Cold Snap, What to do?

Here in Northern Virginia we are getting morning temps below freezing, coupled with stiff winds. I brought my newly leafed Japanese Maple and Dawn Redwood indoors and put them under lights. How long can I keep them under lights before they start declining? Did I make the right decision?

You only need to protect them while temps are near/below freezing, so get them back outside as soon as possible. You don't even need to bring them in the house/under lights, just bring them in the garage if it stays above freezing. A night or even a day or two shouldn't be an issue.

coh wrote:You only need to protect them while temps are near/below freezing, so get them back outside as soon as possible. You don't even need to bring them in the house/under lights, just bring them in the garage if it stays above freezing. A night or even a day or two shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks, I don't have a garage or shed, so I guess I'll just bring them in at night then back out. The freezing temps may go into next week, we'll see.

Welcome to spring!

10 F here last night, has been below freezing for most of the past 3 days, fortunately most of my trees are still dormant. Have a couple of maples (kiyohime) that have leafed out, they'll be fine but this weather needs to break...

here too (in SE wisconsin)...

snow saturday and mowing the lawn on sunday

every one is lined up on benches and tables just inside the overhead garage door which luckily faces west...
every day i open it after work and they get a few hours of sun before i shut it for the night...

but they really want to come outside...

Same here in maine. (Big surprise). Its been well above average for weeks. Stuff in the greenhouse is about leafed out, and everything in the yard is are about to pop. We're about 3-4 weeks ahead of schedule it feels like. Some of my cuttings and stuff in the yard i put back kn the ground, and placed Tupperware and clear plastic bins over the trees to help insulate from this recent cold

yep... we had also had an unusually warm late winter (like 70s in feb which is practically unheard of 'round here), so i guess its time to pay the piper for those few days...

but on the upside, the warm late winter allowed me to get alot of other bonsai related chores done that i normally would have been scrambling to get done while trying to get repotting done too...

patiently (?) waiting... long range forecast shows another week of night time lows below freezing...
conveniently every other day...
#worstspringever - at least in my memory...

Yeah, but what's one more week? Man, you have a lot of trees!

Even the tables are on wheels!!
Life is better on urethane!!
Or P-TEX!!
https://youtu.be/bFOrRFsvNbQ    

Gentleman Jack wrote:Yeah, but what's one more week? Man, you have a lot of trees!

the one more week wouldnt have been critical a couplafew weeks ago, but with our really warm late winter things are already leafing out and once that happens they need to start photosynthesizing... and limited light generally leads to long internodes...

for the past couple weeks and the upcoming week (at least) our weather clock has been running backwards  

lance - that looks like one helluva tight park !
i dont think our old ass legs could react quick enough  
i need a nice long mellow snake run, like the old reseda skatercross !

and yeah... almost everything in the clubhouse/studio/garage is on wheels... trees wheeled in & out and when its time to skate, everything gets wheeled outta the way...