Are you in West Virginia? This sounds horrible. I need your weather here for 4 roses coming bare root from Canada and they are not here yet. We are supposed to see 85 F.

Sorry about the evil weather:(

We also have freeze warning this weekend. My Generous Gardener is covered with buds and I am worried. Should I cover her? I am also worried about the four roses I just planted. They just started to have leaves. Should I cover them as well? Thanks!

Ikaye and paint girl, it may not do as much harm as you expect. We had almost a week of nights below freezing and in the 20's last week and surprisingly, only a few of my roses showed any frostbitten leaves, most didn't show any damage at all. After the low in the 20's, I thought I would see a bunch of shriveled up plants, because I didn't cover anything, but was pleasantly surprised. I hope your roses fare as well.

If you cover anything, just be sure not to use plastic. Use sheets or blankets or agricultural fabric instead.

flowersaremusic z5 Eastern WA Thank you for your advice!

Roses can take temps down to around 28 degrees for short periods of time with little or no damage at all. It's when the temps go below freezing for prolonged periods of time that damage can be done. Temps below 28 may cause freeze burn to the leaves but if it's only for a short time it will not kill them.

If you have any prediction of rain or snow be careful about covering them. Wet or snow covered sheets can get very heavy and can break branches. Be especially careful when you remove them as well so you do not do damage to new growth. NEVER use plastic to cover plants! It can actually cause worse freeze burn.

We have frost/freeze warnings here until Wednesday. The potted roses are all out and I just finished pruning all of my roses yesterday. Nothing I can do but hope for the best. But never fear. Even if they lose a little new growth now they will come back and bloom. A little late maybe, but they will bloom!

We are just the same. With this crazy weather some of my roses haven't even leafed out while others are blooming!!! Sat. will be colder that Xmas morning!

Yeah, same here. We're expecting snow too. Blech.

We had blizzard conditions - seriously - in mid-April with temperatures into the teens, winds of 50 mph and massive hail followed by about 4" of snow. All the roses were leafed out and the tulips were blooming, and we were stuck at 17-18 degrees at night with highs in the 30s at best for about 5 days. Nothing was hurt that I can tell except that a few tulip leaves got shredded by the hail. The roses got a few singed leaves here and there but nothing was bothered even by several days in the freezing or below in mid-spring. Roses are tough, so your polar vortex will probably work out fine. You might lose a round of those buds if the rose aborts them but they'll come back again next time.

Cynthia

We had light snow today. I am in zone 6a in NY. We had a few warm days (temp in the 60's-70F) in March, so many people here have already opened their pools a month ago. Crazy weather indeed. Tonight's low is 28F! I had my fur boots and lamb coat on today. Lol

I put a beach umbrella over my Generous Gardener as it's by the deck, and pray a few buds will be saved!

Yesterday we had snow all morning, then rain, hail, sleet, and back to sunshine in the evening. Today was sunny and then it is supposed to rain/snow until next Thursday. The roses look fine after yesterday so I am hoping they stay that way. Just Wyoming spring :) Hope all yours will be okay!!

Here, our "average last frost date" is exactly ONE MONTH ago, April 15th. We had a couple of close calls up to the 20th or so. Now it's supposed to frost and hit record lows tonight and tomorrow night. Frost. In May. Never in my lifetime (that's 62 years, by the way).

Sheesh.

I normally would have had tomatoes and peppers in the ground by now, no later than by April 21st. But after an abnormally warm early Spring, recently we've had cooler than normal temps. The nights, and my clay soil, have just been too cool to plant tomatoes, so thankfully I put it off. But I've had to schlepp all my potted patio plants into the garage, and cover my hostas. LOTS of hostas. Lotsa lotsa hosta.

The roses will be fine. I hope. Of course they will. Yeah, that's it, they'll be just fine...

"LATE frost" has a whole new meaning.

Thank goodness my hubby has been taking my roses in and out of the garage...or they would be growing pale green garage growth...and they wouldn't be able to be out until the end of the month.

Sounds like it's bad for a lot of us!

Adding my two cents of whine...we're supposed to get down to 33 or 34 tonight so that could be off by a few degrees either way. I'll be moving a lot of my small rose plants in pots and clematis in pots, and will put pots over some newly planted annuals. My garden is practically in full bloom but I'm not as worried about it as the plants in pots. I have a lot of little plants grown from seed that I have fussed over all year to date and I planted most of them out so I hope all those won't be toast. The hydrangeas are full of buds...I'd be sorry to lose those. The roses have been blooming two or three weeks already.

Just wanted to say that hearing about all your cold weather in May, while we have 75 degree temps, makes dealing with the invasion of the Murder Hornets not so bad :)))

But seriously....having such cold weather so late in the season must be so frustrating!

This cold weather is not good for the fruit trees. My goodness you have killer hornets!? I got bit by a wasp last weekend. Boy, the first 10 mins was painful.

Ouch, summers. I've read about the killer hornets. Hope they can nip that in the bud, I mean kill 'em off. Regular hornets are bad enough. There's a cicada killing hornet here that is huge but doesn't seem aggressive .

Last night we got down to only 37 degrees so no damage. I guess the weather forecasters cut themselves some slack ...I take their predictions as inexact and they don't know my micro climate. But they'll predict 33 degrees, then the hourly prediction shows it getting down to 36 at the worst, yet they put out a freeze warning. They have all bases covered. Time to put my plants back out in the sun.

As far as the killer hornets go there are two things that should be done real soon, IMHO that is.... lol.

One is to go to Japan and get some of their Queen bees as the bees they raise know how to kill the hornets. The Japanese bees kill the hornets by forming a ball of bees around the hornet then fanning their wings to create heat that kills the hornet.

Another thing is to encase the front of the bee hives with a metal screen that has opening large enough for the bees to go through but not the hornets.

Well, our weather forecasters were on the money... 28F. Ouch. Only one set of leaves on one rose looks touched, but sometimes the damage takes a bit to show. I wouldn't have thought those temps would be too bad for leafed out roses. I often have them blooming in the snow in Dec. However, it did damage the leaves on two large fig trees. The smaller ones had not really leafed out much. : ((

I have flurries yesterday and today. In addition it also rains as well. The weather is chilly outside. I was hoping to continue pruning my roses this weekend. Now I am beginning to think that I shouldn't had last weekend. Back to my blanket and a good book.

I am happy to report all my roses seemed to be fine. A bud on my Generous Gardener was about to open so I wrapped a thin parka around it. I had to cut a whole branch off Eden.

Toolbelt - those sound like great ideas!

Paintgirl - I'm glad that your GG is doing well! :)

We had snow...but my roses were in the garage...so no worries.

JK, that is funny 😂.

Well, we have hot weather and feel like Summer. I rather take heat anytime just it cuts my hours in garden shorter and rather be in AC room instead of hot, muggy and humid with is not that high yet. Thank goodness !!

3 nights so far of freezes then one night, last, when it rained with no frost, but back at it again tonight and Tuesday night. Saturday was bad - 28F - with everything wilted and transparent. Then we had snow flurries! Sunday morning the freeze didn't go away very fast and everything was limp and crusted with hoar frost. Plus with all the daily rain we haven't had hardly any sun all spring and I see very few buds anywhere.