Frost Warning

NOAA has warned of frost for tonight all week.  Their sensors for our area are located at the Binghamton airport with our temperatures usually running four degrees colder than forecast.  If that holds, we will see temperatures in the mid twenties tonight.  Cleaning up basil, pepper and tomato plants that been frozen and frosted is unpleasant.  We avoid handling that black slime by removing these plants before the cold hits them.

Our gardens will not be totally wiped out tonight.  Many of our plants will take the freeze without damage.  Fringed polygala is evergreen so it will take tonight's freeze in stride.  The pictured plant is among several transplanted from our woods earlier this year.  Its leaves will survive the winter and supply nourishment early next spring while the plant sends out new leaves.  This plant grows two types of flowers.  Beautiful purple butterfly like flowers float above the ground while the seed producing flower is active nearly underground.  That tiny green dot where the stem enters the ground may prove to be a new plant.  Polygala dies without warning so we are eagerly waiting to see if they will survive being moved and appear here next year.

Herb Robert, the H is silent, came here uninvited in with a potted plant of another variety purchased at Catskill Native Nursery.  Many of the early spring native woodland plants complete their above ground growing cycle before the trees leaf out.  That results in wide patches of barren ground for the remainder of the year.  We are considering allowing Herb Robert to widely spread across ground that will also send up Trillium, Bloodroot and Jack In The Pulpit.  It may be that the special plants can easily manage being inter planted with this lasting spot of green.  It is shallowly rooted and easy to remove.  We will watch and perhaps learn.

The tag identifies this Foamflower as a purchased plant.  It also grows in our back woods with several of our plants growing nearby.  Familiar weeds are also neighbors and that dandelion really needs to go.  One of our transplants has sent out impressively sized runners.  We will see just what spring will bring us with regard to these plants.  We do not expect that tonight's frost will end the growing season for Foamflower.

We moved Summersweet and Cardinal Flower to the western edge of the new shade garden this year.  The new rosettes of Cardinal Flower are evergreen and will continue to grow under the snow.  Each single stalked plant is producing several new plants around the base of the old soon to die stem.  We expect to see the brilliant red Cardinal Flowers growing among the white flowered Summersweet next summer.  If these plants survive next spring's fierce changeable weather, the combination of red and white flowers should be amazing.  It is interesting that the coming death by freezing tonight has us looking at plants that will take it without harm.  In some instances attitude is everything.