Would the sheets work even if they were soaked with rain? That's my big worry, that I'll spend a couple of hours covering everything with sheets, then the rain will start and soak/freeze everything anyway! Argh, if only it were just dry and cold!

The plants you list, as long as they were properly hardened off before they were planted out, should not be affected by a light frost and a little snow. They are, as you say, hardy annuals, not tender ones. You could spread the sheets and support them on something if you’re concerned but I think they’ll be fine.

zenny is in kansas... who knew .. lol ...

bose.. i wish you reminded us where you are ...

for the first time ever.. a local forecaster said.. expect about 4 to 6 inches ... but due to ground warmth.. you will be lucky to see 2 or 3 inches accumulate ... props to him.. to cut the BS sky is falling nonsense ... huzzah ...

are you thinking about the heat in mother earth ... your soil is not going to freeze ... nor is anything near said soil ...

speaking of sky is falling.. back in suburbia.. my garden looked like the annual white sale at goodwill .. then i move to 5 acres.. and i had to get a bit more realistic about it all.. and the plants were on their own .. yeah .. i had some losses .. so what ... but for sure.. i didnt worry about it all night long.. what will be.. will be ..

there is an old saying .. something.. something.. something.. and the wisdom to know what i cant change.. lol ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

and its corollary.. in care of doris day ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc

i think i am dating myself ... i remember mom cleaning the house in the 60s while singing this and songs from sound of music ...

ken

I'm in South Central Indiana. I generally have that hands-off policy once I get plants in the ground too - I'm probably cultivating a half acre and I just don't have the time/energy to stress. I baby them, get them in the ground, and then they're on their own. But I do still worry about these freak freezes. We had one other freeze (dry, no precip), I covered everything, and I still got leaf tip damage (see pic). Not a big deal...they've come back from this. But the rain seems like it will render even the frost cover fabric completely useless. Just frustrating. Last year I didn't plant any annuals out, but we had a freak freeze in late May (weeks after our last frost date) and I lost so many perennials. Well, for the year (they're coming back this year). I also lost our apples, since the blossoms were bitten by the freeze. I was just hoping that this year would be easier!

Hi bosewichte,

" Would the sheets work even if they were soaked with rain? "

Probably not. The added weight of the wet sheets might even do mechanical damage to your plants.

It's already noticeably colder here. I guess that cold front is moving in now.

" ...but we had a freak freeze in late May (weeks after our last frost date) and I lost so many perennials. "

It's almost like our climate is changing.

ZM

Truth! I've noticed a dramatic difference in how warm it gets in very early spring. In the past, a few scattered warmer days but not a week or multiple weeks that prematurely wake everything up.

Hello all,

And there it is. Great big white flakes of snow, coming down gently. Already more than an inch of accumulation. No preliminary rain. It just got cold and big flakes began falling. It remains to be seen how much we get. Essentially no wind, so no drifting. I will enjoy puttering with my zinnia plants in the utility room. Starting now.

ZM

Good luck! I've decided not to try to cover anything. Too much planted and anything I "tent" over a row will become sodden with our 4 hours of rain forecasted. Just have to let it go and start over, I guess! Record lows for our area tonight.

Hello all,

We got over two inches of snow yesterday morning here in rural East Central Kansas, but warm air moved in and it melted almost as rapidly as it fell, and was mostly gone by noon. But we were under a freeze warning last night and will be this coming night, with twenty something last night and a similar freezing temperature in the twenties for tonight.

Spring may have "sprung", but I am going to be very cautious about setting my plants out into the garden. I will watch the forecasts, but my zinnias will probably remain in the basement for the remainder of this month.

ZM

Did your plants make it through all right? We had 2 inches of snow but it only got down to 30 degrees. Very wet snow that weighted everything down, but oddly enough, seems like much less damage than when we deal with a dry frost/freeze. I'll be glad when May is here!

Even my apple tree, which was completely loaded with snow, seems fine! No dropped/drooping blossoms.

Hi bosewichte,

" Did your plants make it through all right? "

Well, I don't really have any outside plants. The lawn and the lawn weeds (dandelions) don't really count. My zinnias are "safely" indoors in the basement. This is just some of them. (You can click on the photo to see it bigger.)

Our utility room doesn't have any outlets from the central heating/cooling system, but the door to that room stays open, so it gets some "help" through a double-wide doorway, and the fluorescent lights and heating pads in the room give some heating. I work down there a lot, and it is a comfortable room. So it is "safe" from freezing weather.

Your photo of snow on the apple tree bloom is suitable for framing. Beautiful.

ZM

Thanks! Your zinnias look nice and healthy!

Hello again, bosewichte,

I am still trying to "figure out" your user name.

" Your zinnias look nice and healthy! "

And some of them are "breeders", different from anything that is commercially available. This one reminded me a little bit of a Lilac.

Breeding zinnias is a hobby of mine. I have been doing it for several years, and I have had several successes at getting new forms of zinnias. The following photo was taken yesterday among my indoor zinnias.

Many of my new zinnia flower forms have tubular petals, which can make each petal look like a flower in its own right. And technically that is correct, because botanically any part of a plant that can produce a seed is defined to be a flower. And each zinnia petal has a seed, potentially, at its base. So these zinnia blooms consist of botanical "petal flowers".

ZM

It means 'scoundrel' in German - the name of a beloved cat! I've never tried breeding zinnias before. I planted about 20 varieties, maybe more, last year, and I'm sure I'm going to get some interesting crosses from those seeds this year! :)

Hello bosewichte,

" It means 'scoundrel' in German - the name of a beloved cat! "

That seems appropriate, if hard to spell. I guess "Kitty" isn't used much nowadays.

" I've never tried breeding zinnias before. I planted about 20 varieties, maybe more, last year, and I'm sure I'm going to get some interesting crosses from those seeds this year! :) "

Be on the look out for anything interesting, zinnia-wise. Actually, it is easy to make your own zinnia cross pollinations. Tweezers or something similar (I prefer small forceps) can be used to "pick" a pollen floret and rub it on the stigmas of a chosen specimen.

You can also use an artists paint brush to transfer pollen.

Cross pollination of zinnias can go rather quickly, and in a few minutes you can make several dozen crosses. I like to "be the bee" because I can recognize an interesting zinnia specimen that bees wouldn't perceive as special.

It can be fun making your own zinnia crosses, and considering how many zinnia varieties are available commercially, the number of different zinnia crosses you could make is astronomical. Plus you never know when an interesting mutation is going to appear.

ZM

I might have to try that this summer! I've got quite a few varieties coming up on heat mats and it would be fun to play the bee! :)

Hi bosewichte,

You could have some fun with your zinnias this year. It was here, on GardenWeb, back in 2007 when I lived in Maine and went by the name of maineman, that I first started my zinnia hobby and the message thread, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias, in the original GardenWeb. That was before GardenWeb was acquired by Houzz. GardenWeb allowed us a good deal of inserting our own HTML inline in our messages, which allowed us significant creativity that we don't have here now. For example, we could choose our font, the font size, and even the font color to customize our messages. GardenWeb did have a maximum length of 100 messages for a message thread length, so the practice of inserting links from thread tail to new thread head allowed ongoing threads to continue.

The "It can be fun" messages continued on for years and many hundreds of messages in GardenWeb. Houzz tried to preserve continued threads like our "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias" but some kind of website storage mishap did do some damage. As a form of "insurance", I started an independent It can be fun to breed your own zinniasmessage thread on the National Gardening Association website ( https://garden.org/ ).

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy your zinnias this year. Zinnias are capable of forms that don't appear in the commercial strains yet, like this tubular petaled example.

They say that you should not save seeds from a commercial F1 hybrid zinnia (because they won't "come true"). It is true that they "won't come true", but they can produce some interesting new forms, and I make crosses between F1 hybrids and different F1 hybrids, willy-nilly. Some of the results are admittedly rather pathetic, but some have possibilities that I like. That zinnia above reminds me of some kind of ocean reef creature.

ZM

Zen Man, I always enjoy seeing your zinnia experiments! And just wanted to add, our cat is named Kitty! LOL Well, actually, when we got her she was named Monica, but my husband is of French Canadian descent and for all living memory every dog in the family has been Pitou (pooch) and every cat has been Kitty. So ours became Kitty. Spoken with a French Canadian accent haha!

Bosewichte, I have to agree with ZM - that photo of the apple blossoms in the snow is absolutely gorgeous. I hope at the very least it is a background on your computer! Glad you didn't have the damage you were worried about!

:)

Dee

Looks like I'm not the only one who misses the old GardenWeb. I'm glad to know that about F1 hybrids. I've got quite a few (and not just zinnias, but also snapdragons, foxgloves, lisianthus, etc.). I had not planned to even try to save seeds...had thought that they were sterile. The zinnia in your photo is absolutely gorgeous! What individual zinnias created that blend? Do you isolate and save seeds from these hybrids too, so that you can have them every year? I will check out that link. I was so frazzled last year, first year with new garden and I hadn't prepared well, overwhelmed with weeds and watering needs, so I was treading water at best...but everything this year much more planned out and should be able to try this. I successfully pollinated my Aerogarden tomatoes...it was fairly easy. Dee...thank you! I was so upset with this late cold snap and snow...we lost our apples last year because of a freak May freeze and I thought that we'd lost them this year, too. But the wet snow and freeze didn't appear to affect the blossoms at all...they're still going strong, so hopefully we'll have apples this year!

Hi Dee,

Our cats on the farm were not French Canadian, but most got named Kitty, as in "here Kitty, here Kitty". One exception was one named "Goldie" for her fur color. Unfortunately our cats tended to be short lived, because quail hunters routinely shot them (on the mistaken presumption that they killed wild quail). But we had no shortage of cats, because "city folk" regularly dumped unwanted cats at our place (and other farms). And the occasional dog. Our farm dogs were longer lived, but we never knew what happened to them. They just occasionally "disappeared". One was killed in a hunting accident. It was an actual accident. Those were different times. People rarely took pets in for medical treatment back then.

ZM

Hi bosewichte,

" The zinnia in your photo is absolutely gorgeous! What individual zinnias created that blend? "

It was the progeny of similar breeder zinnias that had narrow tubular petals. Oddly, tubular petaled zinnias manage to appear in a variety of different flower forms. I originally believed that my original tubular zinnia was a mutation, but I have since come to believe that it was an example of an odd stable strain that lives under notice in fields of mixed color zinnias. That strain has red tubes as petals, and I actually saw one in the background of photo of a posted photo in another garden message. That person was apparently oblivious of that unusual zinnia.

Many years ago a poster in a garden message (on the original Dave's Garden forum) showed an indistinct picture of a "trumpet petaled" zinnia mutation, and I encouraged the poster to save seeds from it and give me some. I never had a response from that and I don't think the poster even knew how to save seeds from a zinnia.

But years later when I saw a "trumpet" petaled specimen in my garden I was super excited and gave it special attention and hand pollinated it and crossed it with many other specimens. And I was prepared for the tubular petals to be a recessive genetic factor, so I saved seeds from many non-tubular hybrids and was rewarded by reappearance of the tubular petals in a variety of colors and forms in subsequent generations. Apparently tubular zinnia petals are governed by a variety of genes, so they can appear in a variety of forms. My original "preferred" form was in "starburst" blooms, resembling fireworks.

But since I have seen many variations of the tubular petals, some straight, and some very curved. And some end in elaborate petal ends. So there are a lot of different genes involved, which add a lot of variety to the zinnia flower form. Which make breeding my zinnias more fun.

ZM

Just to get back to the original issue - "Scoundrel," what happened with your annuals? Did you get freezing rain/ice on your plants? How are they looking now?

I don't know if what I would've suggested - plastic sheeting, supported by old flower pots or buckets or whatever you have on hand - would've worked, but in my experience the worst outcomes are when there is actual ice on the plants. As you and others noted, sheets would just get soaked through. My experience is that it's important not to let the protection (if it's plastic, tarps or whatever) rest on the leaves beneath, if you can prevent it. It's almost as if the contact conducts the cold straight through to the leaves.

Anyway: hope you had at least some survivors.

Joan

Wow, I love it! I'm going to keep an eye out for unusual zinnias this year in the garden. I know that some of my cactus zinnias last year had an almost tubular look! NorthernGardener, it all worked out, thankfully. I covered everything and there was some cold damage to leaves, but everything survived! Even my peonies, which were bent-over frozen (see pic), rallied. What a relief!