Saving plants from the cold - part 2

The other day I spent some time moving various non-hardy potted plants into the garage before the temperature got down to 25ºF in order to save them. The second part of that plant-saving effort was to dig up some in-ground plants and take some cuttings.

I definitely wanted to save this small Colocasia 'Black Magic'. I'm not sure that it's had a chance to form a "bulb" yet, but with the hard freeze approaching I didn't have time to think about it.

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Some seed heads and doing nothing

One thing I've learned about gardening is you have to be flexible. You can and should make plans for what you're going to plant, when and where you're going to plant it, when you're going to do certain tasks -- but you need to be willing and able to change those plans at almost any time. Delay certain activities until the weather is better, or take advantage of an unexpectedly pleasant day to get a little extra work done.

That's sort of what happened to me today. I wasn't planning on doing anything in the yard -- I wasn't even thinking about spending any time out there -- but with near-record high temps (75ºF again) and plenty of sunshine, I thought maybe I should do something. Perhaps I'd pull down some vines, rake some leaves, or something along those lines. That would be kind of fun... but then I decided to be even more flexible and avoid my usual tendency to work in the garden whenever possible. I would spend some time outside but not do any work.

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Cold kills the plants

After our hard freeze Friday night (25ºF), most of the annuals and non-hardy perennials saw their brief lives end. Saturday I took a walk around -- after it warmed up a bit -- and surveyed the damage.

It wasn't pretty. Go to bed with green leaves, wake up to brown.

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Oh dear, slow deer

I've written before about the deer that visit my yard, eating the euonymous bushes that I keep around only for them, pruning my roses for me, hanging out, or just passing through. They come through twice a day at least I think, but I only see them once in a while -- it depends when I'm looking out there. Early morning is a good time for a sighting.

When I see them later in the day (mid-morning, or even early afternoon), that's less common, but when I saw this deer today I knew something was wrong.

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Scrambling because of the cold

Friday evening it was forecast to get down to 25ºF (it did reach that) so before it got dark I had a lot of work to do. Although our normal low for this time of year is about 40ºF, our temperatures are not steady. A dip down to 25 isn't record setting, nor is it common. It does mean that I had to figure out how to protect a lot of plants a few weeks earlier than I should have.

The quick solution was to just put them all into the garage for the night, as it will warm up again in a couple of days.

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Too cold, too early!

This morning when I woke up it was 24º F. Our normal low for this time of year is 40º F. I knew the cold was coming, but it's still a bit of a shock. So is it winter already? It feels and somewhat looks like a winter sunrise...

Nope, there are still some leaves on the trees. Plus the high temp over the next few days will be upper 60's F, with lows ranging from normal (40º F) to 50º F. For those of you who garden in areas of the country with predictable, regular temperatures and weather I envy you.

Nobody except the homeless feels these early below-freezing nights more keenly than gardeners, because it means the instant, overnight death of many plants that we have nurtured for the past half year or so. It also means scrambling to protect plants that we don't want to see die yet.

I'll tell you about my scrambles in tomorrow's post.*** .

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The vines started removing themselves

A few months back I wrote a little bit about using a single pole as a trellis for annual flowering vines. The one disadvantage of this single-pole method is that if the vines get heavy and you get some strong winds, you end up with something slightly different than an upright pole draped with vines.

You end up with a bent pole.

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A few forgotten photos

Every month I end up with several photos that just didn't lend themselves to a whole post. Sometimes I had planned on taking several shots and composing a post, but the subject didn't cooperate. Take for instance this woodchuck:

He was in a perfect location one morning in my neighbor's yard. Facing just the right direction, in exactly the right spot on the hill, with the early morning light hitting him just right. The perfect photo! Except I didn't have the camera in hand, and in the 10 seconds it took for me to go grab it he had decided to move. He turned away from me, moved further down the hill, and was no longer in the good light. I snapped a few quick shots anyway, and this was the only one that was even decent. So my great post about how this woodchuck would be my arch-nemesis in the Spring turned into a single neglected photo in a folder on my drive.

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A taste of the cold

We've had a touch of cold weather recently, with nighttime lows dipping around or just below freezing. Our normal low in St. Louis at this time of year is around 40 F, but our temps are not very steady. The non-hardy plants in my garden got a touch of "frostbite":

Some of the leaves on the tropical plants like this Colocasia (Elephant Ears) have had it. Although it's depressing, it happens every year so I just have to accept it. So I'll confront it head-on and take a look at the damage today.

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