Following the hardiness and pot theme. When we first acquired the nerine collection we put them into an unheated old greenhouse. Winter came and temperature dropped below freezing so we thought "We'd better put in a gas heater-blower" which we duly did at one end of the house. We warmed the air perfectly, so we thought, without realising that the fan sucked freezing air in under the door and through the gaps in the glass panes. The effect was to freeze a perfect semi-circle of pots and kill off most of the bulbs. A few of the basal plates survived and we were able to save some bulbs by putting them into vermiculite in paper bags in a cupboard and starting them again from bulbils. After that we used bench warmer blankets, then moved the collection to a new Venlo glasshouse with proper heat control. Happy days Nikko ________________________________ From: Peter Taggart <petersirises@gmail.com> To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Monday, 8 October 2012, 19:59 Subject: Re: [pbs] Cold hardiness of potted plants left outdoors in winter I think that there may be drought induced death in many plants if the roots freeze in a pot, whereas in the ground though the bulk of a tuber or bulb etc, including most of it's roots, may be frozen solid, the few roots which have their tips deep enough may keep the plant going. (While frozen there is very little moisture of a liquid form available to the plant.) I particularly feel that this may be the case with Cyclamen and rhizomatous Iris. This could equally well aply to the rootstocks of woody plants. Peter (UK) ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com/ ______________________________________________________________________