Weather Watching #4 Winter 2013/14

cat--
That link is not opening for me.....G.

weird, it works for me

hi, Gita. If you click on the Mid-Atlantic Gardening Forum link above and look through the threads, you should be able to find it.

Except for any man made snow piles everything has melted. So much for a white Christmas, more like a wet Christmas.

Very wet here! Wet and mild.

But not mild for long! Our 10-day forecast predicts a low of SEVEN degrees for Monday night! I'm going to have to figure out what marginally hardy plants I love so that I can protect them. I can only think of Camelias at the moment. And I have some Salvia Black and Blues I was hoping would make it, but I have cuttings of those, so I can replace them.. And a funny plant called Tinantia pringlei (Mexican Speckled Wandering Jew). And my hardy Gardenias which I dearly love. And Sarcococca's are marginal. The Peanut Butter shrub.

What else should I be worrying about? And what can I do to protect them? Not sure I'm up for burlapping everything. Is that my only choice?

Happy, I'm thinking this winter will be colder than ones recently. Your camelias and gardenias will benefit from temperature protection and protection from drying winds. I vote them burlap worthy. Today I shook three more bags of leaves around my containerized JMs and other goodies. I also shook leaves over my heucheras for the deep cold and will pull off as warming comes so crowns don't rot. I'm keeping rootballs very well mulched and have shaken more leaves over several hydrangeas. Throwing and old blanket or sheet over a favorite shrub will help, or an iinverted cardboard box. May grab a few of the discarded Christmas trees being put out for collection and lay branches from same over some areas as any 'air space' will help insulate. I also have some of that spun bond fabric I could use as a temp wind blocker.

Tonight through next Tues will be a challenge to many of our less than Zone 4 hardy plants! And a lot of them survive Zone 4 temps because they have snow cover. Good luck to us all.

I have a good layer of mulch over everything. Do you think that'll be enough?? After our recent mild winters, I definitely wasn't expecting this... :-(

Hmmmmmmm..coleup---

I may try to dump some of my shredded leaves over the B&B salvias
I have 4 or 5 of them....The leaves may all be frozen in the bags, though.
How about the Cardinal flowers? The tall ones. Name???? ???Cardinalis???.
As of right now (9:30PM), I would say we have about 2"+ of snow.

YES! SNOW is like nature's blanket over plants. A good insulator.
It is what makes all the Pansies survive! In my garden--I hope all the
Dianthus I planted survive. So far--they are as green as can be in my
front lawn bed around the bed where my KK Hibiscus lives.

Roads are all just wet. I don't foresee any driving problems here.
Wonder what I will wake up to????
G.

snow is coming down here in Jersey too. Should I be worried about our PB shrub? and our fig tree? yikes I hadn't thought of covering anything... we have a patch of salvia B&B too. I may just have to hope for the best.

Dianna--

In fall of 2012, when I first got my B&B Salvias--I was so worried about
them making it through the winter--cause someone said they were tender
perennials. SO--I surrounded them with my plastic garden fencing and
stuffed dried leaves in there.
By spring--I thought I better remove all the leaves and let the roots
have some air. As I removed them, there was already a growth of new
leaves around the root zone.
During the summer--these plants grew huge! They bloomed well into late fall.

Seeing how robust they were--I did not take any particular care to prepare
them for winter. Now--i am worried.....Hope they live through this extreme cold snap.

Que serra--serra! Gita

This is all very helpful for me. Please let me know if you think of any more marginally hardy plants. I'll get out all the old bedsheets and tie up the plants! Many of the Gardenias are in pots, so I can drag them inside.

Coleup -- I didn't realize Japanese Maples were marginal -- mine are still in pots -- guess I need to take them in as well.

we have five inches of winter wonderland out there!! I think most things in n my yard will be happy under that for now- but I will protect the gardenia, happy.

I think we got about 6"s of snow, it's hard to tell if it's even stopped yet, though. It's 19*F with gusty winds and it's blowing around so bad it looks like a blizzard. Everything is on a 2 hour delay as of now but may change due to drifting. Very nasty out there.

Got about 5"-6", but it has stopped. Cold and windy now.

Need to get out to clean the driveway which goes all the away around the neighbor's fence. My house is more privately located than more others in the neighborhood and we bought it for that reason. Now, cleaning this 100 yd driveway is a rather daunting task... :o(.

Must first fortify self with hot chocolate ;o)

haha donner. DO you do it all with shovel? It's a very pretty setting! Bundle up!!

We who are not used to snow have shut down all schools today.
We have an appointment to leave for at 10:30 but our drive and neighborhood are so flat we can usually get out easily without shoveling this amount.

Woke up this morning to an amazing bright, white light coming in
through the windows. It is gorgeous out there....looks like ~5"?
I have no plans to go anywhere today but may need to go out to get the paper...
House cleaning on the agenda.

They are calling for more cold and storms into next week.
Wonder if that will hamper my sisters and their friend going to DC after
they get here on the 7th? Not really a touring-the-City kind of a day.

My house faces N. so the snow will not melt off as fast as the homes across
the street. Will be shoveling for sure....later. G.

Good Lord! The long term forecast has dropped the predicted low for Monday to FOUR degrees!

Yikes! Brace ourselves for the low temp!

The snow was dry enough for us to use the snow blade on the lawnmower. Last time we had to manually remove 4" of slushy sorbet.

The %^*&#@ tractor would not start. Bundled like "Ralphie" and no where to go. Holly is still doing the shoveling since my op. but I have managed to do the drives and parking area riding the tractor. I have the charger plugged in so it will probably start later. Looks as though a new battery is in the forecast. I even run the darn thing weekly to keep it ready but it looks as though the age and frigid temps are winning.

Ralphie= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Story

I've wondered if a lawnmower could throw a little light snow...

Harry used our snow blower for the first time today. We've had it for a few years, but never had the chance to use it yet. Today was the day!! Also, cleared paths to the bird feeders and garden. Can't believe how cold it will be getting.

Gita, we'll have to wait and see how the B&B fare. I hope the PB shrub does okay and our little fig tree too

Donner, I like how you fortify w/hot chocolate - I did the same here too!!

be safe everyone and stay warm

nice pictures, Diana. I love the flowers with little pointy hats of snow.

We have several cut tree sections by our campfire as sitting stools. Now they all have tailored cushions of snow on them.

sally--
I LOVE bon fires!!! Something about fire and water that is endlessly fascinating.

On one of my two trips to Latvia, to our cousin's house, I asked why all the
tree stump sections, that we used to sit on, had all the bark removed.
Her husband told me that if you remove the bark, there won't be any bugs and
insects making a home under the bark and the wood will last longer.

Just FYI. G.

For all of you bemoaning a few inches of snow... this is from about 1979 in Annapolis, my house on the Severn River...

Snowmageddon, Feb 2010!!

79 was a big one- I missed classes at College park
2010 was the all time! I hope we never break that record.

We've been preparing here at the Valley for the oncoming Deep Freeze - well, at least relative to the last 20 balmy years since 1994. It is predicted to reach the -6°F to -8°F range on Wednesday morning. By contrast, January 1994 brought nearly 16 inches of snow which was then capped by -30°F in rural central Kentucky - and the all-time KY low temperature of -37°F to Shelby County, KY.

That's cold.

At the Valley, here is a bit of what to do when you have to be ready to go outside, and how to recover when you come back in...this is a tried-and-true recipe for staying warm and winter weather survival.

As you can plainly see, delay in collecting your firewood leads to some reduction in BTU value due to decay. I guess the upside is having fungi to make risotto or brown sauce with...

pardon me while I get tissues to mop drool from keyboard....................................

-37 in KY??????? Holy COW

A word of warning/advice:

Inspect such fungi closely to determine their edibility. It wouldn't be unheard of to mistakenly include these mushrooms in some delectable dish, only to suffer gastronomic discomfort when they turned out to not quite be what was expected.

Of course, collect those you wish to add to other dishes before using the logs for warmth generation...

Also note extremely marcescent foliage on the species you expect to use for warmth - this can add a bit of snap and crackle when consumed...

Viburnum---

You had me going there for a while---f
First couple pictures I thought it was really an old log---then the chocolate icing
just stood out--over and over.....

Nice filled cake to give the log appearance...Real mushrooms, though. Right?

YUMMMM! Gita

meringue mushrooms = my guess! That's a beautiful yule "log" -- yum!!

We used to make a Yule Log to burn in our fireplace, often on 12th night... start with a gnarly looking log, use a drippy wax candle to adhere pine cones and other decorations (not too much pine stuff, or you could get more snap & crackle than you want, especially if you can't remember when your chimney was last cleaned).

Another thing for the "we should do this, also" list next year! :-)

meringue mushrooms my guess too

nice job Viburnum!

Sorry - stepped out of town since yesterday, but back in the saddle now.

Well, Gita - you've given the greatest compliment. Tongue was firmly in cheek (especially during consumption) while writing the above - but to have the images perform a trompe l'oeil, well that's additional icing on that cake.

All congrats must go to Mrs. VV - from whom all these culinary blessings flow - for the artistry of the arboriculture and mimicry of meringue mushrooms. Me? Merely the muscle...

These are certainly items that can warm the body and soul during this holiday season, while also being a feast for the eyes.

Consider another...

Oh to be so talented as to make such beautiful confections as those... Alas! I can only dream, as my artistic genes have fallen off. (sometime just before birth)

We're in a panic about the upcoming cold snap. I'm trying to determine the best methods for protecting newly planted camellias, etc. I don't want to build burlap houses (too time consuming and too cold to play outdoors -- plus the ground is frozen so I can't drive stakes into it). I think we are going to spray with Wilt-Pruf (assuming I can still find some and it is ok to spray the plants when it is this cold), pile up the mulch, and put cardboard boxes around the shrubs. The perennials -- I'm not going to worry about them. It is what it is.

See? I've totally forgotten the plunging thermometer, incessant winds, and pileup of precipitation.

But in the interest of keeping the home fires burning - stoking the embers of the soul, if you will - one must continue the harvest. This particular specimen was lovingly grown just for this kind of occasion.

A rare hybrid of Prunus armeniaca, Prunus dulcis, Theobroma cacao, and Viburnum ×pragense, this individual was cut (which produced the sawdust and wood chips surrounding the round) in celebration of the holiday visit of Mrs. VV's brother and wife from Germany. Because of the venerable age at which the specimen was collected - you can clearly count the rings - it was paired with some equally august late harvest wines of the Rhine valley region.

This is the Valley version of Baumkuchen.