How cold is a "hard freeze" in your area? It was cold enough here last night that the water in my birdbath froze, but all the roses in bloom still looked more than half way decent today. Roses can take quite a bit of cold--into the high 20s, like 27-28 degrees. If I were worried, I might grab a couple handfuls of oak leaves (blown in from my neighbors' yards) and put them around the base of the rose bush. In fact, with 15 Austins all only a few weeks in the ground, I think I'd do that to all of them for sure. Good luck. Kate

If you're going to mulch, pine needles are probably your best bet. They're light and airy enough that they won't crush your seedlings. Cedar mulch or wood chips are probably too heavy. You might want to try a Styrofoam rose cone cover over your seedlings and then mound up pine needles around it to protect from deep freezes. I use them on my sabal minors to help them pull through the winters here in Michigan.

Here's a June Gold Peach as an example, planted two years ago. It was the first one I ever planted where I followed the "guidance" to cut a whip back fairly aggressively to promote lower branching. Unfortunately, all those branches were right at deer level, and the plant was eaten down to a twig. I thought for sure it was dead, but did some pruning "cleanup" to deal with all the damage, then protected not just the lower trunk, but also surrounded the tree with netting. Everything you see here is literally this season's growth. It has come back with a vengeance (though it has a much lower, spreading growth habit). Just based on what I've seen over the last four years (that is the extent of my fruit tree growing experience), barring any unforeseen catastrophic events, I think next year will be its big year- where it reaches substantial size and durability to be truly viable as a food source. It should put on a fair amount of height, and start to catch up with its brothers and sisters. I've learned that backyard culture doesn't really work well at my location- bears and deer. To have a fighting chance, they have to be nursed to a certain size, and there's a commitment of time and effort involved. That said, I have acres to work with, and live in the sticks. I've done some summer pruning on this one as well, mostly to try to open it up as much as I can, and position it well for next season. Glad I'm not the only one who has this fruit tree bug.

Plastic bags alone aren't a good choice for covering plants for frost protection since it isn't a good insulator. Plastic greenhouses work because the plastic contains a large mass of air that is heated and then held in place by the plastic (and many have a double layer of plastic and the air trapped between the two layers is the actual insulator), but plastic bags over the small air mass around a plant will do virtually nothing as the heat contained in the small air mass is quickly lost. If you use clothes-pinned sheets with plastic over them, that may work better since the sheets will provide insulation and the plastic will block wind. However, in sunny conditions the air trapped by the plastic will heat up and damage the plants worse than the cold (voice of experience when a vent in a plastic high tunnel blew closed) so unless it is totally overcast, I would remove the plastic, and even if it is bright overcast I would check the temperature periodically since solar radiation does come through clouds. Like mnwsgal, I have left sheets covering plants for several days when I have had to leave for work before temperatures were above freezing. Spun bond row cover is made specifically for leaving over plants. Or with the clematis, just let them take their knocks. They will recover.