Yeah, as Dibbet mentioned, you are not alone... much of this is typical now for the upper south. By now, most of our trees are typically full of foliage. Not so this time, as it was in late March, but record lows in the lower 20s ruined all of it. I feel your pain... the same thing has happened here in northeast Tennessee. Sadly, NONE of my trees that lost new foliage in the freeze have recovered at all. I am not sure if they ever will. Tge leaves are brown and dull. If so, its going to be one ugly summer. If not and they do recover with new leaves, I think that we will have to deal with the pollen all over again. On an interesting note, I had to go to Maryville, Tennessee today- which is about 30 miles southwest of Knoxville. I was happy and surprised that there was little damage to the foliage there on the trees, which leads me to believe that the tree foliage damage in northern Alabama and northwestern Georgia was very minimal as well. I have heard some reports however that in north GA and north AL that some leaf loss is as much as 90% in some areas. I have no idea however, as I have not seen any photos of the trees in that area to make an evaluation. We do have areas with more foliage, like the Kingsport area has much more, as does parts of town around here. I guess this weekends and next weeks upper 70s and lower 80s will really accelerate the foliage. It was not until I got almost into Knoxville that I started really starting noticing the much less damage... it was really noticable when I entered Knox county and the further southwest I went, there was less and less damage- which should be expected as they are further south and about 800 ft. lower in elevation that us here in Bristol, but I did not think there would be so much less damage. I noticed that the Willow oak trees down around the airport have NO damage whereas mine was heavily damaged. They did have some leaf burn however on some of the Pear trees, but it was worse here, but only on the side that the wind was coming from... I guess that added to the chill on them. In Knoxville, this did not seem to be a problem as bad as it was here. I think we were in the worse situation for this... we are far enough south to have had the temps in the 70s and 80s for weeks- making the trees well ahead of schedule, but far enough north to suffer more of the effects of that unusually cold chill we had on the first weekend of April. I am really concerned about my Live Oaks... I think it ruined them... all of the new growth was destroyed and I see no new growth coming back out.... Here is a before/after photo... I took the last photo right after the major freeze. I will take more this weekend and as you will see... not much change. Most all trees are still bare, which is very unusual, as by now, most are getting quite full. Late March looking out my front lawn.... (to view - "copy" the link and paste in your browser, but leave off the " [IMG] ". [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4599.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4609.jpg[/IMG] Around April 10th-11th.... [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4730.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4741.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4731.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4745.jpg[/IMG] New growth on my Southern Live Oaks were destroyed: [IMG]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e172/Tennesseestorm/Tree%20album/100_4675.jpg[/IMG] NE Tennessee - Zone 6B-7A

On the barrel, putting a black barrel full of water in the greenhouse will absorb the heat during the day and give off heat at night. The problem is that sometimes we will have a few cloudy, or rainy days before a freeze so the black barrel is useless. Bury the barrel and it constantly absorbs warmth from the ground, and this can't fail. The buried barrel is mostly below ground and has two holes on opposite sides at ground level. The half barrel is out on top and has a three inch hole at the top. The barrel is filled 3/4 with water. The cold air that sinks to ground level goes into the bottom holes, is heated by the warm water, and then rises to go out the top hole. This creates a vaccum which pulls in more cold air and naturally circulates the warm air. When it was 20F outside, I checked the temps, the water was 62F, and the air in the top barrel was 58F going out. The main thing is that one cubic foot of water will produce 54.5 BTUs per hour. Figure how many BTUs you need to heat any greenhouse, and sink that much water in the ground to heat what you have. On the temps varying here in Lakeland, everybody's microclimate is going to be different. In my place, it is in a low spot. On the second day of a two day freeze event, when there is no wind, my place is 6 degrees lower than it is 1000 feet to the south. You have to look and see what the weather channel says you will have for your zip code and then just observe what you get for your low. After a few times, you can figure what you will get. I already know that whatever TWC says Brooksville will have, that is exactly what I will have. It has been fairly consistent for years.

yup, thats a mango seedling treefrog, thanks. Im in the smack center of CA in Fresno. I live in the central valley where we get LONG dry summers (typically above 110 degrees) and cool, short, wet winters (Dec and half of Jan). So far, we've had a couple of frosty mornings, but nothing to hard to protect any plants. There is only a bit of damage to dypsis lutescens, majesty palm, hibiscus and bouganvillea. Temperatures begin to rise quickly begining this first week of January so there is minimal danger for any more damage than what is shown in the pics above.

There's nothing wrong with that. I do that sort of freezing for later a lot at peak tomato harvest, which for me is usually June-July and peak fruit harvest, which is about the same time frame. I often have a freeze full of stuff in fall that I do go back and can eventually, or I use it for cooking. This year I kept up on the fresh preserving fairly well though. And, so course, some things like cucumbers need to be canned immediately so I always do them first even if it means freezing fruit and tomatoes for later. I did a huge amount of food preservation pretty much daily in June and July, mostly canning but also quite a bit of freezing and fermentation. When I stopped watering the garden and walked away from it in August or whenever it was, I didn't know if it would produce anything else. We were so hot and so dry, and at that point it doesn't matter how much it rained in May or June because that rain is long ago all used up And, I wasn't sure how the kitchen remodel would go and if I'd have a usable kitchen in time to do any fall food preservation either. Thankfully, the kitchen is almost done now, so I can use it for food preservation. Surprisingly, the garden is still a huge jungle and has produced a lot since the weather cooled down some earlier in the fall and rain began falling again. The plants don't look great as it still is too dry and they remain wilted most of the time, but they are productive which is what matters. And it is weedy, but snakes hide in weeds, so once I lose control of the weeds, I cannot do major weeding to get rid of them until after we freeze. Of course, it still hasn't rained enough, and it has stayed hot too long but the heat has been good for the garden in the sense that it remains in production. I harvested a ton of stuff about 2 weeks ago and have been preserving like crazy. I've also continued to harvest occasionally since then. The latest things I've made are pepper vinegar and a currently fermenting pepper mash that eventually will be made into hot sauce. I need to harvest again before the weekend frost/freeze, as there's still a lot of peppers I left in there to continue to grow and size up. When I walked through the garden earlier this morning, I made a list of things to harvest: watermelons, winter squash, birdhouse gourds, about 10 kinds of peppers, fennel, dill, lima beans and southern peas. There's green tomatoes that I may harvest on Friday, or I may just cover them up overnight. There's Laura Bush petunias that are newly sprouted volunteers about 4 weeks ago and about to bloom. Those usually can handle temperatures down to at least 20 degrees, so I'll work around them when cleaning up. I'd like to start cleaning out beds, but every bed has blooming plants in it and the garden still is full of butterflies and bees. So, I'll be patient and wait for it all to freeze. I really don't want to deny the bees and butterflies any of the flowers that remain even if it messes up my own timetable for garden cleanup. No matter what we do, I never have enough room to store everything when harvested, so it piles up in bowls and buckets all over the walk-in pantry, laundry room, kitchen and breakfast room. We have been working on fixing that. We put in a tall cabinet type pantry with pull-out drawers in the kitchen for normal pantry type food storage so I now can use the walk-in pantry only for produce and for home-preserved foods. I think that will help a lot. We need to reconfigure the interior of the walk-in pantry,move some shelves around, etc. (we moved the door to that pantry from the kitchen to the breakfast room), improve the lighting in it, etc. but that won't be hard or take long. Tim still has been working 6 days a week so we haven't worked on much of anything lately that requires power tools and his expertise. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be having to harvest produce and hang on to it for a couple of days before going to market. You're going to need a food storage facility bigger than your camper, Kim! Hazel, Are you good about watering indoor plants? If so, almost anything would work in a hanging planter. If you aren't really good about watering, then you could put something like a succulent in the hanging planter. Succulents like to stay on the dry side and don't need a lot of water. Just be sure you hang it in a place that has enough natural light. Dawn