I hope your stuff is OK. I was very pleased with what I saw when I removed sheets yesterday. Except for Phil (Philodendron bip.) He may or may not still be alive. All of his leaves are toast. Usually Phil stays green, but it doesn't usually get below about 23 for a few hrs. We had 4 nights in the teens.

I just unplugged the heat for my GH. I said I wasn't going to do that but there were a few big plants that couldn't fit inside, even for my ridiculous cramming standards and the thought of them freezing to death was too much. An enormous Yucca that takes 2 strong people to lift, a Sago I grew from a seed sprouted 10 yrs ago that I wouldn't worry about if established in the ground but still in a pot, a big rubber tree, and an Aloe with blooms in a group hanging pot (frying pan) sharing with Neoregelia, my weird Selenicereus that grew itself in a knot, and biggest Gasteraloe. I hope they look good when I open the door later. DH took the key to work.

I let 'Firesticks' (Euphorbia tiruacalli) go gently into the cold nights. It was fun to observe but increasingly impractical to have around when it got so big and I needed to ask someone else to move it for me. The potential for it to cause a problem for someone other than me was too high. The little tips break and leak sap so easily, just from something like casually brushing by it. I was constantly having to go wash up. Dedicating so much good light to something so mean had to come to an end.

Did anyone else let anything go on purpose?

To add a twist to the Polar freeze, we got a dusting of snow last night here in the Georgia mountains. I don't think it makes any difference in terms of the plants; the damage was already done. The snow is kind of nice to look at, but with the sun shining bright today, it will disappear quickly.

I covered nothing but the outside faucets and the fountains, no plants.
It will be interesting to see what made it and what did not. My large philodendron by the garage and the other outdoor ones in the island beds look the worst, and they would be missed the most if they don't make it. My main concern is the one by the garage not actually planted in the ground but is in a large tall pot, but I know it was also well rooted in the ground after years in the same spot, so I expect it will be fine.
Of course a lot of the daylilies look like mush, many are still surprisingly green, only a few seem to have totally disappeared with no green left showing. It is always so interesting to watch the hard dormants coming up late after thinking they were probably dead.

I haven't checked on the bromeliads in the garage yet. The schflerra looked fine though so I can't imagine the bromeliads were damaged as they were under a frost cloth next to the schflerra.

I think I'm going to put them back out on the back patio tomorrow as the low is supposed to be 29. I'll cover them up in the evening, which I normally do when it gets below freezing, so they should be fine. They've been in the garage since last Thursday (or was it Wednesday... ) so I think they would appreciate some sun tomorrow.

Oh but get this! It's going to be 72 on Sunday. a low of 12 last Saturday morning and a high of 72 this Sunday.

But, as far as sacrifices I let some begonias go. I took my potted Hosta and put it on the back patio in the corner and covered the top with some frost cloth (just small pieces as my big frost cloths went to my fern and a ruellia) and put the pot of begonias on top. I was kind of surprised, but the soil on the top of the hosta pot was frozen when I looked at it this morning.

I put my ruellia cutting and phlox cutting behind the hosta pot (decided against bringing them inside) and it looks like the ruellia was fine, but the phlox froze? I noticed the phlox was dry though and the ruellia was wet so maybe that had something to do with it. But, the phlox looks alive still (it has like two leaves at the top that didn't freeze).

I opened the garage earlier and the opener sounded sluggish. DH tried to use his washer fluid in the car to clean his windshield and nothing came out, so the lines must be frozen.

These are the plants I protected, mentioned above. Sago.


Aloe



rubber tree (Ficus elastica)


Yucca is so big, the pot can be a shelf for sux pot.

With temperatures projected above freezing in the near future, we uncovered the "flash freeze" protection we put in place, and I am pleased with the results. During the freeze, we reached a low of 4 degrees for several hours, and had 80 out of 84 hours below freezing (almost 4 straight days below freezing). For the first time I can remember in my 45+ years of living in Georgia, our ground froze. We could not even get the stakes out of the frozen ground to put away our outdoor inflatable Christmas decorations.

I was particularly worried about my Spider's Web fatsia japonica plants, so we covered them with plastic 30-gallon trash cans. The fatsia japonica next to the house seems to have survived with little damage to the foliage, and the one not next to the house has a bit of darkness on the bottom leaves, but at least the leaves didn't melt.



We covered the ferns with a triple layer of sheets, and discovered no damage when we lifted the sheets.


There were some evergreen plants which I did not expect to have problems, but the leaves have all browned. I have read that the Twist of Lime Abelia can be cut to the ground in the spring if necessary, and the branches will regrow, which is not a bad thing since it is in my space-contrained train garden.


As for these Japanese Pitosporum plants, I will have to wait and see. In theory they should have been good to 0 degrees, but they don't look good now.


All of my rosemary plants died, the first time that has ever happened in my north Georgia garden. No big issue; I will just plant more in the spring.

The leaves have melted on my perennials, but I have high hopes that the daylilies and japanese iris will be back in the spring.

A local master gardener has cautioned that some damage will not be evident until spring, particularly with crepe myrtles, hollies, etc. I have my fingers crossed that the plants will be ok.

It is fascinating to see how different plants handle unusual temps. Like you said, I agree that the length of the cold is the main factor. You could run outside in 10° with a tropical plant for 2 seconds and it would be fine. But 2 hours could ruin all the foliage. 2 days and it will surely be completely dead.

I hope this is the only deep freeze for you all this winter.
I put a pot of extra canna roots in my shed. Now all mush. So that answered my experiment lol.

LoriMT said: With temperatures projected above freezing in the near future, we uncovered the "flash freeze" protection we put in place, and I am pleased with the results. During the freeze, we reached a low of 4 degrees for several hours, and had 80 out of 84 hours below freezing (almost 4 straight days below freezing). For the first time I can remember in my 45+ years of living in Georgia, our ground froze. We could not even get the stakes out of the frozen ground to put away our outdoor inflatable Christmas decorations.

I was particularly worried about my Spider's Web fatsia japonica plants, so we covered them with plastic 30-gallon trash cans. The fatsia japonica next to the house seems to have survived with little damage to the foliage, and the one not next to the house has a bit of darkness on the bottom leaves, but at least the leaves didn't melt.



We covered the ferns with a triple layer of sheets, and discovered no damage when we lifted the sheets.


There were some evergreen plants which I did not expect to have problems, but the leaves have all browned. I have read that the Twist of Lime Abelia can be cut to the ground in the spring if necessary, and the branches will regrow, which is not a bad thing since it is in my space-contrained train garden.


As for these Japanese Pitosporum plants, I will have to wait and see. In theory they should have been good to 0 degrees, but they don't look good now.


All of my rosemary plants died, the first time that has ever happened in my north Georgia garden. No big issue; I will just plant more in the spring.

The leaves have melted on my perennials, but I have high hopes that the daylilies and japanese iris will be back in the spring.

A local master gardener has cautioned that some damage will not be evident until spring, particularly with crepe myrtles, hollies, etc. I have my fingers crossed that the plants will be ok.

I think the Abelia should resprout leaves, so I wouldn't trim it to the ground. Sometimes they don't quite come back after being pruned like that. There was a landscaping company here that trimmed an Abelia back too far and it died. But when I had some, they'd lose leaves sometimes but they'd make more the following year.

Unless of course the branches die, in which case you might have to do some pruning.

I forgot to say that I had bricks holding down my frost sheets and when I went to pick them up, they were frozen to the sheets. I ran out of bricks so I improvised with a couple cans of dog food on one sheet. I wasn't surprised that those were frozen to the sheet though since the bottoms are metal.

But, my 'Society Garlic' died back to the ground. That hasn't happened since I planted it almost four years ago. It had remained deciduous over the last three winters.

My Yuccas froze too. They look unscathed after they thawed out though.


I had been spraying a privet we have with fungicide for the last couple weeks and apparently the leaves that had it the worst got burned by the frost so they might just die anyway.

I'll go out later and take some pictures of my observations plant wise.

I will say though, my dwarf ruellia that I covered has new growth forming at the base. So I guess the frost cloth did something.

Privet:


'Society Garlic':


Dwarf Ruellia:


Ferns:




I covered this one and I don't think it looks too bad. When we had a late freeze back in April this year I had to cut almost all its leaves off (I didn't cover it then). It took from April to about... October maybe? to fill back in.

My 'Society Garlic' has some green appearing already.

It looks like about 3/4th of my 'Society Garlic' died. I thought to myself the day before that deep freeze that I should probably cover it but then I thought for some reason it'll probably be fine. Oh well.

I pulled on some of the dead flower stalks and the bottoms came out with the dead stalks. Boy, I've never smelled rotted garlic but I imagine that's what I was smelling. 🤢

I'm re-doing that section of that garden bed anyway and I was uncertain what I was going to do with it once I got that far. There's a circle in the bed and a ring around the circle. I want to move some of the plants in the circle to the outer ring and put a dwarf crepe myrtle in the circle.

I think I'm going to salvage what survived of the 'Society Garlic' and put it in a pot. That way if we have another deep freeze, I can bring it into the garage. I think it would be a slap in the face (to the plant) to discard it completely given some of it is trying to come back. But, I'll be wearing a mask when I do it. 🤢

I am still waiting to see if some of my plants recover from the Christmas flash freeze. The shrubs that lost all their leaves seem to have new leaf buds, and the stems are still bendy. The one plant that clearly died was the rosemary. I have multiple varieties and they all died. Fortunately, rosemary is cheap to buy and grows quickly.

I've been waiting to clean up the dead stuff in my flower beds because of the insulation factor. Was going to do that this weekend, but it's too rainy today. Maybe get started tomorrow if everything is dry. I'm anxious to see what is still alive as it warms up.

I think I'm going to wait to clean until April. We had a freeze mid April last year which found me trying to cover a lot of folks that jus started sprouting.

I can tell so far everyone else made it, but they can handle colder zones than ours too.

It would be way too cruel & unusual if there is anything more severe than very light frost from now on. Had the exceptionally early hard frost in mid-Oct., then the unprecedented deep freeze just before the holidays. That's a severe enough winter. ...I hope!

That December deep freeze was expensive. $50 extra above our previous highest-ever bill.

but does Mother Nature? I guess I'm just pessimistic when it comes to our weather as I think Georgia might be bipolar some days. As much as I want to clean up, I'm forcing myself to wait.

I don't remember how much higher our bill was. I'm thinking about the same amount as yours though. I remember thinking, wait, that's what we paid last February when it was cold for most of the month!

Well, one plant I forgot about was my potted cucurma. It was in the garage when it got super cold and I didn't consider it. Well, it got cold enough in the garage that the opener was sluggish, so I'm not surprised my curcuma rotted.