46 Pots And Pails

Once again severe cold is forecast for tonight.  These Camelot lilies are spending this cold night under the cover of a plastic pail.  This protection has been necessary all too often lately but so far these plants have escaped frost or freeze injury.  We will see just what tomorrow brings.

This cluster of Cardinal Flower plants have also been protected with a plastic tub.  Their placement on the north side of a stone wall provides some stored warmth from the wall.  This native plant gets more help from us than any other plant.  Nineteen plants have been potted up and are spending yet another cold night in the basement.  Some of those plants are already growing stems while these left outside are just holding on.

There are not enough covers for all of the plants and this Cardinal Flower has been repeatedly exposed to freezing temperatures and frost.  It is only almost totally dead now but tonight will hit it hard again.

Another native plant, Jack In The Pulpit, has no frost tolerance.  Without a protective cover, its growth tips would be black mush by now.  When that happened here before, the plant survived but with almost no above ground growth.  Flowers and seeds need not form every year for the plant to survive but we do want to see flowers as often as is possible so we cover.

Becky secretly took this picture of me sitting on a wall that I built to protect the arbutus transplants from lane traffic.  My back is painful nearly constantly but two simple things really help ease the discomfort.  First, constant good posture is a must.  My head should be back over the shoulders more but I am looking down at the plants.  Walking while maintaining an upright stance also helps greatly.  These are free medications with only positive side effects.  The sweet scent of the arbutus flowers only added to the moment.

There are included here no pictures of our daylilies.  We cannot cover them and they have been hit hard by repeated severe cold.  Some are more hardy than others and should survive with flowers this year.  Others may simply be gone.  If they cannot endure our temperamental weather, they will not be replaced.  We need more plants that can survive here on their own. 

Light Last Frost

We were prepared to deal with three consecutive nights of possible freeze or frost.  All of the plants on the wall were carried into the basement.  Since this is no small effort, they remained there until the danger passed.  Wet, but in subdued light, they came through the scary nights unscathed.  The forecast calls for warm nights in the coming days so we can begin to remove plants from pots and fill the garden.

Pinxter opens its flowers before leaves appear.  An earlier frost took the unopened flowers while the leaves were still tightly closed.  Now the plant is poised for a full season of healthy growth.  Perhaps we will see flowers next year.

Summer sweet sends out its leaves ahead of the flowers.  Small brown twists mark the locations of leaves that were open for the previous frost.  Newly opened tender green leaves were able to survive this one night with a light frost.  In time the plant will fully leaf out and should manage a grand display of sweetly scented flowers.  Here we were lucky.

Becky had resigned herself to the fact that her tree peony would never flower here.  The only cover available for this plant was a large wrap of thin nylon cloth.  With that small amount of protection, all three buds survived the frost.  We will look for flowers this year.

None of the plants in this photo were covered from the frost and all survived.  The poppies are somewhat sensitive to frost.  The light frost caused them no harm.  The lily is a survivor from the days when we expected them to survive with no protection.  Survive it did and perhaps we will be able to identify it by its flower this year.

Our bearded iris had sent up buds just ahead of the frost.  We prepared ourselves for a year with no flowers but the light frost did them no harm.  This unknown variety from Becky's grandmother's garden still flowers and stimulates a pleasant childhood memory.

These lilies in the sod house also look great.  The holes mark the locations of plants that had grown too tall to fit under the tarp.  They were pulled to spend cold nights in the basement.  We will now begin to move the lilies into the garden after they are removed from the pots.

Busy days lie ahead of us as we set out both flower and vegetable plants.  We were lucky to have waited longer than many.  We were lucky that this last frost was light.  Now we can get to some serious gardening.

Frost Questions

This time of year is tough on both the plants and the gardener here in zone 4.  Winter is mostly gone but the battle between warm weather systems from the south and cold northern air continues.  We recently enjoyed a day that saw afternoon temperatures close in on eighty degrees but the overnight low fell to twenty-seven and featured both freeze and frost.  Fortunately, our protections were in place and most of our plants survived.

The pictured circle of lilies illustrates a contradiction.  The plastic pail used to cover these plants leaves the left most plant exposed.  It faced the cold frost unprotected and alone.  It looks no different than the plants that spent the cold night under a bucket.  Last year we lost an entire circle of these lilies when we forgot to cover them on a night that had frost.

We have grown quite fond of this bush called summer sweet.  It freely reproduces by root runners and we have it planted in several locations.  We never cover these bushes as they usually leaf out late enough to avoid killing frosts.  That was not the case this year.  All of the other bushes are covered with tiny brown dead leaves.  Topography saved this plant as a small hill shelters it from the cold that pours down from the ridge.  We will wait to see if the burned plants produce a second set of leaves.

These apple blossoms were also unprotected from the cold.  We have neither smudge pots nor windmills to fight the frost.  Let totally alone these blossoms appear to have escaped injury.  Bees still visit here and the scent that fills the air is sweet beyond description.

We broke out the tarps and the buckets again last night.  The potted plants on the wall were all carried into the basement.  None of these precautions were necessary last night but like the prey we must escape every time.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Weather wise this has been a nearly normal spring.  Seasonally cool temperatures have many of our more tender perennials just now breaking the surface of the soil.  Still, with last night's low forecast to hit 24 F we had to break out protection.  A single large tarp covers thirty something pots of lilies.  Here we get a lot of protection with little effort.  In the background several wire cages containing freshly scooped leaves are intended to insulate newly emerged plants from the cold.  The leaves were surprisingly hard to find.  Strong winds preceded the cold and removed most of the leaves.  Only those held in place by ground briers or brush were free for the picking.

Our welded wire cages are intended to protect plants from the rabbits or the deer.  Here one supports a tarp over the lettuce plants that were set out way to early.  Still, the tarp is quickly and easily placed held by water filled juice bottles.

Despite the forecast, we found the air temperature just above freezing this morning.  These lettuce plants may have looked just as good if we had left them uncovered.

My passion for lilies has handed me more than I can manage.  These orange spotted lilies are out in the garden and were covered with leaves and a bucket last night.  The reddish leaves spring from mature bulbs that will flower this year if they are protected from late frosts.  The green leaves sprout from daughter bulbs that will flower next year.  Several of the mature bulbs could be potted up now so that they could be moved into the basement for protection on cold nights.  Since four pots of these lilies are now in the sod house and more of these lilies grow in two others places in the garden, there is simply no way that I can save them all.

Inclination Impact

Arbutus grows here in two different places.  About fifty yards separates the two plantings but the lay of the land made a twenty-four day difference in the appearance of the first open flowers.  The plant with the earlier flowers grows at the base of a west facing slope.  This time of year it receives direct sunlight all afternoon.  Early abundant warmth initiated the first open flower more than three weeks ago.  Subsequent hard freezes had no impact on the open flowers so there was no apparent down side to the early flowers.  We do not know if its pollinators were active early.

This naturally occurring arbutus plant grows at the base of the same hill but here the slope is to the north.  Its placement in a depression in the ground prevents this plant from receiving any direct sunlight this time of year.  As the sun climbs higher in the sky this plant will receive direct summer sunlight but now it grows in constant shade.  The difference in bloom time will allow us to enjoy the scent of arbutus flowers over a period of seven weeks.

With the lilies I have made a deliberate attempt to delay the start of active growth.  Lacking a convenient    north slope, artificial shade helps keep the plants dormant.  Three rows of potted lilies wintered here and one row is still in the shade.  Sunnier placement of the front row is causing those plants to begin growing earlier than the back row, but they are all way behind the plants in the garden.  Here the goal is less time exposed to late freezes and frosts.

These lilies are growing out in the garden in full sun with a southern exposure.  They have been up for nearly three weeks.  Cold nights have found them under plastic buckets  to avoid death by freezing.  Many of the younger green plants still show frost burned leaf tips.  Their early start may make it impossible to cover them later when they will have grown taller than the covering containers.

To hedge my bets I placed two clumps of these lilies in three gallon plastic pots.  The potted lilies have spent  cold nights safely in the basement.  Our usually reliable frost free date is June first so these potted lilies may have flowers open before they can be safely returned to the garden.

Planting the arbutus in more sun helped to increase the bloom time we enjoy, and planting the lilies in the shade helped to keep them from emerging too soon. A change in inclination has a definite impact. 

Uncage My Lilies!

Since the lilies have opened and there has been no sign of the marauding flock of bud-shredding Baltimore Orioles, we decided to take off the bird netting. Ed took the opportunity to weed this bed and enjoy the fabulous fragrance of these flowers at the same time. What a pleasant way to spend some time in the garden.




Uncaged and weeded, the lilies are ready for their photo op. You will have to imagine their fragrance. Exceptional lily displays have been sparse here this year, a consequence of late frosts. These lilies were protected under heavy 30 gallon plastic garbage cans on the chilly May and June nights. Sited on the North side of a stone wall, early growth was limited and these lilies fit under the cans. Other taller lilies had their flower buds destroyed by contact with the top of the cold cans. Their foliage was protected so the bulbs were nourished this year. Perhaps next year will favor more lily flowers.

Summer seems to be here now with heat and humidity and oodles of rain. In between the thunderstorms we harvest green beans, onions , broccoli , beets and squash. We have had four tomatoes. Three of them were cherry tomatoes, but they were delicious. The first okra flower appeared yesterday. We had strawberries at lunch. An August garden give you an abundance of everything except time.