beginners

I'll unlurk for a bit with posts about planting in cold winter zones this
time of year. I live in the white mountains of New Hampshire. My house is
half way up a small mountain and winter temps of -20F aren't unusual in Jan
and Feb. Have seen it as cold as -40F but only once and I don't care to see
that again.

I'm an iris lover and I wondered if this group wasn't a little too advanced
for me too but I've hung with it for a month now and have learned a lot. My
usual flower passion is daylilies but the irises do follow close behind.
Probably for the same reasons. Ease of culture. The winters are long and
cold here and fall and spring weather really erratic. I've already had
measurable snow here too.  Tuesday morning it was 22 degrees and Wednesday
it made it to 85.

I have had luck getting new plants this time of year by using a big cold
frame I have. I plant things direct in the cold frame. A few years back a
daylily person sent me a bunch of his seedlings at the end of Oct. The
ground outside was already starting to freeze. I planted about 30 plants
directly into the ground in the cold frame and added fresh manure. As the
manure composted it threw off heat. I didn't loose a single plant and when
the end of winter came and the ground was thawed enough to dig I moved them.
All bloomed. All increased that year. Didn't seem to set them back a bit.
I've also planted late bargains by planting them directly against the
foundation of the house and moving to a better spot in the spring.

I'm not real good about mulching for the winter. If it doesn't want to grow
here without a lot of fuss it dies. But the gardening folks that do will
often use pine boughs. They allow air to circulate and protects from
temperature swings.

Next spring I may try my hand at hybrydizing with the irises. Just a few so
I can see how things work. Most of my irises are old standbys that I've
traded for or bought at the feed store. I do want to get a few ruffled and
laced ladies for a bed I have at the end of the driveway. I love it when
traffic stops to gawk!

The ladybugs swarmed on the house here the first week of October this time.
Usually they don't start swarming until Halloween. Could be they are telling
us something. My horses winter coats are farther along this fall too. I
suspect it's going to be a long cold winter.

Sue in the North



 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index