A WORRYING TIME FOR SOUTHERN GARDENERS

Like many gardeners in the south I am tempted to grow plants just outside my range. Cold snaps cause me to run for the blankets but there was no way I could have protected against the cold temperatures we had last week. We had already suffered a significant freeze event while I was away after Christmas but that was was not near as bad as the last few nights. We are typically much colder than Austin, from anywhere between 5-10º. partly because of the lack of housing and roads but in my garden there are no trees to moderate the temperature. I am fearful of the losses which may take a few weeks to really show.
I went out with my camera this morning. Typically a gardener likes to show the best of his/her garden but this morning that was impossible to find.
Our native mullein is a pretty tough plant, right? It made it through the first cold snap.

But not the second. It's hard to imagine that cold could bring it down. I shall miss the those soft velvety leaves and the beautiful flower stalk with yellow flowers.

But the plants I worry about most of all are my gorgeous structural agaves, Agave weberii.

They are already beginning to collapse. And I don't like what I see here.

Will the Philippine violet, that show stopper of the fall garden, survive? Only time will tell.

This week brings a thaw and should reveal what will live and what will die.
And I don't like this. Of course I know full well that spalling takes place when pots are full of wet soil and it freezes and thaws. There wasn't even anything growing in this pot but it was full of soil. It was very careless of me to leave out outside.

This was one of last year's garden purchases and I must say they were worth every penny.

They come in a set of 3 and I put them to good use this year. Despite the fact that calendula and alyssum are usually winter hardy I experimented by covering one grouping one. The plants came through with flying colors, whereas an uncovered grouping suffered horribly.

On a cold morning when there was no hope of getting outside I turned my attention to new life; seed cleaning and sowing. These are the dried seed heads of the American basket flower, Centaurea americana, given to me by a gardening friend last summer. This native annual has large thistle-like seed heads, but without the prickles. On the left what remains after seed removal.

The seeds are difficult to clean so some will be planted with a little extra. I use coir fibre to plant and they are on a heated seed mat. They should really have been planted in the fall so fingers crossed they will germinate quickly and soon catch up. If not I will remember to plant earlier next year.

Under the new grow light system I have arugula, chard, kale, pak choi, cilantro, tomato, brachyscome, and stocks. There is nothing more cheering on cold winter days than seed germination.

Swann River daisy, Brachyscome

10 week stocks

Pak choi

At least it makes me feel as though spring is on the way.

TAKING THE ROUGH WITH THE SMOOTH

As a gardener one thing you learn very quickly is that that no two gardening years are the same.

We have returned from our winter travels, albeit a short one of only 14 days, to some pretty sad scenes in the garden. Of course, I have seen it all before whether it be spring, summer or winter. Probably the most devastating was a terrible hail storm at the height of the spring flowering. Much was lost, some of it taking more than two years to be realized. When I left the garden, many times for 6 weeks in summer, exuberant growth is what met me on my return, as well as weeds, an unwelcome rattlesnake who had taken up residence in my absence, and on one occasion a pair of foxes.
What you don't expect is to have trouble leaving the garden in the winter. We always turn off the water when we leave and move the less hardy plants into the garage, greenhouse, potting shed and even the house. But this year the cold was prolonged and deep and some of my hardiest plants have succumbed. The soap aloes, which I had divided giving them each their own space in which to grow, instead of on top of one another, are soft mush. Will those long cold days and nights be the end of my Philippine violets? Even my ghost plant did not find refuge among the rocks in the sunken garden.

And yet!!! This photograph was taken on January 6th 2017 as we returned from a New Year visit to Connecticut. That was my concrete fish fountain underneath all that ice, the fountain still trickling.It crumbled apart after it thawed out.

Really not much different from this year when I used a sledge hammer to break the 2" thick ice.

 I almost couldn't wait for the New Year to begin so I could make plans for the 2018 garden year. What visions went through my head while among all that tropical foliage and balmy Caribbean air. What a shocker to hear gardening friends lamenting the strong cold front that stuck around night and day for 3 days. Of all years too, when my garden will be on a tour. But, the gardener presses on undaunted. Today the sun is shining and I am thinking about starting some seeds. I have moved all the orchids out of the laundry room to make way for seed starting. I have ordered a couple of plants and a grow light system. I walked around the garden and saw the bluebonnets are strong and healthy, the love-in-a-mist, California poppies, larkspur, rose campion and Barbara's buttons have shrugged off winter's cold. Bulbs are beginning to peep through the soil. Even the scarlet flax survived. In the days to come I will begin a tidy up of all the dead annual zinnias as I start new ones indoors.

I'm feeling better already.

"A GARDEN IN WINTER IS THE ABSOLUTE TEST OF THE TRUE GARDENER"

"A garden in winter is the absolute test of the true gardener. Fair weather gardeners are to gardens what interior decorators are to buildings-they only know half the story"

My goodness, is that really true? Was Rosemary Verey just talking about garden designers or was she talking about every gardener; the likes of you and me; those of us who can't keep our fingers out of the dirt. We know we haven't quite got it right yet and we keep striving to create something that satisfies us and makes us proud but I believe we think of ourselves as true gardeners. Maybe we haven't yet passed the test.

The winter garden is certainly the most difficult part of the garden year. When plants have gone dormant, and all but disappeared below the soil, what is there to give interest. Evergreens are so important to tide us through the winter months. In Texas we are fortunate to have many such plants, yaupon hollies, live oaks and rosemary bushes to name a few. Then there are the agaves, yuccas and sotols. But even these are still the winter icing on the cake, as flowers are the summer icing. We still need the hardscape around which to plant, the pathways, walls, patios, arbors.

I know I looked out on my winter garden this morning and knew there is much more I could do to improve its appearance at this time of the year. Maybe Rosemary Verey is right. Summer is this easy bit.

"Gardens that look and feel good in winter do not happen by chance; they are the culmination of designs first sketched on paper then considered and perfected."

Now there in lies my problem!