Peach farmers always say that the colder it gets, the better the quality of peaches it will produce that year. As far as Citrus is concerned, I'm a little further north than you, and I've got 18 citrus trees planted, some of them new plantings, and a few cold tender varieties like Lime.

Most of them were covered, but it'll be interesting to see if some of the more cold tender ones have made it. If not, most of my citrus has a one year guarantee anyway, and I could take some of them back for a refund or exchange.

Gardenia will be fine, they grow like mad here and freezes into the 20's don't seem to kill them back any.

So what's the report from Daytona ?

I am in a colder location than you and my trees are not happy .

Just have to wait and see how much long term damaged was caused by night long temps of 20 degrees .

All I can say is WOW!!!!!

I never knew that that area of Florida could get that cold! Ouch! Your poor citrus and whatever else hates the cold.
Please don't tell me it gets that cold around Miami too, because if I ever decide to move to Florida, it isn't going to be where you all live now.......
I hope you all fare well in your plants!
Please report in..ok.
Mike

One thing I've seen in my yard is that if you can drape a massively huge plastic tarp up and over bushes and small trees and extend the tarp out in all directions across the ground it will concentrate the heat coming up from the ground. It may not be enough to keep things above freezing but it does seem to help. It is also a lot easier to just drag and drape than to wrap and manage each and every plant in the flower bed.

I also rig up a temporary hoop house with pvc pipe and plastic sheeting from the home improvement store and set a small kerosene heater in it. Kerosene is an easy fuel to work with, costs about $3.50 per gallon around here (NC). My small heater will run for around 13 hours on one gallon. The trouble is finding a small kerosene heater, everyone sells the large ones which over heat and burn a lot of fuel.

I just saw on the news ,a landscaper down there in Florida that sprayed all his plants with above all things...FOAM!
The kind you put out fire with! All his tress and plants were incased in this stuff. His yard looked like snow.
Then what he does is just water it away in the am.
All his plants did well.
I wish I knew if he was in buisness ,to this for people, because if he was, he would make a killing down there!

The hoop house idea works very well, especially if you don't get a lot of snow. If you don't want to use kerosene, try strings of outdoor Christmas lights, as they're now on clearance. You can use a ThermoCube TC-3 or another device to regulate the temperature. The combination apparently kept my thornless Mexican Lime and a bunch of other stuff alive through a low of 7.2F.

PS--That news story on the foam was reported by Jim Cantore on the Weather Channel, right? Weird . . .

i live in port orange( subburb just south of daytona beach) it got down to 26 thurday morning. 3 days of hard freeze frost. hasnt gotten that cold in years!!! hibicus are dead. i covered my citrus and mango trees. pretty much everything else is gone.

bmeredith, I have 11 hibiscus trees and live in Port Orange too so if you want to try to grow some off my clippings (if that's possible and how it's done) then I'll be cutting/shaping my plants at the end of Feb/beginning or Mar (we're also resodding my entire front lawn at around the same time so if you come on that day, you might get put to work :) ... I'd be glad to help you if I can, just drop me an email).