Frost doesn’t mean gardening season’s over
Cleaning up some frosted bean and marigold plants the other day, I thought of a weather report I heard recently on the radio. The announcer stated: “Freezing temperatures are predicted for tonight, thus ending the gardening season.”
His deadpan delivery of this dramatic — for gardeners — statement, as well as what he said, tellsme thathewas no gardener. Freezing temperatures do not end the gardening season.
Despite that frost, aren’t there still leaves on trees, some of them still to turn spectacular, fiery colors? If I can’t consider trees part of my “garden,” how about some shrubs in the flower beds? Butterfly bush is still coughing out a few fragrant blossoms. Rhododendrons and heaths look as spry the morning after the freeze as they did during the warm day before it.
Hardier vegetables and flowers
Okay, so maybe the guy on the radio meant vegetables and herbaceous flowerswhen he was talking about gardening. Yes, bean and marigold plants definitely froze to death as recent night temperatures plummeted to 29 degrees Fahrenheit at my upstate New York home, as did zinnias, corn, peppers, cosmos and bachelor’s buttons.
But even weekend gardeners grow more than just these tender vegetables and annuals. Black- eyed Susans are still dressed up like it’s summer, and ‘mums — doesn’t just about everybody plant mums?— are unfolding new blossoms. Perennial flowers generally are unfazed by temperatures down into the 20s.
Among annual flowers, there are plenty that likewise are unfazed by freezing temperatures. Strawflowers, for example, as well as snapdragons andpansies are still perky. These latter two are actually perennials that are grown as annuals this far north, and they survive our winters if temperatures don’t dip too low.
Microclimates
Look around and you might even find some tender annual flowers still treading water through the frosty spell. A wall, paving or tree canopy each