We covered our 5 year old poinsettia with a frost bag. Still got some damage, maybe a 1/3 of it. Needed a trim anyway which we will do in a few weeks.

Hawaiian Ti by driveway will also need to be trimmed (wasn’t covered) but the Ti next to the house had no damage at all. It was sheltered by 2 palm trees & was not covered. So, we experienced a mix.

Prune back roses on Valentines Day or near that date! Cut way back and remove all leaves as shown in image.

Trim back everything else after March 15th, the last day of potential frost.

Sorry to say but you cut it back too soon. “Dead” flowers and leaves would have protected any new growth from another freeze. Pruning should be delayed until mid march, when the historical date of possible cold weather passes.

That link was so helpful. Thank you!

If you happen to come back to this thread, I would love to see your frost blankets/PVC contraption.

You shouldn’t have done that. Many will come back once the weather warms up. You can always cut back in the spring once you see aw
Hat really dies off

Pruning after a freeze
 

I know it looks terrible but try to
delay pruning until after the last possible freeze. In Central Florida that is considered to be St Patty’s day. If you trim now, that encourages the plant to grow & new growth will be harmed if another cold snap occurs.

Hahaha!!!
 

Priceless!!! 😂😂😂

How are the plants doing??
Well, some came through alright.
Some really took a bad hit, but should be o.k.
Some are struggling.
A few are on life support and may not make it.
Only time will tell.

😳

I guess that the lawn people will have to stop cutting lawns for a while. Good, that will make the neighborhood less noisy!

Agreed. I’m not cutting back until March 10-15. We’ll see.

Our grass still has some green to it but not a lot. Most of the plants are dead, but most of them are perennials and will come right back. I already see some fresh shoots on the oregano. The lemon thyme did pretty well. The hostas look like a slimy limp mess, but there are fresh new ones growing in the middle of them. Basil's dead, but I'm surprised it held on as long as it did since I treat all my plants like perennials and basil clearly is not. I'll buy new ones, not a big deal. The impatiens reseed, so I just yanked all the dead ones out and the new ones will come in a couple of months. Hibiscus is borked - I'll trim that back in a couple of weeks and see if there's any life left in it. The "random orange flowers" are re-seeders, I yanked those out last month when last year's batch finally died. Some kind of thing I stuck in a nifty looking planter is pushing back up, we'll see how that does.

Ginger plants - was gone before the freeze, hoping the roots didn't die and they regrow again this year like they did last year. Their flowers are gorgeous. Some weird succulent grassy looking clump with tall yellow flowers that poke out of it did fine, no damage at all, still green. The ground-cover pink flowery clump got freezerburned but is still alive.

Just plant what can handle the wild shift in temperatures.

I am surprised that all of the small flowers that The Villages plants in the roundabouts and at the intersections survived. They seem quite fragile and they look like they should have died with the freeze but they are still blooming and appear to be going strong.

Follow the lead of TV and plant what they plant, they know what they are doing :icon_wink: