Tiger, do you know the type of fig? Does this person get fruit? That's incredible.. Even though you're in zone 6, I'd still mulch..To be honest, our winters have really been mild the last 4 yrs..Even annuals I've planted last year have reseeded themselves and are growing..Like Morning Glory.. You really should check out Palm and Cycad forum, and look at pics..one guy in Chiago has a beautiful windmill palm in his yard..Toni

Larry, All seedlings started indoors and grown in relatively stable temperatures, low air movement (even a fan on high speed cannot simulate March winds), and artificial lighting must be hardened off gradually to outdoor conditions. If you take plants that have been grown inside their entire life and transplant them into the garden without hardening them off to the harsher outdoor conditions, the sun exposure, wildly varying temperatures and wind will kill most or all of them or severely set them back. I move most vegetable transplants outside to the sunporch as soon as daytime temperatures allow. My sugar snap peas went outside the minute the smallest bit of green popped up out of the seed-starting mix, so they have been grown in sunlight and wind and wildly fluctuating temperatures. I have left the pea plants outside at night unless temperatures were forecast to go below the mid-20s. My snap peas have had ample exposure, therefore, to sunlight, strong winds (I did move them back onto the sunporch on two days when winds were gusing in the upper 30s and lower 40s) and cold temperatures, so they are ready to go into the ground right now. I'll plant them today or tomorrow, depending on whether I "get around to it". If your peas have been inside a structure all along, they must be hardened off before being planted. I usually move plants to a shady part of the sunporch for a couple of days. Then, I move them closer to the sunporch windows for an hour or two for a couple of days. Then, I move them outside for 1 hour the first day, 2 hours the second day, 3 hours the third day, etc. After about a week to ten days they are fully hardened off and can go into the ground. If you don't harden off your plants and they suddenly have to cope with sunlight from sunup until sundown, the leaves sunburn...and it doesn't take long for that sunburn to occur. If enough of the leaves burn, the plants die. Wind damage also can burn them and severe windburn can kill plants. If your plants have been growing at a constant 60 or 70 degrees, sudden exposure to temperatures that are significantly colder than that can stunt them. For all the above reasons, hardening off is essential. If you try to skip the hardening off process, you'll likely lose your plants. Peas can go into the ground anytime in March and my feeling is the earlier the better, but you do have to be prepared to cover them up if your temps are headed for the upper teens or lower 20s. Small pea plants tolerate cold really well, but once they're large enough to start blooming, cold temps and frost can knock their blooms off or can damage the tips of the vines. I keep floating row covers and old sheets handy in a stack on a shelf in the garage so I can throw them over peas on very cold nights. Dawn

I'm going to keep them for one week and get the pods to produce peas. Then I'll cut them down. Either rabbit or groundhog cause some damage to my seedlings at beginning. But they do not bother mature plants. I've taken out 9 grounghogs and I hope they are gone for now. But I'll still protect the baby seedlings. Not sure if birds eat them.... I'll probably plant a bit more. So I can harvest some mature peas. I like the taste of sugar snap better than the snow peas. Somehow the snow peas lose the tenderness very quickly. Not sure if that is the problem with this variety.

I'd prune the broken branches, and if you are likely to get more similar storms, prune off some of the flower heads - bring them in for cut flowers. Often nursery shrubs have lots of flowers to help sales, but it isn't necessarily the best thing for a new plant to try supporting all of them. You will probably get many fewer flowers next year as the plant grows more roots and stronger branches. Years after that once they are established, the branches will be stronger and you will have lots of flowers.