We now have had one other freeze and a few uncooked blustery days. The second freeze killed vegetation that skimped by the primary time with a light-weight burn on the outer foliage. 

My two Japanese magnolia timber are ugly; the one in full bloom was broken throughout and is roofed with burned and crumpled brown lifeless flowers. The opposite one was solely flowering evenly so many are nonetheless in bud kind and had been unhurt. The tender perennial “Chinese language rain bells” had been killed to the soil line however a couple of lengthy stems had been reduce off earlier than the chilly and perhaps they are going to yield vegetation in case the mother and father do not return.

Early spring-flowering bulbs are opening extra blooms every day and so they did not appear to even discover the icy mornings. Leucojum, jonquils and some daffodils are exhibiting their brilliant pleased flowers as harbingers that spring is coming. Camellia bushes are opening extra flowers every day. 

Final weekend was the Quitman Backyard Membership’s Camellia Present. Quitman is “The Camellia  Metropolis,” the bushes are planted by way of the city and particularly alongside Courtroom Avenue. The Betty Sheffield Monument and Backyard is on the south aspect of the Historic Museum. Sheffield found the unique “Betty Sheffield” and hybridized a number of extra, all named after the primary one and every totally different in colour, petals, stamen association or one other trait.

The Whitehead Camellia Path on VSU’s campus can also be lovely. They’ve an interactive path information and names of camellias and a few timber together with basic data that’s heard by way of your telephone. Parking is the one downside, the backyard is situated on the north aspect of the campus alongside Georgia Avenue a great distance from the primary parking space.

After a freeze is nearly like a brand new starting. All tender foliage from final rising season is lifeless, many gardeners depart lifeless foliage the place it melts, normally on high of the plant’s root mass. The reason is, the lifeless leaf materials will present mulch for the roots. It may be eliminated after the soil warms and vegetation start to develop. 

Some vegetation you already know is not going to return from the roots, could shock you if they’re in a microclimate that stays a couple of levels hotter than the medium air temperature. Crops grouped in a yard out within the open will freeze faster than vegetation given some safety by home or constructing foundations, evergreen bushes, berm of soil and others.

My lovely, uncommon decorative Taiwan cherry tree fell to the grinding jaws of a bulldozer with metallic tracks that chewed up something the jaws missed. The birds which can be predators are upset, a portion of their looking habitat has been eliminated, the place various canopied timber grew alongside the roads, offering meals for prey, which the raptors and owls ate, now it’s a ravaged and torn border alongside the roadsides. 

My neighbor’s three 35-feet-tall “Cedars of Lebanon” structural timber that had been 40 years outdated. Scraped naked of life however Mom Nature all the time wins ultimately and it’ll heal and develop grass, timber and weeds once more some future day.

The autumn crop of untamed inexperienced onions are showing by the hundreds with their distinctive odor. They get pleasure from chilly climate and the plentiful rain has them rising quick, they are going to bloom in spring, every pollinated flower produces a bit of tiny child onion (onion units a.ok.a. onion seed}, throughout summer time the onion units develop, ripen and fall off the scape they had been grown on. A wild onion can produce from 10 to twenty new little onions every spring. Onion units or seed onions might be purchased at farmers provide shops, mail order and a few huge field shops have them with their bulbs.

In case your fingers are itching to dig within the filth, there may be nonetheless time to plant cabbage vegetation, greens (lettuce, mustard, turnips, radishes, carrots) from seed that’s sown and never planted in rows. If we’ve got a low freeze proper after you plant cabbage vegetation that haven’t been hardened off, they are going to be broken and probably killed. Chives and parsley develop finest throughout chilly days, they are often began from seed and shall be able to skinny out or transplant by mid-April.

In case you are wanting to wash up after the freeze, don’t prune or trim again any spring-flowering bush, tree or shrub till after they’ve accomplished their bloom cycle or you’ll reduce off the flowers they’ve ready for spring bloom.

Hopefully these grey days with chilly winds and dripping rain will give method to sunny and barely hotter days.

I’ll see you in two weeks.

Susan Grooms lives and gardens in Lowndes County.