I think what Saffron requires is a dry time while the flowers bloom, otherwise one looses all the color as it is water soluble, In Kashmir late Oct and Nov are pretty dry so the saffron flowers can be harvested without loss. I grow saffron in Pittsburgh and it come up every year but if it rains you can see the color dripping away. Vijay On Nov 30, 2013, at 3:14 PM, Peter Taggart wrote: > It will take much lower temperatures (around 0F/ minus 18 C) in Winter, > Summer rain is not a problem here where inches may fall in July in some > years > . > As a norm Leos climatic observations on north western Europe are true. > However there is an old story of a statistician who drowned crossing a > river with an average depth. of six inches. On rare occasions the weather > patterns change and the weather comes from the east. Then northern Europe > gets much colder in Winter than its normal gulf stream influenced > temperatures, when the weather comes from the west.. > Peter (UK) > > > On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 6:56 PM, Leo A. Martin <leo@possi.org> wrote: > >> Lauw wrote from the south of France, >> >>> ...the leaves of Crocus sativus are very >>> frost resistant: no problems with -10 C >>> ...during the 20 years I grow them here >>> I never experienced any frost damage of >>> the leaves and the corms. >> >> Europe is very far north compared to the United States: Madrid is at >> approximately the >> same latitude as New York City. Yet much of western Europe is warmer in >> winter than much >> of the United States. There are several reasons for this. The Gulf Stream >> current brings >> warmer water from the Caribbean to northwestern Europe. Western Europe is >> closer to the >> sea than most of the US. And winters in Europe are very cloudy compared to >> much of the >> US; clouds prevent heat from escaping, while on cloudless winter nights >> all the earth's >> heat can be radiated away. >> >> -10C is about 14 F. This corresponds roughly to US Dept of Agriculture >> zone 8: >> http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/ >> >> Most gardeners in the US live in areas that are a lot colder than zone 8. >> There are >> large parts of the north-central US with winters like those in Russia. >> >> Beside the temperature problem, much of the US where Crocus sativus might >> grow gets a >> large amount of summer rain. I don't know how much a problem this is >> because I haven't >> tried growing it with lots of summer rain. >> >> > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/