The First Hard Freeze is coming...

12 years ago

We know it's coming. Here in DFW area it's come during the first 10 days of Dec. for a number of years. Funny, I walk through the garden and it looks spectacular! Everything is green, rarely do I water even though we haven't gotten much rain. The Blue Dawn vine took over the passi incense and the zinnias have never looked better. Even the begonias look their best.

Still...the clock is ticking and while the plants may not know it's coming I do. The Big Dig has begun another year. How many lemon lollipops and cuttings of almond verbena and the big brugs can I fit in the greenhouse?

It's sad and still I'm sticking in anemone giants and other little bulbs...moving a "shrubnant" remaining remnant of a camelia or other one-stem wonder into more shade and waiting for the leaves to much everything.

Where are those caladium bulbs anyway? Gotta get them dug and hope to find time to get it all ready to roll when that surprising forecast comes right on time...again.

If you read this far I know you understand

sigh moving to the dark side...

c

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Comments (17)

soxxxx
12 years ago
My little make do green house is full.

I put water teepees on a few small plants.

Still need to put the faucet covers on.

This is a sad time for me. So many plants that gave their best, even through the drought, will soon be no more
melvalena
12 years ago
I understand the feelings. :(

Its a sad day when I take the hummer feeders down and wash them and pack them away. I'm probably the last to pull mine in. That's when it starts for me. I keep them in the same box as the faucet covers. :)

It is coming. I'm still seeing butterflies!
I can remember sometimes it comes over Thanksgiving.

I spent last Saturday getting the garage cleared out and ready to move plants in. Still unsure I can make it all fit!!

I've already pulled the really sensitive stuff inside. We had one freeze up here already.

Looks like my area has at least 10 more good days ahead.

I'm going to miss my little buddies who hung on through the worst of the summer. BUT I have big plans for new ones!
Thankfully we have a very short 'winter season' here in Texas!
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I don't blame you for plowing. We rototilled our garden soil every year for our first 10-12 or so years here in a constant effort to get more organic matter down deeper in the soil. When we first moved here, the dense red clay was so bad that the rototiller just bounced off the surface of the soil, and you could only work a shovel, fork or mattock and inch or two into the ground and that took incredible effort (and the effort resulted in Tim breaking the handle of every tool we bought). Once our garden soil was workable and easily diggable by hand 8-10" down, we stopped rototilling and cultivating the soil mechanically, and now just build it from the top down with mulch, but I don't regret the years we spent improving it. One of the fun things about rototilling every spring is that before our very eyes, bit by bit, the red clay turned brown. At first it was only brown in the upper few inches, but now it is brown as far down as I can dig by hand. Without constantly working in organic matter more deeply with the tiller, I think it would have been impossible to get the high yields we get from our garden, but for the sake of the soil structure and all the life in the soil, I'm glad we got to the point that rototilling or mechanically cultivating no longer is necessary in our front garden. No-till sounds a lot easier than it is, at least initially, but it works well for us now in our raised bed garden. I still use the Mantis cultivator in the newer back garden, which is more than a decade behind the front garden in age, so hasn't been worked nearly as long. I cannot imagine farming here in OK without plowing. I am sure some folks do it, but I wonder how in the world they fight the ever-present Johnson grass. Well, unless they have feral hogs, in which case the hogs will do all their plowing for them.
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PKponder TX Z7B
12 years ago
Yesterday I stripped all the leaves from the plumeria and knocked the dirt left in their roots and tucked them away in the spare room. The bananas and ginger are inside too as well as the tender tropicals that spend the warm days of summer outside. The rest are staged on the driveway, debugged and potted for that last minute dash to bring them all in.

While I do enjoy cooler weather to get outdoor exercise, it really saddens me that dormancy is upon us.
Lin barkingdogwoods
12 years ago
PK, how do you bring your bananas in? Do you keep them potted or bare-root or???

Thanks!
Lin
pjtexgirl
12 years ago
I have to last minute cover a couple things with a plastic pot but other than that I'm good to go.
PKponder TX Z7B
12 years ago
Lin, I pot them but go very sparingly with the water during winter. Mine are still small, the summer was not kind to them.

I have a friend who digs hers up and throws them in the crawl space.
Lin barkingdogwoods
12 years ago
Thanks, PK - I planted one out in the garden in the spring and it's done so well I want to make sure it overwinters, so I may pot it up. I've already potted up the plumeria (just to protect the roots from errant puppies) and the Crinum Menehune; this weekend I think I'll get the aloe and bananas...

Lin
texasflip
12 years ago
Looks like we might see some warmer than normal temperature for a while

Here is a link that might be useful: Pattern change heralds trend to milder weather
wantonamara Z8 CenTex
12 years ago
I was on planning to go swimming at Hamilton pool this weekend...Warm weather!!!!!! Celebrating Travis county buying another 800 acres of land for the park so it wouldn't get developed.

I have my tender Aloes and cactus close to the door that they get dragged in for the Bad freezes. they now have a stone covered (not that it will ever rain again) patio that faces south and gets great winter sun so it heats up great and has its own micro climate. Te stuff that is hardy to mid 20's is still up in dangers way. But I am getting the hundreds of pots on the move. I still have my Huge 6' Epi to hoist on top of a cabinet. I wait till the last on that one and roll it close to the house a couple of times to gamble with the weather. We still have not frozen yet but my neighbors have. They are lower than me. Things seem manageable
carrie751
12 years ago
I hope so, texasflip, as I cannot put things up for the winter until after the 19th..............thanks for making me feel better.
ogrose_tx
12 years ago
please, please, just 3 more weeks...
pjtexgirl
12 years ago
Three more weeks sounds good!
rcnaylor
12 years ago
Location, location, location.

19 degrees two nights ago here in Amarillo.

Texas is funny that way. A few years ago our church sold boxes of citrus fruit. A truck delivered them from the Valley. Brownsville area.

It started snowing while we were unloading. The truck driver was wide-eyed. He'd never seen snow before.
carrie751
12 years ago
It's a looooooooong way from Brownsville to Amarillo, RC........a looooooooog way !!!
texaskelley
12 years ago
It just goes to show what having such a large state can do as far as climate variety...

This is my first winter away from Missouri. There, everyone was pretty much in the same boat all at once as far as weather goes.

Down here we haven't even seen weather in the 30s yet. I have my really tender stuff inside already because that's what I'm used to. I am trying my best to leave the potted things that are hardy down here outside despite my Missouri urge to pull them in. I just need to adjust the way I garden and I'll do okay down here.

I can't believe it has snowed in some parts of the state! I've seen the pictures, but it still seems so strange...

AOK
carrie751
12 years ago
We had more snow than I wanted here in North Texas last winter.........I hope we don't get a repeat !!!
melvalena
12 years ago
The snow didn't bother me so much. It was the ice that did me in. :(

The First Hard Freeze is coming...

Comments (17)

soxxxx

melvalena

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