Perhaps you should ask people why they are worried. There are a lot of experienced people here who have reason to fear these sudden deep cold snaps. It isn't people making it up
ty weather? Not just cold, but always bitter cold and cloudy and crap no one wants falling from the sky.
Two years ago I lost a lot of trees due to a sudden cold snap that happened right at Christmas 2022. We hit 6F here on Christmas Eve - which is unheard of for a part of the country where the average low in January is 31F, and the high many winter days is above 50F. It was my third winter here in NC and I got complacent - partly because I saw on the forecast that it was going to be followed almost immediately by unseasonably warm weather (we hit 61F on December 30). I lost 41 trees. Many were small trees in development, but I lost a number of larger trees that I considered bulletproof - including a large Eastern Winged Elm and a Yaupon Holly that are both native to this area. I did nothing to prepare for the cold other than move my Mediterranean species indoors for a night. I should have done a lot of things - which might in sum total taken a couple of hours at most. So it is "bonsai in haste, repent at leisure" for me - I spent the last two years regretting all the things that I might have done. The last two years I have shown an abundance of caution, and have not lost a tree to the cold
Two years ago I lost a lot of trees due to a sudden cold snap that happened right at Christmas 2022. We hit 6F here on Christmas Eve - which is unheard of. It was my third winter here in NC and I got complacent - partly because I saw on the forecast that it was going to be followed almost immediately by seasonally warm weather (we hit 61F on December 30). I lost 41 trees. Many were small trees in development, but I lost a number of larger trees that I considered bulletproof - including a large Eastern Winged Elm that is native to this area. I did nothing to prepare for the cold other than move my Mediterranean species indoors for a night. I should have done a lot of things - which might in sum total taken a couple of hours at most. So it is "bonsai in haste, repent at leisure" for me - I spent the last two years regretting all the things that I might have done. The last two years I have shown and abundance of caution, and have not lost a tree to the cold
I should probably add that I don't as a rule worry about conifers. I have never (knock on wood) lost a conifer to the cold.
Am in Katy area. Pretty close to I10 and Grand PKWY. I have seen some saying we will get down to 24. Last year I did an experiment when we had the cold snap that got down to around 22. Most trees survived so this year I will only bring in the ones I really don't want to die. Most of mine are in pot and fairly small so they can come in if I still have room.
I have no idea what yall are talking about..we gearing up for Mardi Gras in the boot.
Laissez les bon temps rolle!
Starting to warm up a bit down here as well!I have no idea what yall are talking about..we gearing up for Mardi Gras in the boot.
Laissez les bon temps rolle!
Cheap for a lawyer lol
In my case, if I had to point to the one thing that contributed the most to my mass die-off, it was that I failed to water prior to the cold. I don't as a rule track my watering schedule, but if I had to guess, the trees had gone a week without water prior to the cold front. Then the temps dropped, humidity dropped, and I was distracted with Christmas celebrations and did not notice until several days later. The holly I lost, which is an evergreen, showed all the signs of having simply dried out. It looked fine for a week after the cold, but the foliage slowly browned and the tree never showed signs of recovery. Like I said, I got complacent. In SoCal I had an automatic watering system, so watering was something that I did not typically worry about. At the time this happened, I was living in a rental house while we were constructing our new house - so I did not have the ability to do much of anything to protect the trees from wind or to use large amounts of mulch (since I had my tree benches on what had been a grass lawn - and I knew I would have to reseed before we left). So I don't blame the cold, per se, as much as the conditions that the cold and the holidays, together, created.
I don’t have mulch I just have everything up against the house behind chicken wire on the ground with some natural rodent deterrents.
All in jest my bonsai fren
