Frank, Thanks for going back and looking, but the year which had the earliest bloom was 2012, not 2006. I probably didn't write that clear enough earlier. Hman, You're right. Jan and Feb had a little higher temps than normal in 2012, but March was quite a bit warmer. From the Website you linked, Jan. 2006 was the warmest Jan (I moved the location to Kansas City-much closer to me) since I've been keeping bloom records. That year, the ave. high temp for Jan. was 52F, while the normal high temp for Jan is 40F. The ave. temp for Jan. 2006 was 43F, while the normal ave. temp for Jan is 31F. As Frank mentioned March 2006 started off warm that year but then dropped pretty quickly. My records show a peach bloom of March 30 for 2006, which is about normal. My take away from all this is that Jan. temps haven't seemed to affect fruit bloom (at least in my area) which was your point. I suppose the real danger of warm Jan. weather may be premature de-hardening of wood before winter is really over. The warm Jan. weather this year has caused maples to start to bud, but maples come out very early anyway. Of course waking up early doesn't seem to hurt them. This post was edited by olpea on Sat, Jan 31, 15 at 8:57

I used to garden in redwood raised bed boxes until the redwoods growing in my yard took them back. Boxes toward the front of the picture, redwoods in the background. This one gives a better sense of how big they are, which I'm told is how far the roots go. I gave up fighting with the roots. The planters are "sub-irrigation" or "self-catering planters", mostly Earthboxes, but at least one of them seems to have more space for water than soil. I "smuggled" some garlic from France last year, and put them in one of these last October, and most of the roots are directly in the water. I don't have any real hydroponic set ups though. PS I actually brought the garlic back peeled so it was legal.it is sending up scales as we speak! Non edible PSS I notice the original roll call thread is open again. Is there a mod who can combine them? Original Northern California Roll Call

Have you ever heard of micro climate? Where is it planted? I've had a lot of success with plants not necessarily rated for my zone 5/6 in Indiana by providing a micro climate for them. Meaning the plant is protected from the elements on 2-3 sides....planted next to the house or other large structure. Top dress the soil with a thick layer of mulch. Do not cut back the plant till early spring. For years I'd dig up Canna bulbs and store in my garage. Then one fall/winter I was sick and didn't dig bulbs. To my surprise they not only survived our harsh winter but grew in the spring bigger and better than ever due to the micro climate provided by the house and other large perennials. Do a search on micro climates.....should make it more clear what I'm saying. Best of luck.

Jennifer, I hope that Finbar came in. Our cats must have felt the weather coming because when we got home late Friday afternoon, they all came right indoors, including the one who usually stays out after dark and makes me worry. Larry, I know people eat the tender vines/shoots of regular English peas and sugar snap type peas, so I don't know why you couldn't do the same with Austrian winter peas. I hope you and Madge can catch up on your rest and stay healthy while you're busy taking care of sick folks. dbarron, Pouring down snow? Like thundersnow? That would be so cool. I love thundersnow. We have two dogs who bark and howl at the thunder, and one who goes into the bathroom and hides from it. Currently our 2 barkers/howlers are howling at the sound of emergency sirens because there is a serious motor vehicle accident near our home (not really close, but close enough that the dogs can hear the sirens from the fire trucks, police cars and ambulance). Tim is gone to that, so they are watching out the window for him to come home and, in the meantime, doing their howling thing. It is impossible to sleep through anything in this house. Once the sirens stop, the two dogs will stop. Or, I can tell them to stop howling and they will stop. For a minute. Then when they think I've gone back to bed or whatever, they start up again. They try to be good but they love to howl. We used to have a dog named Biscuit (RIP, sweet doggie) who howled along with opera music and truly loved to sing along with it, but other than that, he never howled at anything. These two blue heeler mixes we have now believe they were put on earth to howl at everything---sirens, the howling of coyotes, the howling wind, etc. When the fire pagers woke us up around 3:40 a.m., I looked out the window and heavy snow with big, wet fluffy flakes was coming down like crazy. The temperature, which was around 58 degrees right around midnight, now is sitting right there at 32 degrees at our house, but shows 33 degrees at the nearest Mesonet station. The snow covers everything....the ground, the evergreen shrubs and trees, the lawn furniture, and even my greenhouse. I don't know how long it has been falling. What the forecasters had said was that if any snow fell this far south, it likely would be mixed with rain and would not accumulate. Well, there's no rain mixed with this and it is accumulating. Our ground is pretty warm (the mesonet map shows our soil temperature is 47 degrees at a depth of 2 inches) so I would think the snow will melt away pretty quickly---perhaps even before sunrise, so people here might miss seeing it unless they're awake in the middle of the night for some reason. So, I got the longed-for snow. I don't think we'll be outside tomorrow building snowmen or anything but I am enjoying watching those big flakes coming down. It definitely is not Spring yet here, notwithstanding yesterday's official high temperature of 69 degrees. I checked our weather just now, and the NWS extended the Wind Advisory, which had excluded southern OK, to us at 3:13 a.m. I had been amused by the fact that the Texas county that surrounds our part of our county on three sides had a Wind Advisory and yet we did not. Was NWS-Norman thinking the wind would just stop at the Red River? Even before I went to sleep last night, we had wind gusts as high as 40 mph, while the folks near us with a Wind Advisory had wind gusts in the mid 30s. So I suppose after several hours of those higher wind gusts, NWS-Norman finally decided to add us to the Wind Advisory. Better late than never, but who is awake at 3:13 a.m. to notice such things? NWS-Norman always does this, by the way, adding us later on to Wind Advisories long after NWS-Fort Worth put the Texas counties surrounding us under one. This is a persistent thing here, and I don't know why it is that way. When the Fort Worth Stock Show folks last evening cancelled the scheduled Saturday morning Stock Show parade for only the second time in its history (and people on FB instantly were outraged by the annual parade being cancelled), I knew that they were expecting snow or sleet down there because someone mentioned they didn't want the horses to slip and fall on the dangerous, slick roadways. I had explained to Lillie earlier in the day that Friday was the opening day of the stock show and we'd try to take her and her younger sister down there to the stock show one day during its run if we didn't get the traditional Stock Show weather of ice and snow. While they had a gorgeous sunny and warm day for the opening day, it appears they have snow/sleet/ice for the first night of the show. I doubt it will last for the three week duration of the show. Dawn