing worse than this one. Keeping fingers crossed. This is waaaay too much work!

We got down to about 40F here. As a result, my guanabanas are now getting ready to dump their leaves. The majority of the damage was due to the dry wind. A couple mango and cashew trees got burned leaves from the wind. The jackfruit near the canal dumped about 1/5 of its foliage. Other than that, it was fairly mild.

Jeff