if they are STILL FULLY DORMANT ... and fully zone appropriate [which those you mention might not be] ...

then they would need no protection ..

in theory.. buds were set last fall.. and wintered over.. getting ready for this spring ...

its when they leaf out.. that all the trouble starts..

and the reason we prefer to plant them when fully dormant ...

and of course.. this springs weather has not cooperated with all that theory ..

ken

Hi Ken,

These trees are hardy for my zone. We just want to protect the buds because they are beginning to "wake up", and they can be frost sensitive during the younger years of this tree. I am zone 6a, per ArborDay, and other sites, but a few sites still consider me zone 5b.

Golden Raintrees are hardy down to zone 5a.

Here in KS the springs are fickle more than kind. We are now in the 80's for highs. Everything is in bloom and growth, even my oaks. Three or four years ago we got low 20's in late April, bringing all new growth to its knees. I have my fingers crossed! The AVERAGE last killing frost here is April 9, feels like we may make it this year. But it may come to "Hail Mary...and pass the sheets and blankets."
hortster

Alot of folks are going to be in deep shiznit. I pray I'm not on that list. Although its going to be in the low 30s several times this week.

Some of my conifers start to break bud...what? EVERY SINGLE deciduous plant has starting to leaf out. The only exception is fringe tree and Oak which are just swelling. There are even a couple that just finished leafing out.

Just think this is what you said a week ago.

Oh Frost Shmost! Live for today!
It's going to be 75 degrees and sunny all week. I'm enjoying this for all that it's worth.

Hi Whaas!

I never thought that we would be in the mid 20's overnight this week, just days after 2 weeks of high 70's and early 80's. Our last day of frost is usually May 5th, but I thought we had possibly changed that this year. Boy was I wrong!

My European Hornbeam Fastigiata trees are already leafing out of their buds and they are so gorgeous! Since the tree is frost hardy and hardy to zone 4, we are not going to protect those trees.

I feel your pain. What you are experiencing is typical for winter here in north Florida, except worse in that we have weeks of 80s and then teens, not mid twenties. My advice is to cover everything with buds that have expanded or anything that has leafed out. Even with covers, once it gets below mid 20s, you can't do much. Those types of swings can not only damage new buds, but can actually kill cambium, resulting in tree death if the cambium has become "active".

I'm just surprised that for once, the heart of the cold air push is to our east. That almost never happens! Better not talk smart though. The year is young.

+oM

Well, we avoided the frost. It only got down to 36. But I'm off now to get 15 more tomato cages and sheets for the baby European Hornbeams that have only been in the ground for a week and are already leafing out. As soon as I planted them, like the next day the buds were beginning to open.

Zone 4 or no Zone 4, frost hardy or not, a HARD freeze after just being planted, with leaves already bursting open, is a prescription for disaster!

I'm using 2 sheets over each cage, it may not help, but I have to try. :(

I got chilled to 31 degrees last night...the wind kept the frost away.

I went out this morning and bought 15 tomato cages and fleece, very warm, throw blankets, that are the size of a twin bed. So warm! They were on sale for $2.88 a piece, so I bought 15 of them to use on the cages instead of using 2 sheets. The sheets would have been $5 a piece so we saved a lot of money doing it this way. Plus the throw blankets are warmer than 2 sheets put together. The winds are 15 mph right now and will be down to 7-10 mph overnight.

We are hoping these blankets will help the trees' foliage and buds stay alive, as the freeze is bringing temps down to 29. We shall see. I pray to God they stay alive.

I hate to intervene in this thread as no one wants to hear about our weather! However, when we do freeze, which is rarely, we have the issue of the temps just crossing the freezing mark, and since the difference between 33 and 31 can be significant, we do resort to strategies such as ilovemytrees is going to try. One thing that works well if you can do it is to string Christmas lights throughout the trees that you are trying to protect. Often they give off just enough warmth to do the trick. Sometimes they look so pretty that we leave them up for a bit. Of course it only works with small plants, and you have to have the lights (or be able to pick them up cheaply), but you might give that a try.

The other thing that can work if you have shrubs close to the side of the house is to make a 'lean to' by duct-taping the blanket or sheet to the house wall, stretching it out to cover the shrubs and then weighting it down. THat way the material doesn't touch the plant (as you are doing with your tomato cages) and cause it to freeze at contact points.

Good luck - 'real' spring is near. What a year this has been.

I just doubled up the fleece, dark black blankets on the tomato cages hovering over the trees. My husband laughed and joked that it looks like some satanic ritual with these black, tall, funny looking figures all over our backyard. It gives a spooky look.

I saw the tease from our local tv station say that this freeze tonight will kill all foliage that is not covered. So, I, being spooked, went out and doubled up the blankets on the tomato cages. It may end up being 29, but these trees will have a winter coat on. lol No, none of the blankets are touching the trees, they are just clothes-pinned to the tomato cages.

Ok, as so many have said before me about id questions, illness diagnoses: photos, please! This is one that we're not likely to see elsewhere!

Hah, I spoke too soon^. 28 F last night! Somewhere, something got damaged. Everything I looked at today seemed alright though.

+oM

Too many "news" stations act as if the second the temp dips to 31.999999 degrees, every bud and leaf is toast, and that's generally not the case.

IME, upper 20s usually doesn't cause much damage. Mid 20s starts to kill a lot of new buds, and below that can be really bad. However, most trees do have a second set of auxilliary buds that can resprout. Cambium damage even in an actively growing tree doesn't usually kick in until it hits the teens IME.

Last night we were at 26 I believe... I had everything that has started to grow (Mostly Japanese maples, plus a few spruces/pines)under sheets. It was summer last week, back to winter this week.

I believe hairmetal is correct. Now, this is for hardy, acclimated plants-the kind of stuff that's been in your yard for a while. A brand new flat of impatiens......not so much!

+oM

Ick! Thinking about what those impatiens would look like! Our problem of course is that a lot of what people plant here is not frost-tolerant. I myself don't try to push my luck; I prefer things that won't go belly-up at 31.9999. If now and again something does, I usually do not replant it. But a lot of folks in this area are in zonal denial and plant non-hardy citrus, etc and so there is much hand-wringing if we cross the freezing mark. The only thing that I have ever planted that was really climate inappropriate was a Bougainvillea which I put in for my husband, who insisted. I thought it looked ridiculously out of place but I wanted to make him happy and I knew it would die anyway so what did I care. Would you believe the damn thing is still alive 12 years later....it dies back to 4-5' every now and again and then leafs out from there. WHy is it always the things that we don't like that seem to be cast-iron...

Hah F&F, the impatiens were hypothetical. I am simply agreeing that the vast majority of truly zone-appropriate plants are able to handle frosts in the spring. This year might be throwing an extra severe situation at them with the abnormal warmup earlier, but some version of this is completely normal every year.

+oM

but some version of this is completely normal every year

Tom, I'd have to disagree due to the dramatic increase for potential freezes and frosts. Last year we didn't have a frost after the plants began leafing out.

A second one is coming up tomorrow night and there is about 30 days left before I'd feel comfortable with freezing temps out of the picture. I'm more pissy because all my plants are either 1 month in the ground or 1 year in the ground.

The roller coast is getting a bit old. Last night it was 34 degrees...today it hit 70 and as of 9:30 at night its 65 degrees...tomorrow night is back to a freeze.

Well whaas, it's all in your interpretation of 'some version'. Due to my employment, I deal with such matters every spring. As a class of problem to deal with, its nothing new. But the degree is certainly heightened this year.

BTW, I don't know which thread I said it in, but my perception is that A) Springs are warming up faster around here, and B) If anything, the last frost date is getting later. A truly disgusting tendency.

+oM

wisconsitom, I was actually laughing about the impatiens - in San Francisco proper it freezes about once a century, so all of the commercial plantings in winter are things like cyclamen, impatiens, icelandic poppies, etc. Well one year about 20 years ago it froze to just 30 degrees and enormous stretches of commercial plantings were black slime. It was hilarious (to me). I can't even imagine what the gardeners/contractors were having to deal with. It looked absolutely disgusting. That's what I meant about the difference between 33 and 31 - if you are impatiens, it is the difference between pretty and slimy!

The trees came through our hard freeze okay, I think. The green leaves on the Hornbeam Fastigiata trees still look their pretty green, but the morning of the freeze they looked fuzzy. I don't know how else to describe it. No brown or wilting at all...not yet anyway.

So, there's another hard freeze tonight and another frost/freeze tomorrow night. I'm hereby giving up all future early spring planting! No more bareroots for me! It's all potted plants from here on out and after the last frost date of May 5th. I've already had enough of these shenanigans.

ilovemytrees,
I MUCH prefer planting in the fall when possible. I've seen significantly better results planting in the fall as opposed to spring planting. The trees have much more time to adjust before summer heat, as well as experiencing your local winter conditions and should bud at a more appropriate time for you location. In my climate the trees roots often grow for much of the winter as well giving them a head start on the following growing season. But I want to make clear, these were not bare root plants. B&B or container plants.

Arktrees

Also Ilove, what you are experiencing is in no way an indictment of bare root planting stock. BR simply needs to still be dormant, or nearly so, upon being planted. In bang-for-buck terms, BR cannot be beat!

Also, both spring and fall are good times for tree planting. In fact, some species/varieties don't take well to fall planting, although most do.

Finally, while potted stock does have the one huge advantage of being plantable any time the ground can be worked, it opens the door to your having a load of other problems to contend with. Circling, girdling roots being foremost.

+oM

I was in Florida for about a week and family back here said it was in the 70's and 80's here. I came back and the trees (some )had leaves and the grass wasa foot and a half tall and thick, I had a hard time in the lower yard it was so thick and green. Well, the other night ( Monday?) ruined the leaves on a bunch of Quercus Rubra and one Q Shumardii The Q Nuttallii came close but are holding back their leaves enough to avoid this crap. The white oak family oaks were conservative and weren't fooled. The 2 chestnut oaks are getting restless and are close to leafing out, though. The Willow oaks I have look really bad. The 2 ft tall one has blackened leaves. It looked good before the cold snap. After seeing them in Florida and how the leaves ( not form) look like live oak, I want at least 2 in my yard. My Quercus fusiformis looks totally great after this winter. My Q Virginiana are bare now, but I think they are okay, this winter was no test for them anyway. Long story short I hope my oaks that had their first set of leaves ruined bounce back, the same for others trees.

poaky, my Shumard oak does come out early & shows some damage from the last few frosty mornings (25F), but typically grows thru the damage fairly well & after some weeks shows no effect (I've had frosts here as late as mid-May). And none of my "white" oaks were fooled -- neither was Pin oak.

I also love planting in the fall (soil is usually easier to work with to) BUT the availability of stock is usually terrible to say the least (ecspecially that left over disastrous potted stock). Most nurseries have cut back on bringing in early fall stock due to the economy. I wish folks understood the advantages so more demand was created during this time.

we went down to about 25 last week and the damage is starting to show now. Most perennials, bulbs and trees are fine but all the butterfly bushes and hydrangea were crushed. The japanese maples and dawn redwood were just starting to leaf out and I think avoided damage, but roses for some reason were hit hard. My heptacodium also looks a little beat up. I think my wisteria will lose all or nearly all of its flower buds.

C'est la vie, I'm still far too lazy to bother protecting stuff (other than the maples). The only thing I regret not protecting (although I wouldn't have thought of it needing protection) was one of my ornamental grasses (arundo donax). Fat 1 1/2 inch wide bamboo like sprouts were just breaking through the ground, they are now mushy and dark.

I don't cover stuff either. The last time I did the leaves turned to mush. I used a sheer window drape thinking air would go through and not condense moisture underneath but it got wet trapped air and was nasty mush when I uncovered it. I got some palms from Florida, I just bring them in when it gets too cold they are probably not dormant anymore, one is from Florida and one from North Carolina. My pin oaks both are holding back their leaves too come to think of it Beng.