Yesterday in part 1, I mentioned that a major delight for me, when I returned to my bushland lakeside gardens, was to find that little of the Winterkill that I had feared, because of low snow-low temps, had taken place.
Instead, the most sensitive plants, like digitalis, had mostly survived, under mulching.
My lilies, especially the Martagons, have shown up in great numbers, and are romping away, even the ones that I had tried to hold back, by leaving their mulch in place. This means that I have little chance of having some decent stems of these left, by the July Showtimes, MRLS Field Day, and Public Open House, at my place. I usually rely upon them, as the mainstay of my entries.
Like last year, our season is about 3 weeks early, by "normal" timings, that may not recur, for quite some time hence. Prof. Tim Ball, retired Climatologist from the University of Winnipeg, who has examined the most detailed weather data in Canada, in the Hudson's Bay Co records from their Trading-outposts long ago, that go back about 300 years, thinks that the relatively stable, fairly predictable weather patterns of the recent past, were the abnormal ones; and that we are now back to the old, more extreme swings of less predictable cycles, that were "normal" in the earlier past periods. Global warming from our industrial/consumer activities, may also be a new factor, to slightly complicate matters. But like most ecological issues, its possible significance is being over-stressed, by those who need "crises", real or imagined, to defend the public or wildlife, against, in order to garner their incomes and satisfactions in life.
I mentioned earlier how delighted I was to find that I had found hundreds of little Martagon seedlings coming up, like grass, where I had scattered my seed-cleaning wastes, and some good seed lots, last Fall. They had been given a thin coating of friable soil, after planting in late October (Fall conditions), then with a mulching with leaves, before the snow came in late November. Apparently, the short gradient cooling exposure was sufficient to germinate them hypogeally. Then they were apparently physiologically ready to survive the Winter, to shoot away, from all their small rice-granule sized bulblets, as soon as the soil thawed and warmed up a little.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Gary Buckley's Alpines and Bulbs topic, please visit the Discussions page.