They are calling for a low of 28 degrees tonight. Freeze warning in effect.
Well, the navel orange tree had the most flower buds on it, so we decided to cover that one out of all the fruit trees. Unfortunately the rest have to fend for themselves over night. Even Connie's pumelo tree, that she dearly loves, that has some new flower buds just forming. It is tucked between two buildings, so I hope it will do OK. We really don't have large enough tarps for any of the other fruit trees anyway. We would have to build cages out of bamboo around them to keep the tarps from laying directly against the leaves, as that causes nearly as much damage as not covering them at all. At least to the leaves touching the tarp surface. Plus putting on a tarp without a cage winds up causing it's own damage by knocking off blooms during the putting on and taking off action. So you really don't gain much if you don't do it right.
Covering the navel was a real circus. The tree is good sized, many 8 ft. tall. We only had one really big silver colored tarp that has been in the shed for years, but it was only long and wide enough to cover the tree on three sides. We put some bamboo poles in the ground to drape the tarp over so it wouldn't lay right on the leaves and buds. We then had to drape a smaller blue tarp over the open side and duct taped it to the silver tarp. Then since it might be windy again tonight, we had to use tent stakes to stake the tarps to the ground to keep them from blowing off of allowing cold winds underneath them. I do hope that tree appreciates the work we did to protect it. It gave us about 2 dozen fruits this past year and they were EXCELLENT, so well worth the effort, to us, to try to protect it.
The pear trees, peach trees, and asian pears are all putting out flower buds, as are Connie's blueberry bushes. Just hoping for the best for them all.
And, of course, we covered Connie's pineapple plants too. One of the plots got hit hard by that 21 degree night we had at the end of January. The other one seemed to do fine, though.
Honestly, I am really hoping that the weather forecast is just WAY off. It's not like that has never happened before. A good 10 degrees warmer than forecast would be just fine with me.