TommyMacLuckie

No, I haven't. I'm new here. This week.

I can tell you this - I've guinea pigged some potted brugmansia and hibiscus in the winter for freeze/no freeze/windchill location markers under a certain house. It's open in the back to the N and NW winds in the winter and then on the eastern part of the house it's closed off mostly but still open a little bit to the N. There is lattice in some places on the South side in the back and in the front, walls on the N side and lattice in the S side. In one of the SW corners there is a Orinoco growing - and it grows insanely fast. In the previous 3 winters, whatever one is there, none of them have froze. They get quite big and fruit and fall over. They are in such a way that we can put a rope around them to keep them from falling while they hold on to their fruit (it might get 3 hours of sun a day but it's always warmer there than anywhere else at night as far as where a plant is).

5 feet away from outside the roofline of the house, they all froze - bananas, gingers, callas, elephants, etc... So radiant heat being trapped from the ground under some kind of ceiling does make a difference. The hibiscus in the ground that is planted basically on a piling did not freeze at all.

I would imagine, though, that if it pulled something like it did in 1989 (I didn't live in Louisiana then) and got down to 7 degrees for 2 nights in a row or whatever it was (it got down to 11 in New Orleans), I would probably lose everything - as in ALL of my plants except for the Sabal minors.

Temperatures get down, at least as long as I've lived in Mandeville, LA, at worst so far to 26 degrees for a few hours. Generally we get down to 29 or 30. That's a big difference. But for one or two nights between December and February we get down to a crunchy 26. All the bananas out in the open freeze. The dwarf Cavs that are under the big Orinocos or Sabas get a late start on freezing usually - because of the canopy of fronds over them. The second blast get the dwarf Cavs.

Just over half of the dwarfs actually start growing in the spring again and the rest of them just fall over. Pups take over. The ones that start growing grow slower than the pups but eventually they all look the same.

Another factor that people blow out of proportion here is the lake. Lake Pontchartrain is to our South. How this would have an effect on nighttime temperatures in the winter when the wind is out of the N or NW I have yet to understand. It moderates the air for New Orleans on the Southshore, not for anyone on the Northshore. People will say 'Oh my whatever didn't freeze because of how close to the lake we are'. I've seen the same plants not freeze plenty far away from the lake. I've seen bananas right by the lake freeze and some far away from the lake freeze. I tell people "26 degrees is 26 degrees." They will actually argue with me that the lake keeps the temperatures higher! So I'll repeat myself and then point to the burnt plants and say it AGAIN! It's quite visible that it did indeed get down below freezing and even more than below 30. And windchill helps zap the plant as well.

Having bananas and palms under a live oak, like I do - I'm just under a quarter of a mile from the lake, on the south side of the house makes a huge difference. This past winter it was 26 in my back yard (north) and 31 in the my front yard (south). All of my bananas did get zapped, my elephant ears and one palm got zapped.

My White Birds did not nor any of my Majesties. So my proximity to the huge tree plus the house keeping the real cold air away made the difference.

If wind is blowing from one direction and there is water in the opposite direction and it's blowing away from you then that water might as well be a parking lot because it has zero effect on keeping the air warm.

Part of my work is establishing how storm surge can change a garden - or in my case, how it can't. I've designed things to stay in place.So far so good. All of this is done on chance, of course, because get a strong enough hurricane and all bets are off. So far I've had great success - only the mulch disappears. There's a little scouring but the beds stay where they are. I have some of them raised as high as a foot and a half above grade with palms in one and bananas and other plants in another. It's partly for when the surge goes out those plants start to dry out first as well as to see if anything falls over if it takes the entire bed with it or...just falls over itself.

Of course, after the surge is gone it helps to water everything for days on end to get the salt out. But then one time we didn't water to get the salt out, it didn't rain either and...everything was fine. So what do I know!

Nah - eventually some things died. And now I won't plant those in a storm surge zone that stays flooded. My guess for the 3 bananas that died waver on was the salt that did it or...not enough water. Since everything else around those that died are fine, I'm going with the salt.

The funniest thing about that? The two Ensetes and the Musella. All the Musas were and still are fine. The Siams I had gotten right before Gustav came and never got them in the ground. I have a picture somewhere of that potted plant...floating and cruising in the current of the storm surge. I found it but after we got everything cleaned up and ready...Ike hit. The Siam died.

I don't know if anyone here has to contend with storm surge, violent winds and standing water laiden with salt for days followed by endless (it seems) droughts after a hurricane as far as their plants go but I do so it's all become an experiment and it helps to have plenty of cold beer.