Although my Calamondin endured the first night, my bougainvillea got fried immediately. I will not cover the Calamondins and Kumquats. They have endured 18 deg F before. This report hopes to detail the insanity of my battle with the arctic blast.

My first response was to save some specimens in my garage. Car goes out, citruses, avocadoes and some bananas (behind the curtains) goes in.

Panic harvesting of about a third of my crop. Shown here is one of the 40-lb boxes. I've managed to harvest about 100 lbs given the time constraints.

And some are just ripe. The biggest one is my Melogold, some are Oro Blancos and was surprised they're already sweet. And for all of those that requested seeds from Vainiglia Sanguigno, I've got those but will ship them to their destinations come near spring time when the postal hubs don't freeze anymore.

This is a battle against the arctic blast. We are going to have three nights of between 19 deg F to 25 deg F lows. So this won't be easy. I have to use all resources at my disposal.

first my banana clumps. It is draped with the cheapo breathable polyester called Plant Protection Blanket. My daughter and I sewed these together way back in December. I draped this one last December, it makes a nice 10' x 25' sheet when sewn together.

If you noticed, the soil is bare and dry for the bananas. Avoid keeping the soil wet during the winter for the bananas. Citruses and avocadoes would benefit from water saturation, but not the bananas, as they will be susceptible to rot or wake up prematurely from hibernation only to die in the cold blast. To start with, the water you apply is around 60 to 65 deg F, which would be your year round soil temp average. I used warm water from the kitchen faucet. I have the big 55 gallon wine barrel that was filled with hot water at about 1:00 am. Behind the clump, I have a catalytic propane burner going on there.

If you take a closer look, notice the two large 15 gallon plastic pots, underneath it are my two pups: Raja Puri and Ultradwarf Saba. This kind of protection has served me well in the past.

Now on to the citruses, first I have saturated the ground with warm water from the kitchen faucet. A $2.49 adapter did the job well, connected to my garden hose and I spread the water all over. It's going to cost me about $200 in water and heater bills, but far less than losing $10,000 worth of plants, aside from the plants are really priceless to me. Notice that I also filled any container I can find lying around, with warm water.

Literally, every container that can be filled with warm water gets enlisted for the battle against the cold.

Some containers were filled with hot water if they are directly under the fruits.

And of course the most massive one is the wine barrel. Because it has wood insulation, it releases heat or rather, radiates it very slowly without burning my plants.

I have also enlisted the help of cheapo dollar candles. They can last for several days. This picture was taken after 10 hours of candlelight. Notice that I place aluminum disperser on top to at least distribute and disturb the flow of heated air to prevent cooking my trees. The candles are in the upwind portion of my trees.

And on the top of the canopy, I placed these breathable covers. I really didn't know how I managed to place this plant protection blanket over 3 and a half trees! But I finished placing all of my covers by 2:00 am. Just when it hit around 26 deg F and below. My wife had been yelling at me to stop the madness after midnight when I was still out there on top of the ladder!

And when I ran out of plant protection blanket, I also enlisted the commercial grade weed blocker and covered only the exposed part of the cold sensitive cultivars. Note that some of these are protruding out, tese are my Yuzu and Sudachi on the uncovered portion, they have not yet formed a good canopy cover, so I will have to use the commercial grade weed blocker. It is breathable and durable, and I have it lying around, so I have enlisted it too.

So putting all of my armaments, here's how the 50-n-1 and other citrus trees looked like.

So far, I won the first 2 nights with no single leaf damage. Jan 12, temperature went briefly down to 25.5 deg F. Jan 13, the early am of Scionwood Exchange and Gina's birthday, it went down to 24.0 deg F, almost 6 hrs under 27 deg F. Tonight, it will be lower, down to 20 deg F. I will report the aftermath of the battle. Tonight will be fiercer than the previous one, the coldest or devastating round will be tonight, or early morning 1/14/2007.