So how did your winter go?

17 years ago

Well, my winter went pretty well considering.

Our oldest rose, Mr Lincoln suffered some damage to the oldest canes, as in they split in half. New growth coming out though.

Darlow's Enigma and Jan's Wedding said, 'Winter? what winter."

We added two roses - Black Magic (HT) and Austrian Copper (Rambler) to the fold. Will they surive? Stay posted.

My Dwarf Pampas grass and SilverStripe starts haven't showed anything - death or life. Perhaps they are smarter than I would have thought.

An interesting item: The Elderberry plants from Oregon leafed out before anything else and they still have their leaves.

Nootka and Little Wild rose from Oregon are showing signs of life. I thought Little Wild Rose was toast.

Orange Currant - looks like one of two survived.

Most of the Cranberry treees did amazingly well. The late snow storm killed lots of blossoms but the trees themselves look really nice.

Osage Orange - Looked like everything died, but there is green underneath the double matted weed barrier.

My Day Lily imports from Kansas are very green - will be nice to see some actual blossoms.

I contributed another 6.7 pounds of cacti to the burn pile (I weighed it out of curiosity). If anyone is interested in cacti - Opuntia primarily, I have plenty.

I am still interested in keepers (other than the ones I have):

http://www.ddgnevada.com/plants/Stuff%20That%20Grows%20in%20Nevada.html

Let's see, what else.......... Oh, four sprinkler heads are fried - replacing those.

All in all, I think everything fared pretty well this year. It looks like not too many cranberries in the future (not shedding a tear here) is a given.

I have at least a dozen cranberry suckers coming up -

http://www.ddgnevada.com/plants/month/0407/0407.html

and if anyone wants one, let me know. They are quite beautiful in the spring.

I think Malus Prairie Fire

may provide some awesome starts after a couple years.

If you are looking for a good looking crab year round,

look at Prairie Fire. I spent a fair amount of time travelling up through Iowa for a year and could not help but admire the the Crabs at the rest stops.

I finally found someone who was familiar with the plantings and at virtually every stop from Kansas City to Des Moines, they all used Prairie Fire.

- A great choice if you are looking for a Crab.

- dRahme

Here is a link that might be useful: Nevada Horticulture

Comments (3)

loganlady
17 years ago
My plants did okay....I only lost about 5 plants. I replaced them.

The mexican palm is now coming back green again so in a month or so it'll look good again. My olive tree is growing baby shoots from it's center so good :):) The desert willow tree is growing now.

My vegetable garden is trying to grow but with this weird weather and really low temps. that came a few days ago...and adding the abnormal gusting winds haven't helped.

My honeysuckle and virginia creeper vines are growing like mad and blooming too. I've had to cut them back already. All of my roses are blooming and look beautiful!!!

We had a half moon shaped raised bed built last October...wondered if the bulbs, roses, chaste tree,etc that I had planted would live through the strange cold winter and they did :):):) It looks beautiful now.

So I guess I can say the winter did not kill off my plants and the yard still looks good!! I hope the vegetable garden takes off like last year. Time will tell.

Beca
mohavemaria
17 years ago
This was a good winter to see what is really hardy here. The australian cassias (nemophylla and phyllodena) were both frozen to the roots. They sure were fun cutting back - not!

I just had to prune out a lot of winter damage on our Cordia parvifolia, little leafed cordia. That bush is the worst to prune because all the branches grow at right angles, what a mess but I adore the plant. Something about the white crepe paper blooms against the smoky grey leaves that come all through the heat of summer. And a plant that is unfazed by reflected heat here in Las Vegas is quite a find.

It's relative Cordia boissieri, Texas olive, took a much bigger hit. It was just going from a bush to a tree and then we had this cold winter. It has been killed back to the main trunk. I think all the side branches are dead. I'm going to give it more time before pruning but it doesn't look good. We saw one in the northwest that looked fine so it is just our nice little cold spot microclimate here.

Webers agave, and octopus agave were total losses in our yard but it was fun going to Turner greenhouses and finding replacements by seeing what was still standing there. Now if only our horse hadn't broken into our yard and tried to take a few bites out of the replacements!

The bouganvillea froze to the ground but that happens every year and it popped right up this spring like it always does. We took down the old trellis though and better get up a new one if we don't want it sprawling all over as it is such a fast grower.

The myoporum, anaother australian plant looked dead after our cold but it is coming back nicely and I can barely tell that it got damaged. We lost a few other australian plants, some of them can be tender and our beautiful tree acacia pendula still has perfectly brown leaves hanging on and has made no move at leafing out and neither has our acacia shafneri. The least thing they could do is let loose of all those awful looking dried up leaves!

One plant that surprised me was our lantanas that always come back but not after this winter. Replaced the ones in the back with more drought tolerant Dalea greggii but the one in the front I love where it is so just got another white one to recreate that look against our grey wall. Love the look of white agaist grey.

Drahme when you say cranberry tree I don't know what you mean, I only know the thanksgiving berries and I know those don't come off a tree. A different world up north.

Beca, those vines do have a way of taking over the yard. At my husbands step mom's house she is in the process of taking out a huge mass of vines that took over the walls and then started on the garden. She is going to need a dumpster for all that vegetation.

Happy gardening, Maria
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drahme
Original Author
16 years ago
Yes, Maria

My mind must have been in the north, as in north east - or Oregon. I meant Crabs. Speaking of which, I am thinking about adding one more - Malus Sargentii - Tina, as a specimen. Don't quite know if I feel like digging another hole though. Anyone growing one of these?

For you folks that like tomatoes...... I am in and out of Kansas quite a bit and there is a terrific gardening talk show on the weekends and three hours long, if you can believe that.

At any rate, one of the regulars on the show always has some pretty superior suggestions for tomatoes and this year it is Road Runner 3. One of the past picks was Verona, and it did very well for us. I don't know if Road Runner is available in NV or not. If not, I think I will pick up one on my next trip through.

Road Runner 3 is supposed to be a dense, compact bush that puts out a ton of fruit and also doubles as a patio plant.

We typically do Early Girl, Better Girl, Better Boy, Supersweet, Ace and Yellow Pear.

What tomatoes work for you? Never too early to start planning.

dRahme

So how did your winter go?

Comments (3)

loganlady

mohavemaria

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drahme
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So how did your winter go?

Comments (3)

loganlady

mohavemaria

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drahmeOriginal Author

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