Re: [gardeners] "winter-hardy" pansies
penny x stamm (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sat, 17 Oct 1998 00:24:18 -0400
Chris, our local garden nurseries are LOADED with new
pansies -- until about 2 years ago, this was unheard of!
Go see what you can find .... Or else make a day trip down
to Connecticut, and I'm sure you'll find some there.
What makes a "winter-hardy" pansy...? I am told something
about the outer layer of the plant stems being -- wait, I'll
ask again on Saturday, and let you know. I imagine that
this cold-weather achievement was bred into it, much as
the knockout colors which we find nowadays in autumn
chrysanthemums. The hybridizers ended with plants which
could only survive in the greenhouse over the winter, but they
certainly did have brilliant coloration. The "winter-hardy" mums
which are coming in now all have much more muted colors.
Nevertheless, an occasional non-hardy mum does survive
in-ground planting now, and come back the following spring --
I happen to have one, lucky me! I also gave a brilliant yellow
showy mum to a friend last October which she stuck in the garage
for the winter, actually watered it once a month during the winter
and brought it out again in May, still in its original pot, and then
planted the whole thing in the garden once again. It worked.
The biggest joke of all was the year I planted a cluster of six
gladiolus once a week for 8 weeks -- and the following year every
single one had survived the snows and all came up at the same
time! Live and learn....
Penny, NY zone 6
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