February 2010 Archives

My blog is currently being moved to a new server and should be back up and running by March 1.

Just kidding of course, I like Canadians.....however, their weather etiquette leaves something to be desired!



Story by AccuWeather.com senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson.

So far this month, much of the Deep South and Middle Atlantic states have been hit with snowstorms and persistent cold.

Average temperatures since Feb. 1 have been a whopping 5 to 10 degrees below normal! So what's going on?

An unusually strong and persistent area of high pressure over northern Canada has been forcing much of the cold air well south into the southeastern United States, leaving much of central and northeastern Canada relatively mild with a lack of snowfall.

It appears that this blocking pattern could persist through much of the rest of this month, keeping the eastern half of the nation in the deep freeze.

Thank you Canucks!

Two weekends ago I cut back several thousand brug seedlings that were damaged by our freeze. I also learned a valuable lesson, you really can get sick from handling brugs. I have not had a problem in the past, but I think because so many of the stems I cut back were oozing out sap, and the fact that I was wearing shorts and no shirt, was a bad combination. At first I just had puffy eyes and a major headache, but later ended up with cold like symptoms and insomnia.  It was not a pleasant experience, but I'm pleased to report that I am doing fine now.

Here is how my seedling growing area looked one morning of the freeze.



I ran the sprinklers in hopes that the ice would form a blanket and protect the plants. It did the job until we had two nights of 10+ hours below freezing with the temperature bottoming out at 25-26.

This is how everything looked a couple of weeks after the freeze -



Not all my brugs look as bad as these. I protected about 100 larger stock plants and lots of 4" plants that came through with little damage.

After two days of pruning things started to look a little bit better.



Although most of the tops were damaged, I believe the ice saved most of the seedlings. Had they not been iced over, the pots may have froze solid, killing the roots.

I still have lots of cleaning up to do to remove all the cuttings. I also have another growing area with larger plants that need selective pruning as they only received minor damage.



The good news is that as I was pruning I could already see new growth sprouting out from the base of many of the plants.

Next year I assure you I will have my greenhouse built for sure!