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It can take eons for rain or groundwater to dissolve limestone, especially when it forms the underlying bedrock of an area. Just to clarify, alkaline soil conditions are not at all uncommon.
btw, the weathering of limestone is not at all the same as dissolving limestone. Weathering of any underlying rock/mineral material is the essence of what forms a soil's pH.
Big long list of testers here. There's more than just pH that should be tested for. Test, don't guess. https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/hyg-1132
Missed that. Yes, a cone.
tj
It’s awfully young, only around 6 feet tall.
I live in NE and have beautiful lilacs in my yard. We are soon moving to FL & so sad that I can't grow Lilacs there.
Old thread, but I’d try Ceonothus otherwise known as California Lilacs. They aren’t real lilacs but are still shrubs that bloom at the same time with similar looking fragrant flowers
I have put a patio umbrella up to shade the direct sun for a few days.
It is fine now, it was just a little sad from being transplanted😅. Just a dramatic plant that just needed some love and water.
Another thing that I would try to find are the East Asian Douglas-fir species. Most of them grow in hot areas and are more warm climate conifers
Also, the only western fir I would even try to attempt is Abies concolor as it does quite well in the upper south and Midwest. They are adapted to heat, but more so desert heat. But it can handle eastern US humidity just fine
Yep, but on my Syngenta map, I see ONE marker for the city entered. Not various sites in that city. The pop box on the green marker pops out a frame with the city name, and current conditions there. But this may be different in different places. I assume that's where they're getting their climate info.
That's true that this is a handy map that serves well for guidance. But really, with regard to soil temperatures, you're not going to measure something a lot more precisely representative of growing conditions. The temperature you read is going to depend on the soil structure exactly where you plunked your probe in. If the soil is more permeable where you stick the probe in, the temperature you measure will be closer to the air temperature. If you penetrate a clod of compost when you stick the probe in, the insulation will be better and the temperature will be further from the air temperature. So I strongly suspect that you'll get different readings in different places. With regard to gardening, there is nothing important about exact soil temperatures. If your probe measures 32.1F, I wouldn't take that as a reassuring temperature for germination of summer veggies. But if people like to run outside every day and measure temperature in some hole, that's up to them.
I have a long-arm soil thermometer that I use for my compost piles, and it's clear that I get different soil temps in different places in my growing beds, though maybe all within about 5F. When I lived in the PNW, I knew commercial growers who just used a finger test! But my finger isn't that well calibrated.
Yes, I did notice that only one map marker shows at a time on that map. It would be nice if more than one could be up at the same time, but it is indeed only one at a time. The marker does seem to indicate the location of a town rather than a data collection point.
Must have been a bad winter for heather! I lost all of mine as well in WI. The difference in weather for mine was that in central WI we were having a very mild winter, no snow and then we got hit with a couple weeks of an arctic blast. Mine were all covered with pine boughs. The lack of snow did it (mine were 6 years old). I had decided to give up on heather, but forgot I had already ordered some to expand my heath garden. My new ones look so good - (we're having a great summer). I'm tempted to dig them up and bring them inside this fall. Has anyone done this?
I know this is super old, but if you are trying callunas in the east, im sorry to say that they hate the heat or anything about the east. i bought one in october last year and it just straight up died just then.
It is against a rock on the south side of the house
Also, I have no problem protecting it with frost cloth if the temp gets below -5 to -10
Reasoning is good, trying out is better :-)
Bio sciences aren't exact sciences, I have been told.
I didn't pay attention to the whole video but it talks about grafting exotic scions to balsam fir root stock. You might find this interesting:
Those seeds are probably just Lagerstroemia indica. Total waste of money and time.
Lagerstroemia that are more hardier are most likely hybrids with Lagerstroemia fauriei.
Regardless of hardiness: many Lagerstroemia cultivars are prone to late spring frost so if you live in a region with late spring frosts protection of the plants is necessary.
Here, Lagerstroemias would leaf out extremely late anyway as Lagerstroemia need lots of heat to start budding and leafing, which we don’t really get until maybe mid may. By then, frost chances have already passed