monstera deliciosa.......interesting fruit....beautiful foliage.....I agree with the general description that Mango Kush provides. But, for my money.....grow and eat bananas and pineapples each separately......while monstera does taste somewhat like a cross between the two, it is not as good as either individually....IMHO. This family of plants excels in the foliage department and not in the fruit department....well.....not so much for my taste. But a definite oddity for those who are inclined to favor the odd.

Mango kush,
When is the season for the monstera deliciosa?

all year. the fruit can take up to a year on the plant to ripen.

Models want to hang this cold around longer into the next week. Still showing possibly 2 mornings in the 30's in Ft. Lauderdale with a possible freeze.
Good luck and keep warm!

Miami barely managed 45F!!! this afternoon and the temp is dropping. GFS still pops a 31F for Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow. Looks like 70F by Thursday and 80F by Saturday...hold in there.

We've been steadily dropping from our high of a scorching 46 degrees. They are calling for 31 tonight as the low. I went out and bought a more substantial, and hopefully more reliable, thermometer set up so I can at least limit my temp freakouts to those situations that are actually occurring. Can't even get some tender things covered with sheets today as it is still raining. Rain is supposed to tail off by 1 am in the morning. I guess it will be a late night tonight fiddling with the final cold prep. Oh well, who needs sleep anyway.

I got a bit of snow in Ocala last night. Been a long time since I have seen that. I usually like the cold, but this is a bit out of hand now.

NWS MIAMI is going a little crazy!

"159 PM EST SAT JAN 9 2010

...FREEZE WARNING AND WIND CHILL WARNING ALL AREAS TONIGHT
INTO SUNDAY MORNING...

.DISCUSSION...IS THIS FLORIDA?! IT`S A RAW, MISERABLE DAY WITH
TEMPS CONTINUING STEADY THIS AFTERNOON...RANGING FROM THE UPPER
30S LAKE REGION TO THE L/M 40S ELSEWHERE. OBSERVATIONS ARE RUNNING
BELOW GFS MODEL GUIDANCE...AND MORE IN LINE WITH THE NAM...SO HAVE
LEANED IN THE NAM`S COLDER DIRECTION. AREAS NEAR LAKE OKEECHOBEE
ARE ONLY ABOUT 7-8F FROM FREEZING ALREADY...WITH THE METROPOLITAN
AREAS 9-13F FROM FREEZING AT THIS WRITING. SO WITH SUCH A COLD
START...IT`S NOT GOING TO TAKE A HUGE DROP IN TEMPS TO HIT
FREEZING. AM EXPECTING LOWS TONIGHT TO FALL INTO THE 25-30F RANGE
OVER THE INTERIOR TO THE L/M 30S ALONG THE COASTS. FOR THIS
REASON...A FREEZE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR ALL OF MAINLAND
SOUTH FL.

RECORD LOWS ARE POSSIBLE TONIGHT. HERE ARE THE RECORD LOWS FOR
SUNDAY 1/10:

WEST PALM BEACH...29 IN 1970
FT. LAUDERDALE...32 IN 1970
MIAMI...35 IN 1970
NAPLES...32 IN 1970"

Harry and others in south florida:
I feel for you, tonight looks like an ugly night for you. The problem down there is that trees are usually too big to be cover...

Anyway, here in Jax we manage to get to a scorching 35.7F, at 12:00 PM it was still 31.6 at my house! This is some cold weather...

I am hoping for the temps to stay above 25F tonight, but it seems to be dropping very fast right now and it is not even 6:00 PM yet!

Good luck to all...

I could easily cover my trees. But, I'd have to have number large circus tents and about 30 person crew to set it all up. Where are the Ringling Bros. when you need them? We're hovering around 40 right now with continued light rain. Survey of the yard this afternoon found some cold burn damage on jakfruit new leaves, abiu, new growth on mango. No damage so far on lychees. Cacao is holding its own. NOAA calls for lows of 32 here tonight and 31 tomorrow night. But, seems everytime you look at their prediction, it changes. Good luck all....this should be a real blast.

hmhausman-

I feel for you. Up here we have to contend with late spring frosts/freezes and its stressing thinking what if i lose my entire apple crop for the year or peach blossoms/plums/etc.. It sucks. The good thing is that if you have it this year, HOPEFULLY that is it for a decade or more... Get it out of the way now :)

Harry-

For what its worth, I have found NOAA to be grossly in error for the forecast lows. Many times they have forecasted low 20's here and their current condition through the night never gets close to the forecast low.

I have found Weather.com to be the most accurate.

Thanks JB for the attempt at relieving my stress. I checked Weather.com. Good news and bad news. The good news, they are calling for a low of 34 tomorrow when NOAA is still stuck on 31. The bad news...they are calling for 32 tonight, just like NOAA. Time to just grin and bear it!

Harry

Great! Just checked NOAA again and they've dropped tonight's forecast low from 32 to 30. OK...enough.....I am going with the Weather.com prediction. Wish the folks at NOAA would make up their mind.

In my experience the NOAA (weather.gov) forecasts tend to call for lower temperatures than what usually ends up dropping to. However, often they are right on. I just think that they like to stay on the safe side of things... Can you imagine if they called for 32F and it dropped to 28F instead? I much rather them call for 28 and it only drop to 30...

Good luck...

I made a chart the past week of the forecasts from Weather.com, Wunderground, my Local 13 weather, Google Weather, 2 NOAA forecasts (one for my zip-code, one for my town), and after writing down their forecasts (and changing them as needed as they were updated; done in different colored ink so I could see the originals), the conclusion was that every night 1-2 of the entities were correct in their forecasts, and the next night another 1-2 entities would be correct...there was no rhyme or reason on who was most accurate.

Thanks for the confirmation, BluePalm.......the reality is that temp presdiction is an inexact science and instrumentation, locale, micro-climatic factors all play a part in our having to "scratch our heads" in wonder as to what to really expect.

I bought a new digital thermometer with an outside sensor and found that my older min/max thermometer was off.....but not by that much. We were hovering around 32 during most of the pre-dawn hours. The temp dipped to its low here between 7 and 7:3o with a temp of 31.8. Lots of wind and cloud cover prevented any frost. The surrounding weather stations in my vacinity were all warmer than my readings by between .5 and 1 degree. Yard walk (brief and cold as it was) did not reveal anything frozen. Wind chills here are in the 20's. They are now calling for lows tonight to be 29, with wind chill values in the teens. Hope everyone's plants made it through last night with the least possible damage. Have a great Sunday and stay warm!

Hi being a transplant from Kentucky I am still learning about the plants here.

I know the tropicalÂs are more than likely lost, but I wonder about some of the other trees and plants I planted this year to replace those I lost last year.

My banana of course is frozen, do I cut it back or do I chance leaving the stalks in hope they will recover?
I worry about rot from the stalks taking out the root system in them, this is my concern also with my Persian Palms as they are a succulent as well.

My Coconut Palm is very young just planted a month ago, it is completely brown, what are the chances it will put out new growth?

I have pretty much written off my new coffee tree, it is a black ball of dead leaves also a new plant this year.

My once beautiful fern also now black and I doubt has the will to live.

Last year I cut back all my hibiscus and they slowly put out new growth, but I have seen where some advise not to cut them.

I look out at my yard now and just want to cry, it was so beautiful a mere two weeks ago, any advise would be most welcome to this frozen transplant from the North.

I lived in Palm Coast for about 12 years. The Coconut palm has no shot in palm cost. You're Hibiscus should come back from the ground. I would leave the banana alone for a while but it should come back whether you cut it or not. Did you buy the Coconut at a local nursery? I am surprised they would even carry them. They will never make it through even a very mild winter unless they are in a greenhouse and even then it would be tough.

JSV.

Thanks so much for the tips, this is my second year here and thus far I am not doing well in the landscaping area at all.

I spent the first year having the pines cleared from the yard, 32 in all and the Kudsu I believe its called, still finding it creeping in, that stuff is relentless.

I had my doubts about the coconut palm, but thought I would give it the old college try.
Also a coffee tree which I am sure a goner.

I was amazed that my gardenias thus far have come through, I cried when I lost my ferns, they were the prize of my garden, almost 5 foot tall and so full, the bananas had to come back from last years freeze and were doing wonderful, when I checked them today they still had solid trunk mass but the young plants of course were toast.

Same with the Persian Palms but since they are young plants I wonder how much bounce back they have.
The tropical section of my garden is a sad dead plot at this point.

Would love some ideas of what to plant that can withstand these cold snaps.

Of course the plants I knew so well back in KY can not take the heat here, so I am trying to learn what to plant, I love blooming, sweet scented, and I like to have a touch of the unusual, things that are not in every ones yard.

I do all of my own landscaping and enjoy it, but do not want to replant every year :-(

Judy there are alot of things you can grow, in fact you can grow things we can not because you have more chill hours in the winter like pomegranates, peaches, plums and kiwi.

loquats i know are cold hardy, i think you can get away with a sapodilla if youre near the coast (warmer), jujubes, persimmon, pawpaw, figs of course, certain guava varieties.

also dont give up on tropicals, there are several mango varieties that would be happy in a 15 gallon container that you could bring inside or in a shed during cold freezes.

Just curios about what part of FL is considered the palm coast. Is it Pal beach area? I visited Clearwater and saw coconut palma in the ground with coconuts on the palm tree. I know that that is considered subtropical FL. Is that rare to see? I know I only saw a few here and there. I just can't believe you guys are even in this situation. who would have thought that FL would have that cold blast! I never thought i would see the day, how sad!!
Andrew

Palm Coast is actually a town on the east coast off I-95, between Daytona and St. Augustine.

Judy, unfortunately there are not really any tropicals that will survive without a lot of protection in Palm Coast. You might get away with a lychee, and a few other subtropical trees with a little protection, but with the winters we have had recently even they would be toast. My parents still live out there and they said it got down to 21 at there house. The plants mango kush recommended should work well (not sure on the sapodilla). If I were you I would by three condo type mangoes, plant them all in one hole and buy one of the portable greenhouses to cover them in the winter. I'd do the same with a few lychees as well. The portable greenhouses are around $300 if I remeber right.
I don't know anything about the persian palms, but I suspect they will be killed to the ground every winter and come back in the spring.

I am just a hop from the coast.but we had nights in the low 20's
And wow I never thought of the pawpaws, I had them in KY, if lucky there you could find them growing wild, and they would go nice with the bananas.
I will try replacing the coffee tree with fig.
Persimmon was never one of my picks because they tend to draw opossums into the yard to eat the fruit.

I have one tree in the yard that no one can tell me what it is.
I have a thought that it may be a key lime,BUT the fruit is more of an oval shape, green peel, white fruit, and walnut sized.
The bloom is creamy white with a deep burgandy star in the center and on the petal edges, reminds me of a spider plant bloom.
The squirrels love it grrrr they pick the tree clean.
if I can figure out how to put photos on here I will take a snap of it, maybe one of you can I.D. the tree.

Judy,
Poosting pics here is easy. Use photobucket and download your pics to an album. Select the pic you want to download and copy the direct link. Then go to GW to the post you want, and paste pic to optional URL. Name your link, and your all set. If you use the GW search engine you will find your answer here also. Good luck.
Andrew

judy, when you upload pictures to your computer you have to host them onto a website.

www.photobucket.com is a good site to create an account and store your pictures online for easy linking.

www.imageshack.us is a good site if you want to upload a picture and not save it in an account or have to create one.

either way once you upload your pictures ther they will give you a URL.

for example the URL of the following picture is this:

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e388/twoflyasianguy/GARDEN/tree002.jpg
notice how it ends in an image file like .jpg

the HTML code to turn that URL into a picture is exactly as follows

and it will display the following

give it a try if you cant get it to work we will help you

Judy, I also meant to mention that you will have to pick your Banana variety carefully if you want to get fruit ripened before the tree is frozen every year. I would check out "Going Bananas" site. They have a great selection and I am sure you could find a few early ripening ones that will work for you.

testing a pic

Here is a link that might be useful:

well, you figured out how to link a URL, thats a start. you can link people to pictures that way but then you are only limited to one per post

heres the code,

(the space turns into a %)

that will give you this

Thanks Mango will try again, it kept telling me it rejected my post.

And yes it was beautiful a week ago, now it is brown and ugly.

garden web doesnt let you double post some times with the same title. it has nothing to do with the message itself

This was one of my biggest surprises this year before the freeze came, in KY I never had my ele. ears bloom, this was the first time I had ever seen one in bloom.

Here is a link that might be useful:

beautiful. my elephant ears are huge and still no bloom.

good, you have a photobucket account now.

if you click on that link you posted you will see 4 lines of code. the one thats says HTML code can be copied and pasted right into this text box and it will display your image.

Ok Mango lets see if the student is worthy of the teacher lol.

Mango most everyone thought I had fell out of a tree and bumped my head when I said my elephant ears were in bloom, so I had to take snaps to prove I had not lost my mind.

I had cut them back because they were taking over the area and within a week I had three in bloom, as one bloom would die another would take its place.
I have grown them many times in my garden and never had any do this until moving here to Fl.

This was my pride to bad it is now a black reminder of what it once was.
Not having much luck with them in the past I was overjoyed to have this one do so well.
Does anyone know if it will come back?

well you have seen the before now the dreaded after the freeze.

the mystery tree.
{{gwi:1335941}}

{{gwi:1335942}}

Mystery tree looks like Feijoa (pineapple guava) feijoa sellowiana, I believe. Sorry to see the frozen devastation. My sincere condolensces.

Judy, I'm so sorry about you losing some of your plants. I feel your pain. I have two lychee trees completely "torched", a couple of mango trees suffered some pretty bad damage, lots of tropical plants and flowers looks dead. Keeping fingers crossed some will recover? I think most of your plants will come back from the roots. My neighbor had elephant ears that looked like yours after last years freeze and came back by summer. Good luck!

I agree with Harry...mystery plant is Pineapple Guava(Feijoa Sellowiana). I have one...completely unaffected by this recent freeze. Only think that was nipped was the "new growths" If only mangoes and lychees had the same tolerance **sigh**

when the tree blooms if the freeze did not stun it I will take some snaps then and of the fruit.

I at first thought it was a K-lime, but after I tried the fruit I was puzzled.
the fruit is more of an oval shape, green peel, white fruit, and walnut sized.
The bloom is creamy white with a deep burgandy star in the center and on the petal edges, reminds me of a spider plant bloom.

Hey Judy...here's a couple of pics taken last summer of my Pineapple Guava. Mine fruited for the very first time last year, but all the fruits fell off before they matured :o( I use to love them when I lived in CA.
{{gwi:126024}}

Squirrels clean my tree of all the fruit I think they invite all their friends over for a party.

Its like little armys show up to raid the tree.

Do I cut it back and hope it comes back?
Leave it alone?
Or dig it up and start with new plants?

Judy:

This is the time for a definite "wait and see" attitude. Don't start cutting or digging just yet. Let the winter weather take its course and then make some decisions in the spring.

Harry

I spent the day with Springhill and gurneys ordering new babies for the yard.
I tried to be strong and only order things that can fight back against these cold snaps, but I have to confess to a couple of weak moments when the beauty of the plant pushed aside my common sense.
Have pawpaws , black elephant ears and a Paulownia tree ordered along with Yucca plants and two Hansen cherry bushes, 2 Golden Rain trees.
My weak side ordered a weeping cherry tree, some walk on me plants, and 2 Halls Honeysuckle.

Sounds nice Judy. I am surprised you had o order the Golden rain tree though. They grow wild all over the place here in Ocala. I am surprised there are not some around your way.

jsv.

I have loved the Golden Rain Tree since moving here and have had a devil of a time getting my hands on one.

several of my neighbors have them in their yards, I understand they are very easy trees to start even a clipping will do.

Have not seen them wild here, could be I simply have not noticed one unless it was in bloom.

Their are a couple of other trees here that I have noticed in the wild and in yards but do not have a clue what they are.

One I am interested in has a bloom like a dogwood, but it blooms in summer and seems to hold its flower for a long time.

Speaking of Dogwood, how do they do here?
I assume not well, since I do not see them.

I have high hopes for the weeping cherry, I had one in KY I know it can handle the cold snaps, but I wonder if it can stand up to the heat?

I have seen people growing dogwoods in heavy shade, but I am not sure how well they do. The ones I have seen in my area seem to look decent but not as nice as up north.