January 2008 Archives

That's what crossed my mind Sunday morning when I stumbled upon another downed fox in my yard. I heard the ruckus during the night, but had no idea my dog Inga was battling with another fox.  I assumed she was harassing my resident armadillos that frequently rummage through my yard at night. There must be some deep hatred for foxes embedded in her genes. 



























What was really strange this time around is that when I moved the fox's head to get a better view,  Inga ran up and gave me a puzzled look and then proceeded to use her nose to push dirt over the fox's head.  It was really bizarre, she would make 4 or 5 sweeps with her nose, then pat the dirt down on the head, and then proceed to sweep more dirt over it.  Eventually the head was completely covered and she dropped back about 20 feet and sat down staring at the fox.



 

Later that morning I distracted Inga with her feeding and then dug a hole and buried the fox.  Of course I planted a plant on top of it as i do for all animals I bury.

Today I was able to assess the actual damage my plants incurred from our holiday freeze. My brugmansia are all sprouting new growth and in many cases, buds are beginning to form as well.  Out of the 1500 brug seedlings I have, I think I only lost one.  Almost all of my in-ground brugmansia survived too.  I had at least 75 individual  plants planted in the ground and every single one of them survived. Most just had damage to the tender growth, but a couple of the younger ones were beat up fairly bad. They froze down to the ground, but are already sprouting back up from the base.  Unfortunately we still have 6-8 weeks to go until the danger of another frost/freeze passes.  The old timers will tell you that you are safe after the first full moon in March.  I'm banking on it being the first full moon in January because it just passed.

My seed pods suffered the most in the freeze.  The main reason for this is that most of the pods were on the outer ends of the branches and hence were exposed to the coldest temperatures. My guess is that I lost about half of the pods that had set.  I still have at least 100 pods actively growing and that number will surely increase as my plants come back into bloom and I start pollinating again.  
One plant that amazes me is this Pink Perfecktion plant that has 18 seed pods on it...and it is only 2 1/2 feet tall!  My Inca Sun is the one with the most pods.  It has at least 30 pods hanging on it now, and that's after I removed a bunch of ones that were not planned.  I left 8-10 unknown pods on it so I would have plenty of seeds to play mad scientist with.  I plan to treat those seeds with various compounds in hopes of creating tetraploids. 

It is going to be a busy year for me....

I know I have been fairly quiet on my garden blog the past couple of weeks.  The primary reason is that my work and travel has been keeping me real busy.  It did not help that our recent freeze brought my hybridizing program to a standstill leaving me very little positive things to report on.  While the work and travel part is not going to change much in the immediate future, I plan to be getting back on track with my hybridizing projects by the end of this month.  New growth abounds and dozens of brugmansia plants are back in bud. 

As I write this my anticipation is building.  I’m currently flying back from a conference in Utah and my plants have been on their own for five days.  Seeing how I will not get home till after midnight, you can be assured that I will be running around in the wee hours of the morning with my headlamp and flashlight to see what my seedlings have been up to since I left.  I’m a bit nervous as well because I plucked a couple of fat caterpillars off my youngest seedlings right before I left.  It was about ready to rain at the time so that prevented me from engaging in chemical warfare with the pests.  Caterpillars have tremendous appetites so if they managed get a stronghold while I was away, I may be greeted by trays of leafless twigs.

At least pest problems evolve slower during the winter months.  That gives me some comfort, especially seeing how  I'm back on the road for five days again next week.

Now that both myself and my plants have thawed out, I can assess the freeze damage.  It is not a pretty sight around here as you can see by looking at this picture of one of my larger angel trumpets, brugmansia Coral Glow.    Fortunately it did not get nearly as cold as many forecasters had predicted.  The low temperature hovered around 29 for a couple of hours and briefly dropped to 28.  That is much better than the 24-26 that was forecast to be the low.

Over the weekend I was able to assess the overall damage.  One thing is for sure, there was plenty of it.  Because we had such a warm fall, coupled with the fact that I tend to feed plants more than I should, most of the plants were actively growing and had lots of tender new growth.  That is where most of the damage was concentrated.  That's the good  news.  Most of this damage was superficial and the plants will out grow it.  I do not think I lost a single plant to the freeze.

My hybridizing  program was impacted the most by this freeze.  I predict I'll lose at least half the seed pods that were developing.  That doesn't mean I'll be short on seeds because I probably have 50-75 pods that were not impacted.  Because most of my plants were in full bloom, in the two weeks prior to the freeze I had made close to 300 crosses.  I would suspect that 3/4 of those will not take, but you never know.  Many of those blooms are still hanging on.

Freezes are just something you just deal with and then move on.  This time next year I know I'll have a large shade house up to protect my most prized plants.  Not to waste any time, last night I was back outside with my headlamp on looking for new non-damaged blooms to pollinate.  Go figure.....

Here we go, the temperature just dropped down to 32f and it is only 10:00pm.  I was hoping tonight's weather forecast would be wrong, as they often are, but this one is one is dead on.  Accuweather did not have the temperature dropping below freezing till 5:00am, but Weather Underground was predicting 30 at 10:00pm.  This is not good, we could have 8 hours below freezing!   Now it's 31.4, yikes!!!!  Accuweather is forecasting a low of 28 by dawn, while Weather Underground predicts 24...ouch!!!  They say we could have the coldest weather we've had in over five years.

I have a nifty wireless outdoor thermometer so I can watch the temperature drop from the comfort of my bedroom.  Cool, it's back up to 34.5.  I'm sure this has to do with the wind gusts.  Some wind is good because it keeps the cold air from settling in.  Too much wind creates havoc because many of my plants are covered with frost cloth and it is a challenge to keep it in place at times.   I spread out over 9,000 square feet of the stuff today in hopes of protecting my most prized plants. The additional few degrees of warmth it offers can be the difference between life and death for some plants.

Our only saving grace would be if some clouds drift in overnight. 

Now what's all this fuss global warming???