Re: [gardeners] Still no frost!

M T (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Mon, 4 Nov 2002 19:53:33 -0800 (PST) 

Hi Ron,

 Yep, my zone denial is a bit out of hand, but better than it used to
be. I've narrowed down the plant list we drag in for the winter.
 Some of them do real well and are worth nursing through the winter.
The ones that don't (ferns) get left outside.

 The other list of plants I've given up on are the things that survive
here (barely) but never look as good as they should if I was still
living in Hawaii.

 The one I really miss is bouganvilla. We had it as a ten foot hedge
that bloomed 12 months a year. The hanging baskets of it are pretty,
but they just don't do it justice.

 The only plants I can't seem to wean myself off of are the palms. We
have a medeterrainian fan palm and a buttia that's 5 feet tall.
Christmas lights for the winter should keep keep them in good shape.
 I may replace the fan palm (iffy survival rating) with a needle palm
(hardy in USDA zone 6, but need to find a source).

 There was a time when I would drag a few impatiens in in the fall.
They made a nice natural groundcover in Waipio valley on the northeast
side of the Big Island.


 The drought has been bad this summer. A lot of crop losses.
 We are finally getting some rain. We are almost 2 inches above normal
right now. So far it looks good for the rest of the year.

 The extended forcast calls for a low of 48* on Nov 13. All the lows
before that are in the high 40's and mid 50's.

Here's to a mild winter!
Matt in Norfolk, Va.  USDA zone 8

> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 07:08:33 -0800
> From: Ron Hay <ronhay@postoffice.pacbell.net>
> Subject: Re: [gardeners] Still no frost!
> 
> Good morning, Matt,
> 
> Yep, but that's ok. I just hope we don't get ANY frost this year in
> our
> hunk of L.A. Last year, it was touch and go with the tropicals and
> subtropicals. You should have seen us, outside at night, after work,
> in
> a roaring Santa Ana, stringing little Christmas lights around our
> trees
> to keep them from frost damage...while chilling ourselves to the
> bone!
> 
> All the citrus, the macadamia, tea tree and curry leaf trees survived
> in
> grand style, but the one tree that we didn't cover, our coral tree,
> lost
> all of its leaves and took weeks to recover. Oh, yes, our passion
> fruit
> vine died back from the roof ridge beam of our house down to the rain
> gutters, but came back like a champ, giving us about 500 lemon sized
> passion fruits so far this year.
> 
> But frost is a worrisome thing for those of us who push the envelope
> of
> what we can grow in Sunset Zone 18 (USDA zones are useless! People
> allegedly in the same zone, 10 miles away, over on the coast,
> virtually
> never have frost, nor do they ever get regularly over 100 in the
> summer,
> as we in the San Fernando Valley do.)
> 
> Let's just have a nice "normal" rainy season: we received just a
> smidge
> over 4" of rain last year during what should have been our rainy
> season.
> 
> Ron
> Van Nuys, CA
> 
> ------------------------------


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