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Cottage Gardens

Straw Pole

midnightsmum (Z4, ON)

14 years ago

So, I am having trouble holding myself back. We had no snow here in March; May temps in April. Crocus are well done; Daffs are giving a prolonged show due to the over night temps. Tulips on the SW side are showing well.

Who else feels that they are 1 month ahead of the season?? My asparagus is up 2-3 ". Who else is having trouble holding themselves back?? Am I only the one crazy person?? At work, we sort of talk about it, but no one is ready to commit.

So, who else feels a month ahead of their season, or even somewhat ahead?

Let me know!!!

Nancy.

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Comments (15)

organic_kitten
14 years ago
We went straight from winter to summer with very little spring. Very annoying, but we have had a little bit of seasonal weather.

kay
0
hosenemesis
14 years ago
In SoCal, we have been very fortunate and this Spring has been relatively wet and mild, not hot so far. Nothing has fried and the irises and roses are lasting forever.
Renee
0
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Damping off disease - that's new to me. I'm reading that it can be caused by heat and moisture, which is exactly what they've had, as it was 90+ degrees, rained hard, and the straw held in the moisture. I think all my hot peppers except one have that yellowing on the stem. These peppers germinated in March along with the tomatoes, but they're so small. I think i kept them in the seed starter mix too long. First time getting anything to grow from seed. So much to learn. I'll have to post some pictures of my healthier plants. They don't all look that bad. :)
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Fun to hear about your pepper plant DowBright. Yes, that part of me keeps thinking, since the potatoes wanted to be there and do so well, who am I to argue. That back corner has long been a sanctuary for lost and "discarded by others" things. Ms. Potato fits right in that description, though tossed by me. I'm still undecided. That spot was built specifically to have a place a tomato might do well. I've built about half of a raised bed there, using broken concrete chunks from when I had to replace my front sidewalk. Gradually building up the compost of all the extra leaves, eventually the raised bed should be filled. Hopefully I'll get the other half of the walls done over the next couple years. It's hard work and I'm older, so it doesn't go up in a weekend. But it's sure a prefect use for the materials and the plan is to keep things trimmed nearby , after a major cut back, so the sun can come over the fence and have one spot in my garden with at least the most sunlight. Not that it's the recommended amount of sun, but the best that's going to happen here in the PNW ( average 68 days per year of less than 30% cloud cover and at a bit of an angle). Add to that I'm in the city, close neighbors and fences. ... plus mostly all tall old growth type trees. Yeah, I'm growing in the dark here. Thus my lack of growing food type things. Ask me about woodland plants, I've got the answers if I've not forgotten. But food plants I'm really lacking in experience. So today as I kept trying to decide, I went back to check and see what the temperature of the soil in the raised by concrete bed on a rare warm day. Turns out we now know why this is doing so well. It's at 76 degrees, with 78 being the top recommended. If left to grow, I may have pre-baked potatoes real soon. Opps. But great for a tomato plant here where it's generally cool compared to so much of the country. To my surprise I discovered the compost I swept up and dumped on top of the potato planting last night has magically, in the first 12 hours spawned a beautiful clump of dog vomit slime mold ! Most people discovering such a thing the first time are grossed out. It's an acquired taste. LOL It only happens at this time of year here and is rare enough most have not seen it. It will grow and change daily for a few weeks then be gone till next year. Causes no harm and the cool thing is it has the ability to remove heavy metals. Very cool for such a thing in my mind. That's the news from this potato patch for today ! Here is a link that might be useful: dog vomit slime mold
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Organic Farmer Bob typically when you rebuke someone for not knowing about something, you are best not to reviel that you your self know even less. I can imagine lots of home building systems less efficient than stick building, a well built stick house will provide more living space and use fewer resources than a well built standard A-frame, be easier to sheath and take less to heat in a cold climate (thats right, a tall stack like building has a large stack effect, and an A frame has a huge surface area, an a frame with dormers has an unnecessarily complex roof line which leads to leaks and air infiltration). Not all OSB off gases much, not all stick built houses use OSB, no form of alternative building excludes OSB, from an OSB standpoint it doesn't matter what you do the subfloor is still fair game, and probably the area where any offgassing will have the largest effect in any home. Also, where are the toxins coming from in the stick walls that they are not in the cobb walls? As for structural stability there are countless homes of all types that are good in a quake and countless homes of all types that fall like a house of cards. In most cases the strongest house for the money and effort that doesn't use some cheap but very limited resources is going to be either stick or very similar to stick. There are lots of very old stick houses all over Europe as well just FYI, its a safe bet (although I do not have an example that springs to mind) that stick or stick like (say timber frame with stick walls) hoses that are older than 450 still exist, sadly many have been taken down because of the valuable and reusable materials that go into them, a cob house is not reusable nor is a rammed earth house, they just sit and crumble. Also, since fruithack is probably into fruit trees I doubt he is going to rail against forests, and since I am on record all over gardenweb talking about how great trees and forests are I'm going to say it, occasionally clear cutting is the most environmentally friendly thing to do. When Spruce bark beetles started to hit hard here in Alaska the loggers asked to go in and harvest the infested and dying areas. The envirnomental movement stopped them because they were going to clear cut (because it would take too much gasolean and to many lives to try and selectively harvest with how stron spruce branches are) so the beetle infestation was left to go, and each year we loose thousands and thousands of acres of forest to them. had we acted quickly we would have healthy forests and a relatively small patch with all new growth, but no, clear cutting is wrong, so now we have huge swaths of dead forest with no trees growing, fewer logging jobs, and somewhere in the world another forest or plantation was cut to provide the wood that we let rot in the wild, and then a bunch of bunker oil was burned to move that wood to Alaska. Gasolean is also great stuff, with lots of uses.
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Looks like sun scald. Did you water recently?
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newyorkrita
14 years ago
We had a very warm March also. April is more in line of were it should have been. Still, everything is early this year. I am saying two weeks early going by the fact that the azealeas are starting to bloom now. It is always at the begining of May. Except for this year.
0
fluffyflowers
14 years ago
Yes, not much spring here in Georgia either. One week we had the heater on and the next week we turned on the air conditioning. Seems like straight from winter to summer and the plants seem to be way ahead in flowering this year.
0
blueberryhills
14 years ago
Usually the Azaleas are blooming by Easter around here, but this year they are just now in full bloom. We were cold in March and warmer than normal for April, but it has made for a beautiful Spring. I always get antsy about getting the garden planted, it's sooooo hard to wait.
0
gldno1
14 years ago
I live in the Ozarks so I know better than to plant warm weather things here! We had way too hot and then a cool down to our normal April weather of 45Â° most nights and 70'sÂ°daytime. Our last frost can be as late as May 10th.
0
ginny12
14 years ago
Spring is early here too and very welcome after the serious floods of March here in Massachusetts.

I couldn't figure out the title of this thread--Straw Pole. I thought it was some ethnic custom like a May pole. Finally figured out that I think it is straw poll (not pole), as in an informal, preliminary vote. Hope you don't mind my mentioning it for anyone else who was confused.
0
honnat
14 years ago
YES! No snow here either in March. I usually figure to hold off on planting dahlias until the lilacs bloom (usually mid - late May). They're already blooming!! I've got buds on the iris, I've been watering...I'm just afraid we are going to have April in May since we are clearly having May now.
0
memo3
14 years ago
This is the second year in a row that we've had an early spring. It hasn't been as warm though March and April as it was last year, but last year it then remained June weather throughout the summer. We didn't get a single tomato to ripen last year. The cabbage were exceptionally huge though. My flower garden loved the cooler temps. Things bloomed and grew like they have never done before. So far this month, though things are early the temps have remained in the 60's. Our normal frost free date is May 31st and I have seen it snow on that date. I waited last year but this year I've gone ahead and put my vegetables in a nursery bed and I'm prepared should the weather take a dive back to normal temps for this time of year. The forecast for the remainder of the month says rain everyday with temps in the mid to high 60's. So for this season it looks like April showers will bring May flowers and I'm loving that!

MeMo
0
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
14 years ago
lol. Ginny - it was late, what can I say. Maybe the Straw 'Pole' will be the May pole we can all dance around, when the flowers all start blooming.
MeMo - our summer was like that too. Warm dry April always make me nervous, but this April seems about right for rain, but still warm.
In the meantime, last night was a wake-up call from Mother Nature. the door of the plant room blew open, and I had to put the furnace back on this am. Brrrrrrr. The poor plants that I put out must be shivering, but this seem to have survived!!

Nancy.
0
Thyme2dig NH Zone 5
14 years ago
We're a good couple weeks early here in NH. We only had a dusting of snow in my area this March. The peonies are already up as high as they would be in the first week of May. Crazy stuff has been going on like all of the following blooming together: bloodroot, daffodils, tulips, lenten rose, epimedium and trillium. I never have all of these in bloom at once. I'll take it! What a nice treat to have spring come early!

P.S. I was also thrown of by "straw pole". Thought maybe it was some cool, new garden thingamajig that I'd never heard of before!! LOL!!!
0
plantmaven
14 years ago
LOL!...I'm going, hmmm, wonder what grows on a straw pole.
0
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
14 years ago
We could start something new!!! lol. On my way to work, there is a Straw Deer - have you seen the (rein)deer that they make at Christmas with cedar logs?? I should take a pic...I bet you could train beans/peas/sweet peas/morning glories up it! Hey, this could work - must put camera in work bag - lol.

Nancy.
0
Oakley
14 years ago
This is my second year of my new flowerbed. It's on the north side of the house which was completely shaded during the winter, sometimes a solid sheet of ice on the beds for days at a time. I just knew my plants would die!

In the spring/summer the bed gets full sun. And the perrenials I put in last year are so big I'm stunned! We're having seasonal weather too.

No complaints! Except for the big storms coming tonight and I'm hoping I staked my Cosmos okay.
0
token28001
14 years ago
I went looking back through last year's pictures. It's hard to say that we're ahead of schedule. Last year was my planting year. I put in a lot of perennials and early bloomers. This year, they're finally blooming. Growing from seed meant waiting a year, but things are looking up. The roses are right on schedule. The daffodils seem to be lasting longer considering we had a week of 90+ weather and no rain to speak of for over 2 weeks now. Maybe 3. I lost track. I water a little, but only the new seedlings. Returning plants are being slow about putting out new foliage except for the drought tolerant ones.
0

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