"Tender" salvias....planning for next season
rouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
7 months ago
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rouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
7 months agoRelated Discussions
What are my plans for next season for my sparser areas?
Comments (8)The weed battle is only part of the problem with spring seeding. And there are products that suppress some seeds but allow desirable grass to grow (I think the product is either siduron or tupersan--one is the product name and the other the chemical). The other problem is that the grass doesn't have enough time to get well established before the heat of summer. Depending on where in MA you are, the summer heat may not be that bad. I seem to recall that some parts of MA stay fairly cool during the summer as a result of ocean breezes. Another option is dormant seeding, where you wait until it is too cold for the seed to germinate (but not when the ground is covered in snow) and put the seed down. The freeze/thaw cycles and the melting snow help with seed to soil contact and the seeds sprout as soon as it's warm enough. The freeze/thaw cycles may also help some seeds to germinate (I think the process is called stratification). Some people dormant seed in November, but others wait until February so they don't get germination followed by a freeze in case of a January thaw. You lose some to birds and insects and some to germination followed by a hard freeze, but the grass that germinates gets somewhat of a headstart on grass that is seeded in a "normal" spring seeding so it has a better chance of making it through the summer....See MoreCovered Up Tender Plants Or Gonna Let Them Die?
Comments (24)Dorothy, That's one reason I don't try really hard with off-season container tomatoes or with tomatoes grown indoors--the decline in the flavor is awful, and after October has ended, they grow and ripen at a snail's pace. Some years I've kept them alive by dragging them into the garage on cold nights, and leaving them in there on cold days. They do flower and set fruit, but the tomatoes that set in November-January took twice as long as usual to ripen and their flavor still was lacking and their size was as much as 1/4 the usual size. I think that if I used a heater to keep the greenhouse at daytime and nighttime temperatures like we typically have in May or early June, the winter tomatoes would taste better and maybe grow faster and size up better, but it isn't worth what it would cost to keep the greenhouse that warm. When I was removing row covers this morning, I noticed that some of the row covers a very thick and heavy layer of frost on them and others had a lighter patchier frost. Regardless, everything that was covered survived unscathed, except for three leaves on the Seminole squash. They were blackened and withered. They had been covered, but I suspect there was a rip in the row cover over them and the frost came in through that tear in the cover. As for the plants I left uncovered, most of them were fine overall but the upper foliage was damaged while the lower foliage and, in the case of the peppers, the fruit beneath the upper foliage, were not damaged. The plant that looks the worst? The big pecan tree. Its upper foliage is definitely frost-bitten or frozen. Everything underneath the upper foliage is fine. The four o'clocks were fine, but most of them get some protection from surrounding trees. All the container plants that we dragged into the garage on Friday are fine, and definitely were happy to be back outside in natural light this morning instead of indoors under fluorescent lighting. The last time I looked, they had raised our forecast low for tonight to 50 so I feel a little bit better about that than the 46 degrees forecast earlier. However, for those of you who are new to the forum and haven't heard me say this 500 times in the last 5 years, in one spring we had a forecast high of 50 and I didn't cover up my plants (it was early May) and the temperature dropped to 32 and almost everything froze back to the ground. So, even at 50 I feel a little nervous about the temperatures, and likely always will, but not nervous enough that I'll cover up everything again tonight. It is sunny, clear and perfectly gorgeous outside right now with a current temperature of 62 degrees. I hope the rest of this month is like today, but not like last night. Larry, I only found lady bugs and green lacewings on the plants underneath the floating row covers as I uncovered them this morning, but I had grasshoppers sitting on top of the row covers. I assume they were trying to find a way to get to the plants or they were just sunning themselves and waiting for me to uncover the plants. I went to the garden shed and got my spray bottle of Take-Down spray and hit each grasshopper with several squirts from that bottle. I doubt those hoppers are still alive or will give me any more trouble. Dawn...See MoreLove Meat Tender
Comments (12)ajsmama, I use just one bag per serving of meat, they are very thin and all air is easily pressed out of them. Then I put several (wrapped) servings In either a Foodsaver bag and heat seal that, Or in a regular ziplock type freezer bag, and freeze that way. Makes it so easy to remove just however many servings you want at a time. When I don't have the veggie bags on hand, I use the cheapest fold over sandwich bags I can find for the separate meat servings. If I were to use the veggie bags only, I would probably use 3 or 4, but I've never been brave enough to try that. I feel quite sure a Food saver would melt them and they'd probably ruin the food saver. Rusty...See Moremoving tender perennials now
Comments (2)I have to move them because I have other things waiting to go into the space. I just worry that they will fail if dug up and then replanted rather than stored dry). They generally overwinter with no trouble at all (nice sandy, free draining, non-freezing soil but less certain if they are rudely dusturbed. I am in Z8/9 eastern uk (dry)....See Morerouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
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