Looks like I will lose most if not all of my citrus. My outside thermometer showed 16 degrees for a duration of 12 hours one period and 14 hours at the next night. Total of 60 hours of temps way below freezing. Even my grown trees show severe damage. I had picked most fruit with the exception of a few round naval oranges and various grapefruit and I will pull them today. I banked some of my trees with sand and I turned on the mist when it began to freeze and got a good coat of ice on them but it appears that I did not do any good. I will wait till first flush to prune and see what I have. My place in Pierre Part Louisiana was really hit hard. I lost all 60 trees in the grove it appears. They dont look like there will be much chance of recovery. Looks like I will have a lot of trifoliata root stock when its all said and done. Meyer Lemons are on their own roots and I dont know that the roots did not survive....I have had them killed off about 20 years ago and they came back from the roots..........dont know about this time.......................David

David, I pray the best outcome for you and your trees. In treating trees severely injured by cold, normally three courses are open: (1) Leave them alone; (2) cut them back to the ground: (3) cut them back part way. Everything considered, leaving them alone is the best plan. For some time following frost/freeze injury it is impossible to determine how much pruning should be undertaken. Nothing can save trees or parts that have been frozen. Much expense and labor may be prevented by waiting until the exact extent of the injury can be determined. This cannot be decided until growth starts. Normally new sprouts arise from uninjured branches in spring, but if the injury is severe it may be much later. When shoots have grown far enough to make it reasonably certain that the branches will not die back further, is soon enough to start the pruning, you probably already knew much of this. The very best to you and your trees. - Millet (1,100-)

It looks like my grapefruit and navel orange will defoliate. The Satsumas look fine. The clementine, fairchild mandarin, and page mandarin look mid way between the satsumas and the navel oranges. I banked all the large trees with dirt filled cattle molasses drums with the bottom cut out. In my 31 years here I don't recall 4 nights straight with citrus killing freezing for 15 hours duration each night!. I haven't detected any cracking of bark on any of the trees. It helped that there was a week of cold weather ahead of the freezes. This time I am retired and could devote plenty of time to prepare in an unhurried fashion.

21 here right now. This is 9th or 10th night below freezing with 2-3 more to come, so I have no idea how much damage has been done yet. I am sure it will be a lot.

David
We did not get quite as cold as you did but for just as many hours. The temps here were in the lower twenties. Mr. Bonnie once told me that compost worked well for banking so I hauled in as much of the stuff as I could. It was still hot and smoking, so hopefully I will at least save the graft and trunk.
Let me know if there is anything that I can help you with except a crying towel. I am still using it.
Karl

I uncovered today--all my buckets of water were frozen pretty deep--I picked and juiced the remaining fruit--it had ice crystals inside. I have several gallons of mandarin juice--it's not bad!

I can see that many leaves are burned, I don't know about limb damage--I hope I did not loose any of the grafts on my cocktail trees.

The big surprise was my avocados--I guess the varieties I have grafted are cold tolerant. I may be wrong, but Leaves do not even look damaged.

Good luck 'all. The 2007 freeze we had here is still fresh in my memory and I learned a lot from the folks on this forum to be better prepared next time.

Phillip

David
How did your citrus do? I am pleased that I did not have as much damage as I had thought. One year old pomelo will have to be cut back about a two feet above the graft but most others look pretty good. I am starting to see flowers, first on the oranges then the satsumas and finally some on the myer lemon. Not many leaves on the lemon but it is producing flowers.
I read an article from LSU that states not to prune back the dead branches until June. What do you guys think?
When I pulled away the trunk protection after two months the pomelo had a lower limb with a green leaf. How in the world could this leaf be green while completely covered with hot horse manure compost?
Karl

I am surprised at how well most of my trees did. Minor twig damage on most, but the lemon took a real beating--I lost 2 grafts completely--but for one of those varieties I had 1 backup graft. The lemon tree lost all leaves on the lemon, but several other varieties on the lemon kept all leaves. I cut the tree way back, partly to remove dead limbs, but partly so that I can cover it completley next time.

My Ponkan appears to be taking a year off--no bloom buds visible, but a Ponkan graft on my satsuma is loaded. Daisy produced a heavy crop last yr but still has lots of bloom buds.

I had a lot of damage....especially to lemon and kumquat. Some leaf loss to some satsuma. It appears that my 44 Meyer lemon trees are going to come back but it will take this season and I feel like part of next season...per a reduced harvest. Blood Orange suffered a lot but they are on the rebound....I guess depending on fertilize and weather they will also rebound. My youngest trees...just grafted and in one gallon pots sitting on the ground made out best...all kinds of citurs. They suffered very little leaf loss and branch end death. I was surprised. I am going to wait till the first flush is over to prune. Then I am going to prune off the dead ends and dispose of them in my burning place. I dont use prune sealer on the cut places unless its a very large limb...and It does not appear that I have large limb damage. I did bank some and covered some. Sprayed water on some. I think that the worst possible scenario is that we get another hard winter coming up...I think that the damage would be real serious.......let us hope that we dont get one. I hope all of you made out oK.....I am in the middle of grafting persimmon, paw paw,pear and loquat. Some cleft grafting of citurs. No slipping bark yet on my flying dragon and trifoilata...my big Carizzo root stock in 40 gallon pots is green and slipping...grafting some on them to grow budwood.........Take care all. Thanks for your post. David