Well, I uncovered the plants/trees from the freeze. The two banana plants were fine (more on that in another post) and the two pineapples also looked great.
As for the citrus trees (lemon, orange and lime) it looks like they did fine, well most of them...
This is the Meyer lemon, it's nice and green. FYI, the leaves fell off after the first freeze but again, still green and looking good.
The picture of the orange tree didn't come out (I moved as I clicked it). It's the same though, green and looking good and even still has a couple of leaves.
This is the lime. Looks a little browner. I did scrape the trunk, it's green underneath. The base is also green. Some branches are dry and snapped off but others are still flexible. I guess we'll just wait till Spring and see what happens. But hey, in past seasons, we've had to replace all three trees so if we can get through this Winter and we only have to replace the lime, we're headed in the right direction.
Every year that the trees make it is one year closer to not having to worry as much for these light freezes that we usually get. A really hard freeze, knock on wood, is rare for us but they do happen. These are all safe for most freezes (except a hard) but only when fully grown.
Baby steps!
As long as they are still green they should be good to go. Any branches that are brown and snap off easily, them I would trim; making a nice clean cut.
ReplyDeleteWatering them really, really well before a freeze moves in will also help.
All & All I say that they should leaf out when Spring comes around.
Good, I'll work on that soon and get those trimmed. I feel like we'll have leaves too.
DeleteI am so glad that your orange and lemon trees made it through the freeze. I think your lime tree will also make it since it still has green, live areas.
ReplyDeleteMy nurseryman has always said that the more tart the fruit, the more vulnerable the tree is to freezing temperatures. That has seemed to be the case in my little orchard – my lemons and limes are the most freeze sensitive.
My lemon tree was way too big to cover and that bad freeze in the teens several years ago killed about 90% of it. Fortunately, there was enough left to try to save the tree. I pruned it back to the live, green areas and this year it is about 6 feet high and produced about 2 dozen lemons.
I have to cover my key limes with multiple layers of covering because one is not enough for the limes. I found this out the hard way.
Wow, I'd love it if we had a 6 foot high tree with two dozen lemons, ha. That's a good sign though that it came back. We just need to get them grown enough to be able to withstand a little more and little more. Until we can get there and can do all those layers if we need to, ha. I hope the worst of this winter is over for this year.
DeleteI hope everything ends up coming through because you make the effort to do things right.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Aww, thanks for that.
DeleteMy son in law has groves and told me not to cut anything back until spring. I always go by what he tells me for my trees since he has thousands of them to care for.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info from your son in law. Good idea, no cutting until Spring. Thanks!!!
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