#frost tolerance

[southcarolinawoman]

[botanytoo]

Using dormant twigs to investigate climate change (Viewpoint)

Using dormant twigs to investigate climate change (Viewpoint)

Climate change has altered the spring phenology of many temperate plants, with important ecological consequences. However, studies of phenological shifts are generally restricted to field observations or remote-sensing methods. Twig experiments—which involve clipping dormant twigs of trees, shrubs and vines and bringing them into laboratory conditions for phenological observations—offer an…

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[gardengirlb]

Gardening Progress

Today I transplanted the last of the plants into the community garden that will be going in this month.  I still don't quite trust the weather, so I'm not putting my cucurbits in until June.  Actually, I may go back later this week and seed some anyway, since I've started transplants of my own to get a head start.  It would be interesting to compare the rate of growth outside where it has been rather warm as opposed to indoors under my inadequate lighting.  I desperately need better conditions for starting my own seeds indoors, but at the moment I'm not getting them, so I guess I'll have to tough that out. The plants I put in today were the 'Green Goliath' Broccoli, the 'Snowball' Cauliflower, and the 'Cour di Bue' Cabbage.  Of those three, the cabbage had the most vigorous seedlings, so I'm hoping at least one of these Brassicas will work out.  I don't seem to have good luck with them in general, though.  It may just be the climate here- we tend to have VERY hot summers and with short spring/fall seasons, it doesn't work out all that well for cool-weather vegetables.  It might also be that I need to just keep experimenting and start even earlier next year.  We'll have to see.  Gardening is a continual learning process for everyone- even people with tons of experience can be taken by surprise. I will admit that the broccoli thing is kind of discouraging, though, because all I hear everywhere is how "easy" it is to grow.  Yet I've never been successful!  I'm not one to give up, however, so I'm trying not to let it get me down. I've had to re-evaluate the planting plans for the house a bit- I am thinking now what I will do is have my brother-in-law weed whack/mow down everything that is next to the house and then lay down soil bags to plant the melons and whatnot in.  Then at the end of the season I can pull out the plants and turn the soil under, and put everything under cardboard to kill down grass/weeds/perennials that might still be surviving.  I'm also not sure I'm going to be able to grow the 'Glass Gems' corn this year- which is REALLY disappointing, but I am hoping the seeds will keep until next year when I can do a bit more work. Overall I am really just trying not to take on too much at once, because I can't do most of this stuff all by myself- I don't have the energy!  So I have to rein it in a bit and take baby steps.

[gardengirlb]

St. Lawrence Nurseries

If you live in Zone 3 like I have for most of my life, then you understand the pain of trying to find fruit trees and shrubs and such that actually are hardy enough to grow in your area.  Most varieties of fruit thrive in Zone 5 or higher, and even the trees sold by traditional garden supply stores that supposedly are OK for the colder areas can have problems- they may be grafted on a NON-cold-hardy rootstock. So what's a north-dweller to do?  Check out St. Lawrence Nurseries!  They're located in Potsdam, NY and have a huge selection of fruits and nuts that are very cold-hardy, being that the nursery itself is located in Zone 3.  I should note that I have a personal connection with this nursery, as I grew up in St. Lawrence County- Bill MacKentley helped to coach the 4-H Horticulture team every year I was on it, and we'd take many trips to his nursery to practice plant ID and learn little tidbits.  I was also friends with his daughter, who is my age.  I really have nothing but great memories of those times, and I know that their family are, well, "Good people" as my in-laws like to say. Now, for this year I missed the ordering deadline, and I'm not sure if we really are ready for any kind of permanent fruit trees or anything here at the 'new' place.  I might put in raspberries or something next year.  But I would absolutely order from here- and if you live anywhere chilly like I do, you should, too. One thing to note- and this is in their catalog- but they do not offer the popular "dwarf" style of apple that is standard these days.  They use standard rootstock- this is for cold hardiness.  You can prune your trees (you'll need to do it fairly aggressively, so if you go that route make sure you research research research) to keep them somewhat in check, but they will get big enough that you'll probably need a ladder to harvest things on the top, and it'll take a bit longer before you get a big amount of fruit.  So keep that in mind.  You should be pruning every year anyway (for ALL fruits, though please research the particular item because it is different for each kind) for maximum fruit production.

[gardengirlb]

Early Planting- with Photos!

This is what the front yard raised bed looked like on Monday at around noon.  Please excuse the horrible state of the lawn- we aren't lawn people, and it's not really growing from winter yet anyway.  The snow from Sunday was mostly melted and though you can't see it from the photo, there was moisture from the melted snow slowly seeping through the row cover, which is specifically meant to allow sunlight and water through it. We had a group meeting on Monday evening at the garden to discuss the early season, and there are a couple people there who've had things planted since the beginning of April, and are starting to see some sprouting.  I am HOPING to get down there sometime this week to start planting, but we'll see how the weather and my back fare. My back has been bothering me for a few weeks now, to varying degrees of severity and as of right now I can still move around and sit and sleep and such, but it's worrying.  I am really hoping it doesn't become an issue this summer, given that I've taken on a much larger load gardening-wise.

[gardengirlb]

First seeds in the ground- And snow

I really need to take photos of all this stuff, and I promise I will- but I did not do it today, so I don't have them for *this* post.  Anyway, when we moved into the new house there were a couple wooden garden beds already built- one that I think is probably about 2'x4' (based on the relative size to the one we've actually measured), but since I'm bad at estimation of size I will update you later on the actual size of it.  Anyway, the other bed turned out to be 3'x6', and is situated under one of the conifers we have in the front yard, but gets a decent amount of sun.  After finally getting some row covers and a couple bags of garden soil to fill the 3x6 bed in, I got some cold tolerant items planted yesterday, on Saturday.  In the 3x6 bed, I did an entire half of it (3'x3') in the Rocky Top Lettuce Mix, with 5 per square foot- arranged as the 5 dots on a die would be.  I was a bit generous with the seeding, so thinning will have to happen, but that's good anyway since you can eat the plants you thin!  If it hadn't been so windy I may have just very thinly scattered the plants around, but it's Great Falls and we're known for our wind.  So much so that when I bought the row covers, the nice woman at Big R was very careful to inform me that the U-stakes would not be enough to keep the row covers anchored and to make sure I used some extra means to keep them secure.  We used some rocks and tucked the edges of the row cover into the bed. In the other 3'x3' area of the bed, we did 3 blocks (1' square) of 'Ching Chang' Bok Choy, 3 blocks of 'Dwarf Blue Curled' Kale, and in the final 1' x 3' strip we did a row of half 'Dwarf Grey Sugar' Snow Peas and 'Golden Sweet' Snow Peas. I'm still pondering what to plant in the other raised bed and the pots that came with the house.  I may have my Pea Pods planting setup completely set up, but here at home I'm having much more indecision about the whole thing.  Also, I'm seeing what sorts of spring plants we have already with the house- already I've been surprised by crocus and what look to be tulips popping up!  I know for sure we have Daylillies as well. I also found out that Big R, where we got our row covers- has seed potatoes (their claim that they carry almost anything really isn't that far off)!  So if the potato experiment works out this year (Planning on using rubbermaid containers and layering to grow them), I will be able to economize a bit next year buying more locally.  Not that the $16 I spent for the seed potatoes + shipping from Fisher's Garden Store is unreasonable, especially considering I did not have to buy like 20+ pounds of seed potatoes- but being able to just pick up a few is much more ideal for our limited space, especially if we end up doing something like this rather than rubbermaid bins.  Though considering this family, the bins may end up being the go-to.  We seem to always have an abundance of them. Tomorrow if the snow happens to melt, we'll be going to the community garden to get some planting done, but I heard we're supposed to get a couple more inches overnight (on top of the 2" we got already), so we'll see.  If not, I'll find other things to occupy myself.  I did not get the very early start that I was hoping for, but this is good enough, so I'm not going to sweat it too much.  And at the very least, the row covers/frost blanket will keep the critters from chewing on my peas.  And I didn't get ANYTHING in the ground till the second week of May last year, so we're not doing too badly.