Cold Climate Gardening

Sam of Talking Dirty has posted her tomato order, and guess what, Ro–she’s getting the Costoluto Genovese tomato. A woman of impeccable taste, no?

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Check out the beautiful narcissus at Zanthan Gardens. These are the flowers that us northerners force in pots and must then throw out because it gets too cold for the beauties to winter over. My oldest son, who works in the grounds department of the local psych center and gets “stuck” planting the flowers, once bought paperwhites thinking they were the Narcissus poeticus that we grow all around here. We had a very mild fall and early winter, and they bloomed before being wiped out by the cold. People there thought he was quite the skilled gardener to pull off that trick. Daffodils in December, can you imagine? Well, if you live in Texas, you probably can imagine …

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I was listening to North Country Public Radio, and they were having a call in for low temps in the area, and someone from Saranac lake called in with -33.2. I don’t think we went below -20 in Sackets, but I don’t have a fancy thermometer that keeps temperature history.

When I had completed my seed list, I realized I had listings from Johnny’s, Stokes, Select Seeds, Pine Tree Seeds, Fedco Seeds, Territorial, Seeds of Change, Richter’s, Nichol’s Garden Nursery, and Cook’s, and Tomato Growers Supply. Eleven different Companies, and eleven different shipping charges. I realized that, even if I had all the time and money in the world, that it was shameful not to set some limits. So I set about cutting some stuff that was repetitive or just not necessary. I got it down to just Fedco, Pinetree, and Richters. Anything I couldn’t get from those three places, I wrote in my handy dandy notebook all the information so I could get it next year!! Delayed gratification - what a concept.

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The Bloggies are awarded every year to the Best “you-name-it” Blog in over 50 categories. Why don’t you go over and see if there’s any categories you want to nominate a blog for?

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It is now 50+ degrees warmer than it was a few days ago and the snow is cannonading off the roof like thunder. Finally relinquishing its hold on the trees, it is dropping off in showery gusts. This is a relief as a crystal thaw has been forecast. Trees heavy with snow, then coated with slush and finally thick ice become brittle and dangerous. It breaks my heart to see the yard snapped and crushed, or to have to use a chainsaw to get to town, so I am cheering on the melting. The greenhouse has been suffering too, joints snapping in the cold and snow’s weight. I will probably re-do the construction in …

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I use a database to keep track of seed varieties, germination requirements, methods, problems etc. At somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 items sown per season, the database is a lifesaver. Bookish Gardener, show this to your husband and he can relax some! I started keeping the list to keep me from ordering something I still had seed of. I print out ‘to be sown’ lists of things with like germination needs so I can keep straight the warm-cold-warm stratify folks from the cold-warm-cold guys and the 40 degree germinators from the ‘needs oscillating freeze/thaw’ guys.
This would not be so useful to pure vegi gardeners but I can also look back and …

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They say January is the coldest month of the year around here.

This morning when I got up it had dropped down to -22 degrees. (That is Fahrenheit folks.) It actually might have been a little colder than -22, but our digital outdoor thermometer doesn’t go any lower. It didn’t get much colder, however, because a short time later it came back up to -21.8. It is still -21.6. Yes, you have to love the precision of those digital thermometers. They tell you precisely how absoloutely freezing cold it is out there.

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