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.

yeh i think it takes an extended 3-5 day period of below normal cold to hurt fruit buds. I believe that fruit flowers are most affected when they have bloomed, but I'm not too sure. Here is a quote from the freeze warning notification for portions of Charleston, SC on March 17th. "A FREEZE WARNING MEANS SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE IMMINENT OR HIGHLY LIKELY. THESE CONDITIONS WILL KILL OR DAMAGE FREEZE SENSITIVE VEGETATION." I'm sure your trees did fine. I actually had some damage to my "Black Tulip" deciduous magnolia. One of the buds had bloomed and it basically turned brown in the freeze, but the rest are ok.

Jay, I am sorry that Mother Nature felt compelled to ruin your gardening fun in October. Don't you hate it when a freeze or heavy frost ruins everything? To me, that's the saddest day of the year...when the garden is nipped back hard or completely killed. I think the official weather recording stations record at 5' above the ground, so you certainly could have had lower temps below 5' and still have frost/freeze damage even if your own thermometer or others around you didn't reflect that. All our thermometers are at 5' above ground and I guess if I was smarter, I'd put one of them down at 1', 2, or 3' and see for myself what the difference is. When we went down to 29 degrees earlier in the month, the warm-season plants I didn't cover with Agri-bon had damage, but didn't completely die back, so I guess they didn't stay cold enough long enough. The taller portions of the pole beans growing on the fence froze completely, but from about a foot above ground and at all points below that, there was no damage, so the plants lived and are climbing the fence again. That fence is near the driveway and I wondered if heat from the driveway kept the lower part of the bean plants from freezing. I am hoping to keep the beans, peppers and southern peas going a few more weeks, preferably without having to cover them. I don't mind taking the time to put Agribon over a few rows if it is needed--I just hope it isn't needed for a while yet. I have a bunch of tomato plants and pepper plants in containers and will enjoy them while they last, but don't know if I'll move them into the greenhouse or garage to keep them alive deeper into winter. Maybe I'll keep one tomato plant and one pepper plant going. I am mostly focusing on cool-season crops in the greenhouse and garden at this point. My garden still is about half and half---half new cool-season plants, half warm-season plants that are just hanging on. Volunteer plants are popping up everywhere, mostly from self-seeding flowers and the zinnias that began popping up in August after a good rainfall now are in bloom, so the garden is full of butterflies. Between the zinnias and butterflies, I can pretend it is still summer if I just don't look at the trees, some of which have leaves that are now a brilliant yellow and golden-orange, with a few of the oaks and pears starting to show red foliage. Anytime they forecast an overnight low temp in the low 40s, that does make me nervous because it often drops lower than forecast, and we often get pretty hard frost at 37 or 38 degrees. I never can decide at what forecast temperature to put the Agribon row covers on---38, 40, 42, 45? I wonder if the patchiness of the frost on the vehicles indicates you had a little light wind---though I don't know why it would keep frost off one vehicle and not the one right next to it. That has happened here before too. I've also had a really hard killing freeze kill tomato and pepper plants randomly, both in early spring and in fall. The randomness sometimes surprises me. I might see 3, 4 or 5 dead plants in a row, then a live one, then more dead ones. Does that make any sense? No, but it happens. I hope you'll be able to get a lot of good garden work and bed preparation done before it starts getting too cold up there. Dawn

For most of zone 7 the growing season ends around the 1st of november to the 15 of november. Good thing about living along the coast is frost comes pretty late in the fall because the sea temperatures are still fairly warm from the summer The northeast and mid atlantic should watch out on friday morning though, because many areas will be getting a hard frost, that includes NYC, philly, and maybe DC, (as well as all the coastal areas which are the few areas that havent gotten a frost yeton the eastern seabord). Also those spike plants are very close relatives to ti plants. Spike plants are also known as Cabbage trees and can grow really large (and look quite tropical too). They are cold tolerant to 10F making them zone 8 plants, but Ive seen a some survive zone 7 winters in pots. I saw someone near me planted them in the ground and they survived three winters with no protection at all and were in very exposed areas. They got to be almost 4 feet tall, and if they were protected that one cold night, they would probably still be alive today. Good luck.