10 deg outside and supposedly going down to 5 sometime tonight.  Garage is at 36 and should stay over 30.  I have a 60W incandescent bulb on next to my figs and covered them all with a tarp, so I'm not too worried.  What I am worried about is opening the garage door tomorrow morning to get the kids into the car.  I'm not sure my 3 y.o. completely understands the concept of butt-freezing cold.

Keep warm guys. Just be careful with the weather

Heater set to 45. I figure just about 7 more weeks of real winter weather. Fingers crossed.

It's been a steady 10F outside since 2AM.  24F in the shed.

-13 F !  We are lucky to be on high, well draining ground; down in the valleys they got below -20.

hi got 2 new trees in garage holding at 33f hope im good

The wind is the deadly culprit to our figs.  I brought 7 more inside yesterday.  It was 11 degree outside this morning, 15 in my shed, 28 in my GH and 48 in my garage.  Beall in my garage is already leafing out.

I dug up my big Smith tree and a few others back in early November and wrapped their root balls with burlap.  The older the tree the hardier it can withstand cold temperatures.

When I got up this morning the temp in the garage was 24 deg F; it should have come back up after that.  Last winter it got down to 23 deg. a few times and the trees were all fine.  I did move a very young fig indoors to a closet on an exterior wall that stays in the low 50's in this kind of weather.  Good luck to everyone and be aware of fire hazards with space heaters.

My thermometer battery died in the garage, but I'm guessing it's about 40+. Last year was a bit colder and at one point, it was about 30 or so. Not fun. The solar battery for my electric fence (beehives) died this week, too - doubt if from the cold, because it kept up last year. Hopefully, the bears are stay sleepy.

My garage was 19F this morning and it was 7F outside
I warmed it up to around 45F and I'll do that again later tonight
Last year my plants saw 19F a few times with no ill effects however this year I have a several new varieties.
Let's see how they did in the spring
I ordered a thermostat for our Kerosene heater last night

Going to need to improvise something for tonight as well. Got down to 19F in my shed last night. 

My 1 yr old fig babies are stored in a room under my front porch.  All 4 walls are concrete blocks and the roof is a concrete slab poured on a corrugated metal base. The whole thing sticks up a good 3 ft above ground level, the room is a full 8 feet high.   The room is entered thru the adjacent basement.   Not the best insulated, but better than nothing

Prior to last night the outside low was about 11 degrees, and inside the store room it did not get below 34.  Last night I forgot to check temps till about 9PM when it was already below 5 degrees outside.  My store room had dropped to 27 so I fired up the electric heater.  In an hr the temp was back to 33, and it stayed there all night despite the final outside low being 1 degree. 

Gotta get a thermostat for that heater.

Is anyone planning to insulate their fig winter storage area?  Seems like it would make sense to do, less to worry about and easier to keep warm during the cold snaps. 

This is the best heater I know of.  Built in thermostat, medium and high heats, no fire risk greater than anything else you plug in.  

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TGDGLU/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Up until 3-4 am last night i had both set at medium (800 W) on the same, 20 A circuit.  There's a 700W medium that you can use so 2 will work on a 15 A circuit.  They were placed at the center of each outside wall in my 2 car garage.  Last night I ran a 10G extension cord as my temps started dropping past 38.  With both on high and the thermostat cranked up the temps started rising and by mid morning today I cut each back to half power.

I've experienced dieback starting at 17 degrees with my Hardy Chicago, although that may have been a large sudden drop.  It was a long time ago.  With some of the twitchier varieties (Calvert, I'm looking at you) they don't like anything under 40.  I lost a cutting from a bird planted California sapling with an overnight low of 39.  It had huge purple fruit that was thicker than jam on the inside.

Bob - Is this heater less of a fire risk because it's oil filled?

Also... go to the Amazon page and click 92 answered questions.  Read the first one that comes up.  Gotta love Amazon Q&A.  LOL!

"Figs: Provide protection for fig trees in more severe winter areas. Figs initiate fruit late in the summer that over-winter and ripen the next summer, known as the Breba crop. The trees and initiated fruit are hardy to about 10° F during the first part of winter, following a normal hardening off."

http://www.raintreenursery.com/november.html

I'll have to reevaluate "tundra" as descriptive of what you guy's
have going on out there.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/08/america-colder-than-mars-gale-crater

Stay safe,

Paul

So my Thermocube, which is supposed to turn on at 20F, never turned on... The low in my shed was 11.8F, according to my weather station.  Its now up to 20F.  

While cold they were well protected from wind.  I think I may get some die back, but it was just one night.

The point of a second extension cord to a shed with no electrical outlet is to bring power from a different circuit to run the second heater.  It's the same if there's already power in the fig storage area but it would be local power for 1 heater and an extension cord from a different circuit to bring power for the second heater.   They typically have to be 10 or 12 gauge because of the high wattage and long distance.

I could get away with running 2 heaters on 1 circuit at first because both were set to only 800 W.  When that wasn't enough to maintain temps I left 1 on the local circuit and ran an extension cord from a circuit that's not used much to power the other heater.  Then I turned both to 1500 W and that was all I needed.

The oil filled ones are less of a fire hazard than the fan forced ones because there's no red hot metal that can ignite a passing leaf or whatever it falls on.