Spuria in Zone 4

Kathryn:  I don't have a lot of the Spuria myself, and I really don't 
do much special for them, but I will try to answer your questions as 
best I can.  Our summers are usually quite humid, sometimes for days 
at a stretch with heat in the 90s and humidity to match.  As it 
happens, this summer those stretches have been shorter, just a day or 
two before relief, but we just count our blessings there.  Most 
mornings there is heavy dew, and rainfall is such that I seldom must 
irrigate the garden more than a couple times a summer, if that.  We 
have heavy rains, downpours like last night when we got .8" in less 
than an hour (often more than that) or a whole day of drizzle and 
showers.  Winters tend to be drier (we de-humidify our houses in 
summer, humidify them in winter) but we can have heavy snow, too.  
Not as much as in upstate NY, I think, if the reports I read/see are 
true, and not snow with as much moisture content.  Amounts vary from 
one winter to the next, but blizzard with 6-8" of snow are common, 
sometimes more  Last winter we had lots of early snow, then a warm 
spell in January melted everything after which the temps plunged to 
well below zero.  Lost a lot of TBs that I hadn't mulched, while the 
stuff that was mulched survived just fine.  Some of my Spurias were 
mulched, some weren't, and all survived and bloomed.  I must say that 
the mulched did better, but all made it.  Failure of the snow to 
persist is not uncommon, but the awful fluctuations in temp, at least 
in the extremes which we saw the past winter, are fortunately not so 
common.  A good mulch to prevent the freeze/thaw cycle from wreaking 
havoc is a wise precaution here.  My soil pH is one thing I can't 
tell you, as I've never had it tested, but I know from what others 
have told me that it is in the neutral area, neither strongly acid 
nor alkaline.  Most things seem to grow well here, for the soil is a 
very rich asset.   I hope this helps.  I didn't know Spuria were at 
all demanding.  I just stuck them in the ground and they grew.

Arnold
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index