A follow up on my earlier post about putting nearly all of my tropicals out. First, I don't believe there is really a thing called luck. I think it is one of those words people use to describe an uncertain chain of events or outcome. We all use the word.
After the night that we spent about an hour at 31 F, with no frost, I scrutinized the tropical I put out and can say I was Lucky. Over 200 plants, about 150 0f which are still in 4 inch pots, but including about 40 larger plants in gallon pots or bonsai pots, with absolutely no damage. This is the only time in the past decade I have not done the plant shuffle. This Luck involved the possibility of cold damage only. I did lose at least a dozen one gallon Japanese Maples that were heeled in pine bark mulch. They leafed out, turned black and died. Best case is root rot, worst case is verticillium wilt.
There you go, good luck + bad luck = no luck. We just focus more on the bad luck.
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