Late freeze

Last June my nursery burned to the ground. I lost three greenhouses.
Virtually every plant in or near the greenhouses was destroyed.
Only the plants on tables in the yard made it through unscathed. I also
lost every piece of equipment, every tool, every supply and a house and
garage.
(We were not living there.) I had two decades of work in some of those
lost plants. I had special forms that no longer exist anywhere.
Plants will break your heart. One just has to carry on.

Pamela (Seattle)

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Nicholas plummer <nickplummer@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi Bob,

Sorry to hear about the lycoris. It would be incredibly discouraging to
lose the product of nine years effort. Similar to your Oxalis, I left a
pot of Agapanthus seedlings outside all winter and am amazed to see that
they survived the winter. Seed came off a plant growing at Disney World.

I'm Orange County, near Hillsborough, but we seem to be in a chilly
microclimate. We often have snow when Chapel Hill and Durham get rain. I
don't have a garage and the greenhouse is overcrowded, so my living room is
currently full of summer growing bulbs that overwintered in the crawl space
and had been outside during the past few weeks -- I really jumped the gun.
Should have left them to sleep until later in April. I figure my wife's
tolerance for stepping around pots will only last a few more days, so
hopefully Saturday's freeze will be the last.

Nick

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:11 AM, Robert Pries <robertpries@embarqmail.com>
wrote:

Nicholas: I feel your pain! I live in Roxboro, NC where the Raliegh news
media comes to take pictures of snow each winter. When I first moved here
the temperatures were zone 8 for a couple of years but recent winters

have

put us back into zone 7. When I moved here I had an extensive breeding
program with Lycoris (ongoing for 9 years) and another with Zephyranthes.
But one harsh winter wiped me out. The Lycoris would have made it but for
the fact they were all in pots.

We had the same freaky weather as you this week. I am not sure where you
are in NC. The Lorapetulums lost their flowers and new growth but other
than some new pots fresh from Lowes of Hydrangia the the Hydrangia in the
ground were fine. All around me people reported 27 degrees F. but it

seems

my hilltop must have shed much of the coldest air. The Crinums look OK.

Before the cold I moved a couple hundred pots of various bulbs into my
garage and plan to keep them there until Sunday. Saturday night may be

the

last freeze, I hope. Your venting gave me some encouragement. Sometimes

seems that gardening is barely worth the effort. I am still mourning the
nine years of Lycoris breeding lost a few years back, but I should have
brought those pots in. I feel this time I at least partly dodged the
bullet. I can not wait to bring out the several hundred bulb pots that

are

dormant in my basement, mostly caladiums and achimines. Of special note,

left about a dozen pots of Oxalis triangularis out and they weathered the
cold with no damage.

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