Monday, February 1, 2010

Counting my chickens...

The temperature this morning at 6 A.M. was 15º F. The two mornings before had lows of between 10 º and 12 º F. The daytime temperature yesterday just barely got over the freezing point. It’s during periods like this that my concerns for the plants in the cold frames mount: the protected cold frame in particular contains plants with little tolerance for prolonged freezing.
I uncovered the cold frames this morning, and at about noon I propped them open a bit so they would not overheat. Cold as it was on the outside, the plants in the protected frame show no sign of cold damage. This year there are some new Chilean Tropaeolum growing in this frame (they were there last winter, but they did not produce above ground growth – that’s typical for these plants when newly planted). Tropaeolum azureum is the one I’m really fidgeting over: I’ve never seen this plant in bloom, although I’ve known about it for decades. And now there is the possibility that it will be blooming here in a few months! I'm apologizing now for the obnoxious person I'll be for a while if it really happens.

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