And windy, don't forget windy. All the wind yesterday and today have had me out reworking my Tropicals tent to make it more secure. I still keep going out every hour to see what part of the tent has been opened up. Luckily it has held the past few hours, but now that I have said that...

I have 'lost' a few things, though I expect most of them to come back from roots in a few weeks. I have lost nothing under the tent so far. The only thing off the top of my head that I feel fairly sure won't come back is a lone banana I had next to the goldfish pond. That was a test to see if maybe the thermal mass of the pond would be enough to keep the banana (a pup from one of my more mature and protected bananas) from freezing. It wasn't. Oh well, it will make a nice addition to the compost pile once cut up, right?

Good luck with your shelter! I'm counting my tomatoes as goners, but that's o.k., because I have starts from them and many more varieties of seeds too. I came here with hardly any plants, so to have a living room full now is just evidence that I can always get more. I looked, and it's supposed to be below freezing for several hours, and below 28 for at least 3 of those, so I'm thinking my tropical hibiscus might not make it.

I'm concerned about my banana, although it's right next to the house and I've been piling stuff over the roots for awhile now. My maintenance guy says his always freeze and come back from the corm, so maybe it will be o.k. I'm going to pile up more leaves and just pray it will be o.k. Not too worried about anything else. I just can't stay out in this cold weather too long to deal with them. I guess whatever will be, will be. Last winter was so mild and I had a spare bedroom with a sunny window to keep plants in, but don't have that this year, so I'll just have to do the best I can, try to save what I can and see what happens to the rest. I did dig up a couple of things, like my tiny little daturas, because I don't have any more seeds of those. I'm sad that my pigeon peas are going to freeze just as they're starting to set blooms, but I'll replant in March and get some in the summer or fall.

Accuweather just changed the freeze warning for Gainesville to a hard freeze warning; expecting temps below 28 for at least 2 hours.
Hard Freeze Warning for Gainesville

Evidently, we had snow here this morning. Geez.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/weather/florida-shocked-by-wave-of-snow-flurries/2262540

We have hit in the upper and mid 20's here a few times. My night blooming jasmine and the tropical milkweed is still not froze. It got a little bit but normally they would be complete toast by now. Odd.

Bea, I think I got my original white seeds from you years ago. I have the white seeds, I'm trying to save the double purple ones. Those are the white ones that sprawl and have the huge flowers that smell so good, right? Datura inoxia, I thiink they are. So beautiful!

sultry_jasmine, we've hit the 20s too, but not for more than an hour. It has to stay below 28 for 2 or more hours to really do damage. 5 or more hours, and things start dying. It's 34 here right now, and I've done all I can, so I'm going to bed and see what's still standing in the morning. I'm sure my coleus will be gone, but I have cuttings of those.

26 degrees here in Gainesville right now. I see a few wilted leaves on things, but I'm sure it will be worse once the sun hits them.

Good luck all...we missed the freezing mark luckily. It' s 33 degrees as I type.

Woke up and grabbed the indoor module of my in/out thermometer from the lanai. According to it, the lanai got down to 32°F and my tented area got down to 34°F, so apparently while fighting the wind yesterday, I must have reconfigured the covers to allow more warm air out than on previous nights. I have multiple layers above the bananas, so hopefully the frost on the covers never touched the plants themselves. It is still too cold out to remove the covers, but I am dreading what I am going to see when I do.

Darn it, we were supposed to only get down to about 40, so I didn't worry too much (right on the ocean, so freezes are rare) but it must have gotten a lot colder than that during the night because my big ping tung long eggplant is as limp as an old kleenex this morning. :(

The first time I ever saw real snow was in Tallahassee in the early 70s. There was enough that by stopping all the cars and scraping the snow off them we were able to build a small snowman. Very pretty on the camellias, that snow was.

The low was 38 in my North Port yard (close to the house). I moved a few potted plants close to the front door and the only thing I brought indoors was my alocasia that hasn't made it off the lanai thus far, so no ants in it yet. I'm really hoping we don't have a freeze here this winter. But a freeze would give me a good excuse to cut back some plants that have taken over!

It just now gotten up to 33 here in Gainesville. Surprisingly, the potted tomatoes in the courtyard look good, not much worse for the wear. It didn't even burn back the leaves on the amaryllis, either inside the courtyard or out. The big red coleus is limp and sad, but I have plenty of rooted cuttings of that in little cups just waiting for spring. I cut back and covered the pretty yellow coleus. The banana and giant elephant ear leaves are burned, but only on the exposed side. The side next to the house looks fine. Everything but the coleus outside the courtyard looks fine too, except for some burn on the lantana, but that's to be expected. The tropical hibiscus seem to be fine, as do the coleus growing under them. I think it will take more than this to kill them, and I hope we don't get it!

I ate a tomato sandwich made with my Early Girl tomato that I had picked and let ripen inside. It was good, but would have been better if it had ripened on the vine, of course. The second one needs a couple more days to sit in the sunny window, and the ones I picked yesterday are going to be used to make fried green tomatoes. Good thing I have clones of that tomato, just in case it freezes later, which is possible. We have a lot more winter to go here in N. Florida.

It's going back down to 27 again tonight, so they say, so I think I'll cut back the red coleus and cover it with some leaves and a pot to see if I can save it.

@WritersBlock Eggplant loves the heat, so it would be the first to show damage.

Something that just hit me along with the caffeine from my coffee. A big difference between last night and previous covered nights that might play into why it got so low under my tent has to do with the 'day of'. Yesterday I never really had a good chance to pull the covers off and let the sun warm the ground. It was overcast and in the 40's all day until the sun was setting and then it started to clear up. So my tropical bed never got the benefits of the sun. This probably played a lot into slim difference between the outside/inside temps.

Might have. It was also cold for a lot longer last night than it has been lately. The last few cold snaps have only been a couple of hours, so your shelter may only hold heat for a couple of hours or so . Have you tried putting a pot of boiling water inside it before you close it up? Someone said that works well. Or string Christmas lights under the shelter.

I have lights under the tent, wrapped around certain plants, like the bananas. They don't burn hot, but if you feel them, you can feel a little heat. I am hoping that little bit was enough and might be why the area stayed 2 degrees warmer. I also had a 100w lamp in the center of the bed.

I have done the boiling water in the past, but didn't do it last night since the tent has been performing so well until this morning. I have a stack of 5 gallon buckets and if we see another night like last night, I might use them to store boiling water. As it looks right now, after tonight, I should have at least a week's break from having to worry about covering the bed.

One thing my recording thermometer doesn't do that I would love, is track for how long temps remained at certain points. When we move and I start my 'real' garden, I will invest in a system that can track temperatures and allow viewing of the data from my laptop. Such systems appeal to my computer geek side immensely, but just aren't worth the expense for my tiny, rented lot.

Covers are off and a cursory inspection suggests that everything should be fine. The bananas aren't happy about how cold it got, but they don't look like they took damage, but maybe the damage just isn't showing yet. However, not even my Firebush is showing signs of damage, so I am feeling optimistic. It looks like all the wind the past couple of days did a number on the pvc frame though, so I will be resetting all of the pipes today.

I had a closer look, and I don't think the tomatoes will survive another night like last night. Thinking of doing what I did last year; cutting them back and packing Spanish moss around them, then covering the stump with a large pot or bucket. Then on the other hand I do have starts of both of them, so maybe not. I just want to save one Early Girl, because I like having an early tomato. The cuttings I rooted from it are looking a little peaked, so I need to do something with them.

I dare say that while ground temp might have had something to do with it, I definitely had a venting issue yesterday morning. This morning when I woke, we had an outdoor temp of 32F and a tent temp of 41F. Somehow I doubt letting the sun hit the ground for a few hours yesterday made a difference of 7 degrees by this morning. After letting the area soak in some sun yesterday, I paid particular attention to how I layered my coverings to both hold in the heat as well as make them more wind resistant, not that I had to worry about wind last night. I think if this 'winter' has told me anything, it is that next year I need to do more than just frame out the perimeter of the area with PVC, I should add a ceiling. I have looked into options of turning the entire area into a temporary greenhouse for winter, but, really, that is more than I really want to do and it would be harder to store all the parts for the other 10 months of the year when they aren't in use. PVC and tarps are easy to store.

I'm not going to worry about it. If things die, they die. I didn't plant this banana; it was here when I moved in, and honestly, I have no desire to grow bananas, don't even like them. I was only using it for shade for some tropicals I had outside. Now that most of the leaves on that and the giant elephant ear are dead, I may just dig them both up and find some other way to create a little corner of shade for the few shade-loving plants I have. Most of them can be used as house plants, and do well in the front window.

I'm going to have to rethink my entire garden plan, since there is not a lot of room or shade here. I may just switch over to annuals for color and sun-loving cold-hardy plants. I want to grow vegetables and giving up an entire side of the courtyard to create shade for a few ornamentals is just not an intelligent decision. There are plenty of beautiful plants that thrive without shade.

Forget the plants, lol...I'm freezing! Hahaha, seriously hate to say it but I've gotten less fanatical over protecting the plants as I have gotten older. They either make it or they don't. I think we got down to 37 degrees by me so we'll see in a few weeks what the real damage is.

Haha wanna run...I hate the cold too. I've turned into a total wuss (can I say that LOL).

HA! When I moved to FL from SC, one morning it was about 70 degrees, and everyone at work was freezing. I thought they were crazy! Now, this is me.

Even though it was relatively warm last night, I'm seeing much more damage on plants. Cannas are finally going completely dormant and there is damage on the tropical hibiscus bushes. Surprisingly, most of the plants that are more tender are not damaged. Strange how that works, where freeze damage can not show for days and days. I'll have to keep the shade plants inside now, since the elephant ear and banana are going to be leafless soon, and I won't have any shade for them outdoors.

The overly analytical side of me likes to point out to people that it usually isn't the temperatures that bother those of us who have dealt with real cold, it is the temperature swings. Up in Michigan, the winters were always fairly cold, but down here, you can have a week of warm temperatures followed by three or four days of cold. We even get some pretty big temperature swings with the span of a day. The mornings can be comfortable, the mid day is warm and then by the time the sun is going down the cold moves in and drops temps by 30 degrees withing a few hours. This concept first hit me in Kuwait when we would have 110+ days and nights in the 70's. Those 70's nights felt like they were freezing!

Yes, but it's still sad when things hang on for so long, then start dropping leaves. I knew the tropical hibiscus would die back, and the banana, but its still sad to see -- like confirmation that winter really has arrived. I just hope we don't get any REALLY hard freezes this year. I don't mind things dying back a bit, but I don't want to lose them completely. I keep telling myself that things like bananas and tropical hibiscus aren't supposed to grow up here anyway, but my Zone Denial Disorder still wants to save them. strangely enough, most of my amaryllis show no signs of going dormant.

In addition to the cold, I'm moderately surprised to not be seeing mention made of the torrential rains. Holy buckets!

Yeah, sometimes I think those swings can do a number on true tropicals. If you think about it, even if a Tropical plant is hardy to 32F, they are probably from places where temperatures are fairly steady. Constantly yo-yoing temps could probably play heck on those plants. A bit like how my Crape Myrtle STILL has not gone completely dormant. While not a tropical, these unusual fluctuating temps keep it from going to sleep.

My last full day in SW Florida-the day of the big bear-highs were only in the low 60s F. But when the sun peeked out, it felt like heaven to me. Still, I get it. One gets used to a temperature regime awful quickly. I think every species of plant has its own unique sweet spot, not of a single temperature though, but of a range whereby it can best perform, and that also has to do with the swings, as said above. So, you could be in the Azores, hardly a tropical place, and see luxuriant vegetation thriving, just as in western Oregon, etc. But those same conditions, highly conducive to one set of species, would never get warm enough for a bunch of others. And since in Florida, there's so much emphasis on tropical material, it is the cold end of the spectrum which causes grief, if I may point out the obvious!