CULT: observations: pots, roots, freeze damage - long

Last fall, Mike Sutton sent me some of their intros to see how they'd
fare here.  Plants haven't gotten as much of a workout here as they
usually do, but we did go thru a few rollercoaster warm and freeze
cycles during the winter and some pretty sharp freezes the last week. 
Too soon to report on most of them, but he also sent me two each of
three sibling seedlings to torture and their behavior has been
interesting.

I start everything in pots these days so I can make sure they get
watered until they have decent root growth before setting them out in
the gravelly 'killing fields'.  Of the three sibs, seedling B had roots
growing out the bottom of the pots in 2 weeks (that's as fast as the
best can do).  Seedling A took a lot longer than that (I didn't take
notes) and seedling C was the slowest of all - among the very last that
I set out, so not just the slowest of the three siblings.

Over the winter, the terminal buds were killed and have rotted out on
both seedling B (the one with fast roots) and seedling A.  On seedling C
(the slowpoke), the terminal on one is normal and has produced a fan
that could bloom.  The terminal on the other one was damaged, but there
is still a bit of green there, so it wasn't killed completely and hasn't
rotted out.

I think these are rebloomers, and all three seedlings have nice heathy
freeze-resistant foliage on new increases that are large enough already
that they may go on to bloom.  The terminals on the two that got frozen
out may have been trying to rebloom here during one of our mild spells
(residual confusion over their current exile).

Anyway, thought some of you might find it interesting that the most
rapid new root production didn't correspond with winter survival.  In
this case, the tops were perhaps a bit too enthusiastic also, so may
have been more vulnerable?

Another survival note: WIDOW'S VEIL (SDB) has been a prolific grower and
bloomer here - it was in full bloom when we got the 26 degree freeze a
few days ago - flowers that were already open got burnt, but new ones
are open today and look normal (it's raining so it's hard to tell for
sure).  Looks like buds on nearly everything else early were stopped in
their tracks.  I covered the germanicas with a makeshift 'house' of junk
and Reemay, but they got a bit burnt too.

Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
with two big fat undamaged looking stalks on one of my IMMORTALITY X
CELEBRATION SONG seedlings - the suspense is killing me!  My first
modern cross to put up stalks....



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