Am I going to lose my hydrangeas?

They are already budding. : (

The weather is so WHACKY.

Hi Luna, I am trying something new this year, I wrapped my Hydrangeas with burlap and stuffed with leaves. I have noticed that my flowering almond is getting some fat buds, and a patch of daffodils are up like it is the end of February. My back yard is very wet, even some standing water.

This is very wacky weather, the vinearies in the area are worried about their ice wine for this year, the grapes have not frozen yet.

I noticed some daffodils peeking out the other day too. If you have not seen this link it is interesting. Be sure to click on lthe animation tab.

http://arborday.org/media/map_change.cfm

early_bloomer

This message was edited Dec 27, 2006 11:20 PM

Everything will be all right. A little winter budding won't kill anything. It might affect the blooms next year, but I've found late spring frosts are a lot more damaging than getting buds in winter as far as blasting out blooms.

And everyone thought poor Al Gore was nut.

*sigh*

Early Bloomer, I don't see an animation tab, but thank you for the link itself. : )


hart, thanks. I was bummed thinking it might damage them in some way. I can live without blooms, I just nurtured those things from babies and didn't really want them to get damaged.

ladygardener, wouldn't wrapping them up just make them warmer? I am confused. : )

Luna, I had 2 blooms last year on my Hydrangeas, We get some pretty bitter cold winds here. I was thinking more of protecting them from the wind burn. I want to see if that makes a difference.

In the spring I had growth where the fall leaves covered the bushes, the upper stems were dead. I always wait a while before I cut back and also check the stems for life before cutting to much.

Early.. that was interesting, so we are in zone 6 now!! Time to try new plants!!!!

Chris

I don't think it makes them 'warmer' really. think of it like a blanket; it should lessen the temperature spikes, which come from batches of cold air, or warm air and sun.

Hi Everyone - I guess of all the plants that I bought and planted last year, the hydrangea is the one that I would hate most to lose. Mine is like Chris's, not a big bloomer yet, but I still have hopes. Every time that I would see the beautiful blue ones last summer, I was amazed by their beauty. It is just so unusual to see that blue in nature. As always, I love plants.

Ruby

Luna- I agree with Hart; your hydrangeas will survive. They might not have a lot of blooms this summer, but they will be fine.

Here is a link to the National Arboretum "hydangea questions and answers" page.

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Gardens/faqs/hydrangeafaq2.html

Click on "Why doesn't my hydrangea bloom?"

I was just wondering, how many of us Mid-Atlantic gardeners have hydrangeas?

luna......When you click the link and the arborday page opens the animation link is the middle of the menu on the left.



early_bloomer

Oh. *blush* You mean right there, on the left, wher it says "animation"? Doh!

Chris, I wouldn't rush out and buy warmer zone plants just yet. LOL

I dunno, hart..go look at that animation.

Global warmng isn't a questionable theory anymore, I am afriad it's here to stay.

Sorry, but I don't think those maps are very accurate to begin with and I certainly don't get my climate information from the National Arbor Day (please send us money right now and we'll send you some sticks) Foundation and their team of crack scientists. snort

Actually, there are a lot of scientists and climatologists who do question global warming. Unfortunately, the whole issue has been politicized and has veered off the path of rational, scientific study. (And if you don't think scientists can be irrationally influenced by politics, I suggest you rush right out and get a copy of Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions."

well ok then

Lunar,

There has been some controversy over the Arborday.org map. As of Oct. of this year the map has not been officially changed. Read the following thread from GW http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/wtrsow/msg1008050822424.html which goes into more detail. Kim was kind enough to update us but has yet to announce the new map release. It sounds as if Arborday did not use data going back far enough to be truly accurate.

Joanne

P.S. I am not discounting global warming in any way, just passing on information I found to be useful.

Yeah, the Arbor Day web site that made me think anything other than, "interesting". I've read way too much other stuff to take that thing at face value.

But I am not prepared to argue about it.

So......"Yeah. Ok. Whatever." is about the limit of what I have to offer up.

Thanks, though. : )

hart... I remembered this site and I thought you might find it interesting. http://www.realclimate.org/

Real Climate is a veritable 'who's who' of climate science, including:

Dr. Michael E. Mann- Director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Caspar Ammann- A climate scientist working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Rasmus E. Benestad- A physicist by training and work with climate analysis on a Norwegian project called RegClim, and have affiliations with the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) and the Oslo Climate Group (OCG)
Raymond S. Bradley- Director of the Climate System Research Center (www.paleoclimate.org) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences
William M. Connolley - A climate modeller with the British Antarctic Survey : Stefan Rahmstorf - Research at the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, at the Institute of Marine Science in Kiel and since 1996 at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany
Eric Steig - Isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle
Thibault de Garidel - Post-doctoral associate at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University
David Archer- computational ocean chemist at the University of Chicago
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert - The Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago

All of whom post their own reports, essays, opinions and responses to questions.

Throughout the history of the earth the climate has been either warming or cooling. Change is the only constant. Think of the northern Europeans who over hundreds of years established their farms and lives in Greenland seeing their prosperous, fertile land slowly overtaken by ice that took longer to melt every year. At what point did they realize that they and their children were going to freeze and starve.

In the 1970s I took to heart all the scientific evidence that the earth was entering a long overdue ice age. It is really hard for me to feel threatened by global warming when my first thought when I heard that the theories were changing was, please let it be true!

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