On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:46:00 EST, ~ jan wrote:


Galen, glad to hear that your plants survived the freeze. It is my
understanding the orchards around us use this method in spring and I guess
they leave the water running till the ice melts off. Is that what you did?

We had a small ranch as a kid and I can remember many mornings going down
to an icy pasture from the irrigation, was totally amazing to see.

My taro have been doing great inside. I tented my small pond they're in
with light weight plastic and hung a no-pest-strip. Did in the aphids. I'll
be watching for any new hatchlings in the coming days/weeks, but I'm hoping
the 2 week treatment was long enough. Next year I will do this treatment
while the taro are still sitting on the patio waiting to come in. Currently
I've moved plastic and strip over the cannas in the garage, but plan to put
it over the bog lily I have downstairs also. I haven't really seen bugs on
it, but just in case. It is just about ready to bloom and I don't want to
cover it up at this time. ~ jan

I didn't see any ice, I don't think there was any. It usually freezes
here only briefly here, that is, it usually doesn't dip below freezing
until midnight or so, and gets above freezing within minutes of
sunrise, and I've never seen it below 32 during the day. You can
really see the difference a few days after the freeze. There is no
question the elephant ears got nailed now. But just a few feet away
by the pond I have some black elephant ears (more like deer's ears
now, but maybe they'll get bigger) that made it just fine. I've got
this clump of papyrus that is about four feet tall that fell over the
night of the freeze, I thought it was gone, but it seems that enough
of the plant remained in the zone of protection of the sprinklers that
even it is OK now, it's standing back up! I've got begonias and some
other white flower (if Lowe's has it again I'll try to find the name)
that are blooming like nothing ever happened.