The heat wave of last week was almost unbearable as the temperature on at least two days climbed to 96ºF at the nursery. Watering watches were the rule at the nursery as even though the sprinklers water the stock, in a few areas watering was not enough and so necessitated some hand watering and the installation of another water line.
Gardens that like warm nights and days even suffered because of the extreme heat and dryness. Last Saturday seemed to fix everything with a decent amount of rainfall and cooler temperatures. According to Chuck Seiberling of Seiberling Farms in Norton, a heat loving vegetable like tomatoes prefers temperatures in the 60’s at night and eighties during the day.
All of our transplanting is now done except new orders coming in of creeping phlox and other perennials and clematis which will arrive next week. The clematis are potted more deeply with one node (or growing
point) below the soil surface that serves the plant well in case most or all of the above ground parts die. The one shoot will emerge first very slowly at the end of February only to gallop much growth by mid March. Although we sold out quite early in the Clematis department, the number of plants this year will increase by about 10 percent as we are still trying to figure out if the phenomenal Corona pandemic or just some sort of other aberration that more first time gardeners have joined the gardening craze.
Finally after a seemingly long wait, the eastern redbuds have rooted in sufficiently along with the weeping cherry that have been absent from the sales yard largely since mid June.
Many improvements have been added to the grounds including the addition of a fourth weeping willow along the return waterway of our recycled water to the lower irrigation pond.
These moisture and even wet loving trees are a valuable tool to prevent water erosion along the banks of the channel and in not too many years will reach a size of fifty by fifty feet!
Trees are definitely are a wondrous creation.
Tom