Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Friday, November 09, 2007

Miscellany and Oddities

I should amend the title of the previous post to "I Was Half-Right". The subfreezing temperatures were enough to kill off the least cold-hardy plants, but the tough ones are left standing. This introduces oddity #1: A 90% frozen Alternanthera with one perfectly fine branch. The only thing I can think of is that the unfrozen branch was protected by some nearby zinnias, which then collapsed in a heap the morning after the freeze? Either that or there is some very strange microclimate stuff going on.

Today's pictures are from central Virginia, where I found the lettuce and spinach green and happy under a double layer of Agribon-19. On the way to the undercover greenery, I spotted oddity #2: one of my supposedly deer repellent plants - a nice little rosemary - was broken and chewed. Just last weekend I was admiring how nicely the 4 rosemarys anchored the corners of the potager. All spring and summer I fretted about how I was going to keep the deer away from the edibles, and all spring and summer they didn't bother much of anything. And now, when the tomatoes and peppers are frozen dead and gone, the critters come back to eat the "critter-proof" plants. I tell you, there's never a dull moment in gardening. Some of bronze fennel had the tops chewed off too. Apparently whoever did this was just tasting because the chewed-off pieces were left on the ground. BTW, something also chewed off the top of an Illicium earlier in the year - another reputed deer-proof plant.

There are foot-(hoof?)-prints all over the newly planted garlic beds too, but I can't see that anything was dug up. The soil is so sandy there that the prints are indistinct.

Maple leaves
from the November album
It's kind of a gray, ugly day today, but we have a bit of fall color in the woods, even though a lot of the leaves just turned brown and dropped during the drought. The black gums and sweet gums were pretty a few weeks ago and now have shed their leaves, but the wild blueberries and the maples are looking spectacular.

We've been busy lately and I've been neglecting my blog reading. I opened Google Reader this morning and found 150+ unread gardening posts. I'm almost hoping for a rainy weekend so I can sit around and drink tea and read blogs....

But then again, I need clear skies to look for Comet Holmes. Have you seen it? I didn't even know about it until this morning when I was blog surfing and found it on a birding blog, of all things. I started at A DC Birding Blog, where I learned that this year may bring large numbers of winter finches to feeders in the US. More on this later. From there, I read his Friday roundup, and went to check out the Harris's Sparrow on Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog. I noticed there a recent post on Comet 17P/Holmes. I think I need to set a timer to limit my internet time.

Anyhow, the reason I was interested in the winter finches was because yesterday I think I saw a small group of pine siskins in the tulip tree in front of the house. I've never seen a pine siskin before, so I'm not 100% sure, but they were streaky all over with wing bars and very pointy beaks. I didn't get a real good look. This site claims that they eat tulip tree seeds, and I think that's what they were doing, so it makes sense.

So in keeping with the season, my gardening activity is moving indoors to books, catalogs and the internet, and my outdoor activities have more to do with the sky than with the earth.

Labels: astronomy, birds, critters, frost, seasons

Thursday, November 08, 2007

I Was Right

We didn't get much frost, but we did have subfreezing temperatures overnight.

Labels: frost

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Central Virginia is not Northern Virginia

And microclimate is everything.

Last week as I was sitting in northern Virginia typing a smug post about escaping the frost, I was blissfully unaware that in central Virginia the pepper plants were frozen under their Agribon-19 cover. Oh well.

This year was to be all about discovery at the central Virginia garden, and I've just discovered that I can't extrapolate the northern Virginia weather to central Virginia. See on this zone map where there's an odd little pool of zone 6b in the midst of zone 7a in central Virginia? That's where my garden is. It's something to do with the topography, I think. There's a low spot in central Virginia where all the cold air drains. Really. I didn't make it up, but right now I can't find a good website to link to that explains it all. And then my garden is located near the bottom of a hill in the midst of that larger low spot, so the microclimate there gets the full effect of the cold air drainage.

Net result: frozen pepper, tomato, and basil plants.

But this wasn't all bad, because over the weekend I pulled out the remaining (frozen) plants without a bit of remorse so I could plant garlic. I put in 4 varieties, purchased online from Gourmet Garlic Gardens: Chesnok Red, Romanian Red, German Stiffneck, and Nootka Rose. Next weekend I'll plant the ones I bought at the Virginia Wine and Garlic Festival, along with some shallots I picked up today at the Korean grocery store.

Yolanda Elizabet mentioned in a comment that she relies on her own instincts to know when there's going to be a frost, and over the years in northern Virginia I've gotten a pretty good feeling for the sort of day that precedes the first frost. I think today was that day. It was cloudy, nearly overcast and blustery. I expect tonight the winds will calm down and the sky will clear and everything will be frozen in the morning. I'll let you know.

Cloudy skies and blustery winds = frost?
From the November photo album

Labels: frost, seasons

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Gardener's F-Words

Frost.
Freeze.
Flurry of frantic activity following frost forecast.

And then nothing much happened.

This all began on Saturday. I started cleaning up the potager because I wanted to use the space to plant garlic. I had to pull out fully functional tomato plants to make room, incurring a great deal of mental anguish in the process. But later in the afternoon when I checked the weather forecast, patchy frost was predicted for Sunday night. OK good, I thought, then it's time for the tomato plants to go anyway. I also picked all the ripe red peppers and a few green ones to put in the freezer.

The next day, Sunday, the weather forecast had changed to widespread frost. Now I had to decide what to do about the pepper plants, and whether I wanted any more green tomatoes. I ended up picking most of the green peppers and tomatoes, and covering a few pepper plants with Agribon. At that point I had to leave the potager and return to northern Virginia, and I always ignore the first frost forecast in northern Virginia.

The next morning, Monday, the weather forecast contained a Freeze Watch. Then, that afternoon a Freeze Warning was issued - the forecast wording mentioned a hard freeze. Well, I thought, maybe they're serious this time. So I brought all the potted plants into the garage and snipped some cuttings from some Cupheas which were planted in the ground.

So, imagine my surprise this morning when not even the basils showed any frost damage. This was in northern Virginia - I won't know how things fared in central Virginia until the weekend.

In the meantime, I have lots of green tomatoes to use up. We're going to end the tomato season the way we started - fried green tomato BLTs! (And green tomato chutney, and green tomato salsa, and ?)

And lastly, a nice f-word: Fritillary.

They were fluttering around as I was pulling out the tomato plants on Saturday. The Verbena bonariensis was still blooming and attracting butterflies, if you can believe that.

Labels: frost, potager, seasons

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