Everything depends on locale. My location is very similar to Alan’s, though his may have less ocean influence as he’s an hour away from NYC/the shore.
I’m actually thinking about my little “Greenhouse”. The warming pads made by Ferry Morse and Burpee that are sold at Walmart are labeled for indoor use only. So without getting an “outdoor” pad another option may be to put the “Greenhouse” on a rolling cart that I can move in and out of the garage as needed. Another idea that sprung to mind would be to just get a heated dog bowl to leave on at night. It will warm the water to room temperature which will in turn affect the ambient temperature of the “Greenhouse” at night. The humidity would be a plus, if anything. After 8 years of waiting for the town to change the rules and watching so many people violate the town’s poultry rules I’m going to break down and just get chickens, probably next Spring. I could use that dog waterer for the chickens in the winter and then move it to the greenhouse in mid-Spring right when the chickens no longer need it.
All it disturbed is my collection of hot peppers. The only sweet peppers I grow are Carmine and I grow enough of them to never need by any, I just take frozen and diced ones from the freezer when I’m not picking them form plants.
I have backups on most of the hot peppers I lost tow, except the Italian cherries. Those I may be able to purchase as plants.
Same here… was running around last night to protect stupid impatiens flowers and forgot about potatoes, that were super easy to save, if I remember… Fortunately my peppers and tomatoes still in GH. Sorry for your veggies…
Took a little more damaged than I hoped. 80% of the vigorous second growth on grapes got zapped. Yet, some leaves right next to damaged leaves seem fine. Hopefully some still closed buds will push through. Probably 50% of my plum fruitlets seem fine, but the other half look at least slightly damaged and various darker shades of green. The few seeds on those I checked seemed fresh. Hope that is a good sign. Asian pears look like 50% will have frost rings. If that’s the case, I’ll take it as a win. Peaches and apples seem ok for now, but they both have fuzz so it might be hard to tell. I was going to be loaded with plums this year. I still might be but this makes fighting the curc even more critical.
Here are some pics I just took:
Some grapes made it but most didn’t. Every vine was like this. 80% fried but at least there is some good green growth still.
Great pics. I can’t believe how big your plum fruitlets are, especially considering your grapes and paw paws seem about like mine. My grapes match your description and photos. More of a hard pruning for them it seems. Kiwis took a beating though. Paw paws are covered in blossoms. They seemed happy enough, but perhaps I’ll notice otherwise in a couple of days.
We got hit pretty hard in the Lake George, NY area. It was a hard freeze, at 27-28 degrees. It looks like some pears are ok, but peaches and plums look like they lost everything.
It may have been my imagination but I thought buds were swelling. Looking after the hard frost a few nights ago it’s apparent that the buds are fried. We DID have -18 back in Feb. though perhaps not at the top of the canopy.
We only got to -7 and it wiped out peaches at a lot of sites near me and did a number on some of my peach and nectarine trees, especially nects. It seems that just a slight difference on my property created much different results. Used to be a low like that in Feb would be no problem but trees often don’t get as hard during winter as they used to. Trees I thought were in a better location, higher on a hill with steeper grade suffered the most. I’m wondering if they were less hard than those where the cold doesn’t drain as fast.
However, -18 usually kills all peach flowers, and even in the old days you didn’t want to see it get below -15F. By -25 you lose whole trees.
What has become common here is for trees to bloom beautifully and be barren anyway as ovules or ovaries are more sensitive to cold than male parts. The pollinators get their nourishment and I don’t.
All my newly planted chestnut trees lost their leaves, same with most of the black locust. We shall see if they put out new leaves. They are calling for patchy frost tonight here as well.
Believe or not I have 5 fruits still hanging on my Rich May trees.
That’s not saying much, I have 125 Rich May trees.
I drove up to my orchard Saturday (I live near Philly, my orchard’a near Ricketts Glenn State Park so I live roughly 3 hours from it) and realized I lost hundreds of fruit.
I had some aggression I took out on a dead hickory tree.
Very lucky to have ripe tree fruit already! The frost wiped out a bunch of my peppers and eggplants- pretty much all died down to the first or second node even with row covers and it being 32 for a few hours. I dont have time/ a way to replace some of them so i’m letting some grow from the nodes and just planting out more of my other peppers as normal. Apple trees look completely bare. Strangely enough the 6 bench grafts I planted out a week prior all seem to be pushing ok, even though they were never covered.
We got down to 24.1F Initially I thought my apple fruit set was OK and just open blossoms were toast, but I now see trees like Virginia Crab that are usually loaded are bare. Blossoms that weren’t open yet seem to have survived unharmed and those blooms that opened and got pollinated after the frost seem to have set fruit. So my fruit set was significantly reduced, but not eliminated.
I had spare peppers that I replaced a lot of the damaged peppers with but I ended up leaving some that had a few leaves left and even plants whose leaves were destroyed I put back in containers and into my greenhouse to see what would happen- the stems have sent out new leaves, which surprised me. The ones I left in the ground because a couple of leaves made it are outgrowing the replacements. It seems peppers aren’t killed by frost unless the stem (trunk) freezes.
Relatively cool spring weather has stunted all peppers and tomato plants here.
That is not our experience here in the middle of the country anymore. In my area cherries like those in the photo you will not find here. It is a huge oppurtunity i just wished we could grow really good cherries!
