Monday, January 16, 2012

Mothers blanket

Mother nature showed up with a blanket last night. She gently tucked in her little green people so they would be warm for the cold air she about to bring in to the interior region.
It is amazing to me that snow nearly always comes before cold. If it doesn't then plants will die and things are not as they should be. If you have zone 5 plants the limit they can tolerate is around -24C, and this only for a limited amount of time. The zone system is only a guide, so don't think in absolute terms.
This is something Brian Minter(http://www.gardeningbc.com/page/minter.html ) also stresses so just figure that if you have a zone 5 plant it's going to be OK in Kamloops if you live at river bottom. Further up the hill it goes into zone 4, and in places like Juniper, zone 3, all just rough guides to your plants survivability rates. Even gardeners on the lower mainland can have zones 3 and 4 if they are in the path of outflow winds that begin this time of year.
With lows going down to -20C on Wednesday we will be taking care of some of our borderline plants by making sure they either have enough snow cover or have a frost blanket placed over them.
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