Temperatures droppewd a little deeper than expected last night. So happy I moved all my mediteranean species under cloth with a anti-frost cable

So I life across the border in the coldest part. Interesting to see how on a short distance (The Netherlands is only about 200km wide) you have huge variation in temperatures!

This morning in my town:


How is your winter coming along?

I'm just outside your map, -6°C last night, - -7°C the coming night. Don't think I'll be sleeping outside...

Where I am in the south of England we are quite mild. Further north they have been having frost and snow, but we have not seen any of that. We have only had a few days frost this winter. The grass has hardly stopped growing and buds are thinking about moving.

Temperatures here dropped to just below freezing, after several days of rain, highs about 50F/10C. This morning water on the trays on the benches was frozen, but the dog's dish on the ground was not frozen, so what caused the freezing was air temperatures.

What part of cold weather kills bonsais? Would sitting them on the large heat sink we call the earth help them? I took the ones that had been leafing out in the garage, so they should be ok.

By comparison, my son in Rochester, NY, had -8F/-22C. That's cold.

Ivan wrote:

What part of cold weather kills bonsais? Would sitting them on the large heat sink we call the earth help them? I took the ones that had been leafing out in the garage, so they should be ok.

i put most of mine on the ground. Only the junipers are still sitting on their shelves.

www.growingbonsai.net/what-kills-bonsai-in-winter/

I'll do that this afternoon. Temperatures are going to be cold for a couple of weeks, it looks like. Cold = below freezing most of the time.

One thing to add to what kills bonsais in the winter is mice, and other pests chewing the bark, particularly for trees moved inside an unheated room. It seems cold to us, but to the mice who manage to get inside it is 20-30 degrees warmer than out there, no wind, and some nice person has given them all this tree bark to eat.

You mentioned gingko seeds outside waiting for spring to sprout. Are they sitting out in the cold, too?

I have 8 gingko seeds sitting outside, from about the same time as you mentioned.

Ivan wrote:

You mentioned gingko seeds outside waiting for spring to sprout. Are they sitting out in the cold, too?
.

Ginko are cold hardy. I sprouted a few dozen of them 2 years ago. Most of the winter they were embedded in ice.

We got to -7 or -8 C sunday/monday. It looks like this part of west-central Europe will stay pretty cold for the next few weeks.
the last two years my crabapple tree was sprouting in February. I hope that doesn't happen this year.

We had rain last night to after midnight, then it stopped and turned cold with frost in the morning, then this afternoon it was wet snow for a while and only about 2C I don't get problems with mice etc., none of my trees go inside anywhere