The coldest temperature at my house was -8F but I had five nights at -5F or lower. I had some winners and losers but I think I also benefited from solid snow cover for the coldest parts of the winter. I covered my trailing berries with row covers too. My Siskiyou and Kotata blackberries didn't have any dieback and kept most of their leaves. Both are already sprouting leaves and the Siskiyou are kicking up new cane sprouts already. Interestingly, the Kotata escaped vole damage although they were in between fully consumed plants. I think that because they are so thorny, that the voles decided to bypass them. My row of boysenberries were covered but could not lay flat, so they only had partial snow cover during the winter. They had some dieback but were impacted more by voles (mice) and cane borers. I lost about 80% of the canes in total. It does look like boysenberry (thorny) plants are reasonably hardy. I had a couple of boysenberry plants in pots that I moved inside in mid-winter (after the -8F temps) and they had about 30% winter kill but they are also leafed out and getting ready to bloom. My marionberry plants that were planted in ground had about 50% dieback but they also had some cane borer damage. They are leafing out now and I should have a decent amount of berries from them this year. Loganberry plants overwintered with about 30% dieback but they had decent loss from cane borers. They are popping leaves and canes now. My Obsidian blackberries died a horrible death from vole damage. There wasn't much left of them. I decided to pull them since they seemed to have a leaf curl problem last year anyway. My black diamond survived the winter but lost it canes to cane borers (I had to prune them off). I'm going to remove black diamond and replace it with Columbia Star. I did leave a wild treasure uncovered all winter and it survived but anything above the snow line died back. My semi-erect blackberries (triple crown and black satin) seem to have had little to no winter damage. Kiowa had minor dieback but it was to canes that would have been pruned back anyway, so there was no practical loss there. Surprisingly, I had two Kiowa canes that tip rooted (tip layer) which I though erect blackberries didn't do. PrimeArk 45 is sprouting leaves now but I'm not sure how much winter damage it incurred due to the fact that part of the canes had to be pruned anyway due to fruiting on the primocane part of the canes. I did let them grow too long and they didn't produce very many laterals which will impact summer fruiting. Ouachita seems to overwintered with little winter damage after pruning but they are starting to leaf out now which makes me nervous because our frost free date isn't until early May. It looks like all of my raspberries survived the winter fine. One interesting finding is Cascade Delight. It was uncovered and seems to have overwintered OK but is a 'Western' raspberry. It is starting to leaf out now. There might be some winter damage but I'll report back on that. I think you should try out Siskiyou, it seems like a pretty hardy trailing blackberry.

Thank you, each and everyone for the thoughts. I found your understanding very sweet and comforting. I am sure we will enjoy our new location once we get things "wrapped up." I will miss all the roses I have grown, but drought, blight and viruses have already accounted for about a 25% loss of what we grew a few years ago and now we have shovel-pruned others due to disease intolerance, lackluster performance, etc. So we grow less than half of what we did just 5 years ago; we are down to fewer than 200 roses. My Noisettes, (including the beautiful Crepuscule) all took to their death bed over the last few months, on the coattails of losing many other roses to RRD in recent years. I was told the reason for the noisette/ornamental cherry tree losses was a soil-borne "blight..." I got the official report but I was inundated in pressing matters such as a new roof from a storm, floors from a flood, putting the house back together after having to move everything out, wash it, clean it, dry it and do it all over again, to the pressing health issues of a family member, so I just filed it away, knowing that this too would pass. The verbal report (and what I read in the local paper were similar), that many other people in my area had the same thing. It sounded to me like going to the doctor with a sore throat and low-grade fever, getting an antibiotic,a steroid and a pat on the back with the infamous medical statement, "it's a virus, it's going around,I have seen ...cases....blah, blah, blah..." You just take the medicine and move on. We will grow a few roses, but the "powers that be" sort of determine what one can and cannot grow. Fortunately, since I have worked with the master gardeners in the historical gardens, perhaps they will be more lenient. I want to grow Crepuscule again, so I want to try it at my new home. Duchesse, Caroline lives about 80 miles east. I know that you too have probably noted this as I have, that people think because we live in Alabama, we all live close together. In fact, Alabama has a pretty diverse terrain in terms of physical features (and diverse zone conditions as well as a diverse citizenry), from the world's whitest sand/bluest beaches on the Gulf Coast, to the state capital (and former Confederacy/Goat Hill in Montgomery), to the marble quarries of Sylacauga, (home to the world's finest and whitest marble), to Birmingham formerly known as Pittsburg of the South (now one of the fastest growing cities in the country with cutting-edge medical teaching university), to Mt Cheaha, the tail end of the southern segment of the Blue Ridge, also part of the Cumberland Plateau and even my little area (the oldest industrial/manufacturing city in Alabama). Thanks for allowing me to vent!!!!! http://www.prattville.com/Default.asp?ID=5

Dawn, I am fighting Japanese Beetles and disease is rampant on some tomatoes. Also most just set the first cluster and then due to our abnormally hot weather didn't set any more fruit. A few varieties have set better than others. The plums have bushels but may die before they can ripen. I turned the blackberries over to the JB....after spraying...hoping to get a good kill before they lay too many eggs in the soil. I am having to water the garden on a regular basis now. Weatherman says we have a possibility of rain....sure hope it hits us. Back to the onions, the first year I raised Candy and Superstar, I raised them from seeds from Harris Seed Co and started very early in February. They were all of a good size, maybe a baseball or larger. The secret from seeds is plug flats and long growing time under lights or a greenhouse (lights for me) and getting them out fairly early. Local places did have Candy this year but they were pretty expensive too. Glenda

It won't let me edit the post. I'm a biochemist and nomenclature nutbag, and I'm very particular about that stuff; I don't know how it got past me and now it's going to drive me mad that I can't fix it ;) Embo- with the sheer amount of monstrous Cedrus atlantica in my neighborhood alone, it's one species I'm confident has an excellent chance of out surviving me, and I'm 25. If you ask me, this tree will do fantastically here up until climate change has it's way with us all. I really should change my zone tag to 7a or 7b, I've seen negative temps here maybe twice in my life. My county is 1 degree from 7a and I live in an insanely helpful microclimate. I overwintered a weak deodar cedar in nothing but a planter box last winter and it did just fine, didn't even sink the box (it was a test). To give you an idea, there are some spots on my property where I'd give a zone 8 tree a shot without much concern.