Saw a lot of sickly aloes / agaves (I can't tell the difference) at BassPro this morning. Very pale and yellow around the gills they were. I'd hate to be tasked with cleaning them up. I suppose one would need a chain saw with a long blade and a pair of muleskin gloves.

Most likely agaves. I had a few agave deaths. They were A celsii, Nova. It was their first year and I covered them but I knew it was a chancy buy. I just did not think we would have 2 years in a row with such killer cold snaps.

I opened the frost cloth on my garden today and started the cleanup of the wounded and dead. things were better than I thought. Broccoli, cauliflower, mitzuna, Joi choy, chard looked dead but alive under the dead leaves. I chopped them way back. Snow peas composted, Beats and carrots, radishes, turnips growing from the roots. Leeks fine. So even though things look really blighted, and will not provide much for a bit they are better than I thought. The Rabacini's fate is quite questionable. I cut it back to the ground. Black seeded simpson lettuce is much more cold hardy than butter crunch.

The compost pile has been fed....... BIG TIME.

It's not just the degrees. It's also how long it stayed very low...and it stayed really low for far too long. I expect more plant damage and even dead plants than last year. But a few of my plants didn't return until May last year, so it's going to be a long wait.

HMMMM.. That is interesting. Last year my plants barely blinked with the 12 degree dip but THIS year, It is Way different. Tomorrow , I am off to the garden store. I am torn between letting plants recover or tearing them out and starting a new. maybe I will split the difference.

I don't have much outside to cover. I abandoned the radishes to the heavy cover of leaves that I'd dumped on them before Christmas -- I managed to break my foot a month ago and am still on crutches and they're on the other side of the yard. They made it through the first cold spell, so maybe they made it through the last two. I dumped leaves around/on the new salvias and Texas Sage, they look to be OK but I'll know for sure in a couple months. I covered by new rosemary plants two different ways: a double layer of twin sheets and a double layer of felt blanket (U-haul blanket); both seem to have worked well. The lavender got covered with the felt blankets, too, but I haven't check on it, it's not as easy to get to and recover. I'm sure I'll know how everything did by June.

I know it's a combination of the plants and how cold they get and how long they stay cold. I lost a Texas Sage last year, its replacement looks like it made it through everything OK. I'm not counting on the lavender to make it, it's in a pot and has put roots into the ground, so God only knows. I just hope I don't have to replace a lot of plants.

Crutches? Been there, done that and it's tough to get around the garden that way. "Stay off that foot for six weeks or you'll have to start over" from the doctor was enough threat to keep my foot up, no cheating. Hope you're nearing the end of it and all is well.

Took the frost cover off this morning and found cilantro that looked good and black seeded simpson lettuce too. Dill is a little flat, but looks like it will pop back. Chives look good and the parsley as well. Thought the Tarragon was toast but has a few green sprouts at the base.

The three days below freezing last week did in a few plants that made it through the much colder, but shorter duration temps of last year.

It will take time to see what the damage is, some plants took a long while to come back last year and I was surprised in late May when I went to take out a few and found they were just beginning to come back.

If I replace any plants it will be with hardier ones. Two winters in a row of covering and moving is enough.

I am working with a broken pinky. I know I shouldn't but things have to get done TODAY, YESTERDAY, Not 4 weeks from now and we are very economically pinched.

Yes, My days of molly coddling are limited. I see an over supply of empty pots in my near future. I will force myself to buy NO MORE ALOES no mater how winter hardy they say they are or how pretty they are. Even my 30 yr. clump of Aloe maculata has melted to the ground under the frost cloth. Only a few of the hardy ones in pots are alive and the ones I manage to get into my shop. The unlucky plants that got taken to my Husband shop are slime. I am starting a lot of seeds from my trip to New Mexico and they breezed through the snap as even baby little seedlings. I know the test for them will be this summer and the humidity.
I read a scientific paper that thinks that we are haveing a magnetic polar shift that might be causing the "super storms and weird weather." I really can't say but my weather man says that we will end up the winter with a warmer than normal winter overall. HA, tell that to all my broken pipes and plants. I do remember that we were getting off quite nicely with lots of warm days before this.

Well I need to stop my jawing and get to the nursery for vegetable starts.

I rolled up the tarp and collected upended pots this morning. Too soon to tell. I thought it interesting that the calylophus and Blackfoot daisy were still green.

I just got out to the garden and the radishes are alive! They have no leaves left, but the stems are mostly green and I found one that was ready to pull. Oddly enough, the irises that I brought back from Tennessee this summer are laying down like they didn't handle the cold very well.

I'm glad we get a warm spell to recover from the cold. I know they've said that up to February, North Texas had a warmer than normal winter. Gotta love the exceptions!

Gotta look out for the exceptions !!!

Spinach, Siberian kale collards totally unharmed. cilantro and chervil in great shape. they are my exceptions.To bad I don't like collards.

Some of my oriental radishes have been damaged on their root top where they grow.They are large and it is time to pick them. Has anyone used the ground to store roots?

It's going to be interesting to see if the pomegranate made it. That plant seems to handle hard freezes better if it is hardened off by several small freezes and nights of cool weather before the hard freeze. The current pomegranate has survived those types of winters for several years. The prior pomegranate died after the first winter that was warmish, then snapped cold without any hardening off nights.

My pomegranate had a 2F degree snap in 87 and handled that one, but it was smack against a wall.

I planted onions right before the first freeze and just checked on them They actually look great! They weren't covered or anything (except with snow and ice!)

I found something interesting. My larger fennels are slime but the smaller fennel seedlings are fine. If I stick my finger into the center of the slime I do feel a hard tip way down in there (possible growth?) so I will hold off on the yanking. I would have thought the reverse would have happened. The larger ones would be better off than the smaller ones.

I wait until as late as May to declare plant death. Especially if I'm trying to fudge with my zone. I'd remove slimy stuff as soon as the last frost date to discourage rot tho.

I only had onions & like lynnmarie, had just planted them before the first freeze. We covered them and when we uncovered them, they were fine.

My garlic and strawberries survived the 12 degree low I had in the worst of it. They were covered with this Agribon+ row cover

I didn't think they'd make it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Some dead foliage on the tops of the garlic, but that was it they are all bouncing back. :)

I just heard another Arctic front might make it here next Friday. I just put out all my potted aloes and Epi's that survived. Hopefully it will be a milder one.

Plants are continuing their decline. My mizuna and chinese greens had looked hopeful with good centers of green continue to loose ground, (interesting use of words). Maybe they are just thinking.

Hope my weatherman is correct on this as he is saying high of 70 next Friday.................

Not this friday, next friday, in a week. I hope your weatherman trumps mine. Yes-sir-ee. My garden is full of seedlings.

PJ, my rubber tree came back in June of last year. I tried to cover it during the freeze, but the wind kept blowing them off. I cut it back, it came back from the roots. So you may want to wait until June, I wish I had, since I dug up most of my plants that I thought were dead in April and took to the dump, over 500 lbs. I wonder how many of those would have come back? Barbra

Wantonamara, you mentioned radishes above. I left my long white radishes in the ground after the top froze back thinking they'd be okay there for awhile, but they are getting mushy from the top down so I'm digging them all out tomorrow and storing them in the fridge for as long as they will allow.

The Swiss chard is putting on new leaves like crazy and the Crawford lettuce didn't miss a beat.

I had the same experience with the oriental long white radish. Thew turnips were fine.

Oh that's heartbreaking...I'm so sorry for your loss.
This was truly an unusual winter. Besides my frozen pipes (in the well house), I too lost some plants. And get this -they were inside a pop-up 6ft. square green house that was all zipped up AND had a heat lamp on! Mainly I lost my agave and a couple of tropical plants I'd brought in from the porch last fall. The rest (mainly young trees and some groundcovers) should be okay although their leaves were browned. Yep, an unusually tough winter. But it is interesting to observe what does well in those extremes and what doesn't. That's good information, so thanks for sharing.

By the way, a hardware clerk turned me onto a helpful little gadget. It's an electric plug that you can plug your heat lamp or heater into (or anything you like) and it has a temperature sensor that turns whatever is plugged into it ON when the temps drop to 30 degrees and then shuts it off when it gets above that temp again. Works well for my heat lamp in the well house and in the little greenhouse.
Or at least it would have in a less extreme season. I've now insulated the heck out of well house and pipes.

I want the lamp to come on BEFORE 30 degrees. I insulated my pump house and I think I will put some more in it. A heat lamp will keep it about 40 if the foam is in the door cracks. It is a fairly small space. I am going to put a lot of mulch down on the path where the water pipe is in the garden between the pump house and the shop. It will look nice too. I think that the pipe might be too close to the surface and it might have developed slush in the system as it staid cold for so long. We lost pressure and never gained it back till two days after the freeze stopped.