Saffron crocus cultivation in Kashmir
Peter Taggart (Sat, 30 Nov 2013 12:14:02 PST)
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.