Category Archives: Gardening

Crepe Myrtle killed back, waiting for re-growth

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Crepe Mytle I’m awaiting my Crepe Myrtle to re-grow. In 2007 the April 17th-ish freeze killed back all the then Crepe Myrtle spring growth. It was rather far along with nice little leaves showing … then black goo from the two days of freezing temps. It did put out some puny leaves after that, eventually, that’s all.

Next year it had nice leaves, that’s all.

This year (2009) it was putting out little buds to open into leaves and then blam, an early April freeze, just barely, again. But this year the freeze was lesser than the 2007 April freeze by far and wide with the Crepe Myrtle very early into it’s growth for 2009, and noticeably affected just barely, but within a few days it was just brown dried up stuff where the leaf buds were. That nice new growth starting cut off. :(

I’ve looked online and found info from 2007 about freeze damage, and the basic consensus is to leave the poor trees alone, and when another warm spell of a few days lasts it’ll put out new growth again.

Thing is I’m hoping for more than growth, but nice leaves and actual blooms for once. I supposed it’s a young Crepe Myrtle and perhaps hasn’t liked where it is, in the South with the drought, and in the front with not full sunlight all day. It’s where the landscaper we hired years ago had put a Crepe Myrtle on our landscape plans, and we put it in finally a few years ago. It’s supposed to get lilac color blooms. We’ve had plenty of water the last few weeks, and that’s a plus, hope the Crepe Myrtle see it that way.

There are a few suckers coming up that I need to get rid of, and perhaps I could do a little tiny shape pruning, other than that, there’s not much I can do. I sure won’t top it off, no way. That’s a very mean thing to do to a Crepe Myrtle and I bet 75% of the Crepe Myrtles I see around the NE GA area are topped off every year. Horrid.

Garden 2008

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There is no garden in our backyard this year, again. There is supposed to be, but it just hasn’t occurred.

Our backyard is overgrown right now, and we’ve had trouble with the mowers, so it’s kind of “status quo” dormant.

Last year I was supposed to have a good garden. It didn’t happen. I was pregnant and Frank was going to help me but getting the ground ready, and then also help me planting and caring for things. Well, that’s the past. This year I wanted to use what I had left, any of the seeds I’d purchased for 2007.

It’s now July.

I have time, really, since this is The South. But it’s imperative to me that it happens NOW, so I can get tomatoes going, for one. And green beans, and be ready for later when I can plant the end of the season cool vegetables.

This then is what I need to convince Frank of: to get something cut short and de-nuded of grass so that I can plant something somewhere out there. Please, dear? :smile:

36 Weeks today

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I’m 36 wks + 0 days today …

I’m getting much closer, and time seems to be going faster and faster …

We ordered our Birth Kit yesterday, and hopefully it will arrive before our Home Visit on June 4th (when I’ll be 38 wks 0 days.) We also need to get some other supplies for the birth together still (and have them ready for the HV also.)

My midwife gave me a nice chart listing all the days of my pregnancy and the week+day information for each day.

Here are two links to the same OB Calculator which will list your weeks+days of pregnancy in a chart, according to the information you provide:

Last Menses + day cycle, or
Date of Conception, or
Due Date

www.floridamidwife.com/calculator.html

www.vgio.com/midwife/obcalc.php

Both calculators are the same, but the first link is to one that is customized for a midwife (so has some text added, but just an extra title on the chart produced) and the second link is a plain calculator (and no extra title on the chart produced.)

Hubby is out again this week, and has promised to take off Friday and start getting the flooring installed and finish it that weekend. It’s a holiday weekend, so we’ll see what can be done. It’s just our master bedroom and the hallway we are going to do the flooring on, and plan on doing the other two bedrooms on the same floor of the house later.

Also my garden has never been dug out, hubby wanted our eldest to aide us and get the grass layer off of part of the area so that I could get a few of my plants in (the ones that are still alive, I’ve lost several that we bought, urg!) but DS balked and wouldn’t do it, and hubby didn’t do it, so now I have another week to see if I can keep the few remaining plants alive until planting (which will be when?)

I do have space in my whiskey barrel, to put a few things, but I wanted to get that moved to another spot before playing with it, and the plants that have died are mostly herbs that I bought for the barrel, not all though, and the only ones alive are a couple of bell peppers, and one herb or two, and a tomato plant which wasn’t happy but is re-growing where it did seem to be dying before.

Most of my intended plants are still seeds, and I still am glad I’ve never gotten them started in their little peet pot tray thingies … since I have no way to transplant the many things I would have started. I also have beans and a few other things that are best planted straight into the ground. I was going to get at least two teepee hills of beans planted yesterday, but alas that didn’t work out because of the lack of garden dug out-ness. :sad:

I really want that garden fully planted soon though, and need for that to be completed before long, before the baby arrives for sure!

April Freeze Damage

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I posted the other day about the “freezing weather” and wanted to post an update on the situation.

When I looked at the back yard after the sun came up Sunday mornig it was obviously “frosty” out — the grass was not the bright verdant color that is usual of late. I waited awhile for things to warm up, then waited longer … and finally set out to spy the damage or not.

The apple trees are in a sad state of affairs. They did not have that blooming pink look from afar, and getting closer it was obviously brown droopy looking, the blossoms that had opened mostly all were affected from what I could see. There are many blossom that aren’t opened yet, and I don’t want to disturb any of them yet to check for damage.

The white dogwood (in the back yard too) looked sad, the blossoms just hanging there, the leaves mostly looked alright.

The Eastern Redbud tree is close-by the dogwood, and it was totally drippy looking, the blooms had already faded before the freeze, and it was leafing out so nicely, but the leaves were so delicate, they were black and drippy looking, gooey, icky. The whole tree is full of that black sludge which used to be sweet spring leaves.

We have 3 Autumn Flame Maples in the back yard, and they are done with their bloom and have been leafing out. They are not fully leafed out yet, and the leaves are fairly small. From what I saw they look a bit droopey, but not totally affected –maybe.

We have 2 Paperbark Maples as well back there, and their little fresh leaves that have been coming out lately are super-droopey.

We have other trees that are fully leafed out already and they faired fine.

Out in our front yard the 2 Cherokee Chief Dogwoods we have faire alright, their only blooms are high up and seem pretty much unaffected.

We had planted a new tree a few weeks ago, and it began leafing out just in the last week or so. It’s leaves are pretty much like the Eastern Redbud that I described above, drippy and black-ish. :sad:

My Hostas were coming up, quite large and lovely, and they are brown sludge now. :sad:

The peonies have been putting out growth and they seem alright, we’ll see later. There are a few buds starting and time will tell.

The little irises I have have been growing up, but they look a bit dippy, it’s just the “leaf” part, no buds or blooms started yet.

The Japanese ‘Bloodgood’ Maple is fully leafed out, but the leaves aren’t as big as they’ll eventually get, and they look a tad relaxed. Time will tell whether or not they rebound with strength this week.

That’s most of the damage.

The weather was forecasted to be very much below freezing last night, but I didn’t check the forecast as nighttime drew closer. We did not have freezing temps, probably 39 in reality as a low, if not a bit higher. So there shouldn’t be any further damage to what’s left.

I haven’t seen a Spring Freeze like this since being in GA, and before that I was in S. FL for many years. So I don’t have any experience regarding what will occur. I have seen trees drop their leaves in Summer from drought, and re-grow some later on, FWIW. We had long drought conditions in past years on this property, but that’s not been the case for a little while now. I was looking forward to a vigorous growing season all around, trees, flowers, garden, and it’s the phrase of April now, “time will tell” — time being “the progressive movement of the season” –not the ‘clock’ sort of time. :)

April Freeze and Gardening 2007

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From Friday night to Saturday morning it was supposed to be really cold, just below freezing. I don’t think that actually happened on our property … yes it was cold, but not quite to freezing, from how the grass and blooms and herbs and such look in our yard(s) as of Saturday afternoon …

Now it’s the Saturday night to Sunday morning freeze warning time, and temperatures are supposed to be even lower, in the 20′s tonight/morning as well as tommorow night (Sunday to Monday AM.)

One clue for “how cold is it right now” that I employ to reason about what’s going on outside is the heat pump, which sits outside on the ground with pipes going into the house and up the wall into the attic space … and that’s right behind our master bedroom, right where the bed is situated, of course (the only “real placement” for the bed, unfortunately.) When it’s really cold the heat pump doesn’t do a good job, the closer it gets to freezing, there isn’t enough “warmth” in the air to pull it into the house for warmth inside via the houses air system. It makes a horrid racket when it’s actually freezing or lower and the heat pump is running.

Friday to Saturday it sounded similar to how it sounds right now. It’s the Saturday to Sunday time currently, 5:30am approx. and accuweather “says” right now it’s 28 degrees. Well that’s not exactly right, since our property doesn’t have a weather station nearby, and when I have had a decent temperature gauge for outdoors I was able to compare and know for sure that our temps here are not the same as what ‘they’ say (nor actual weather, like clouds, rain, snow, etc.)

So we are waiting for the daylight hours to see what it’s like outdoors, and I hope things will be alright. We have three dwarf apple trees that don’t always bloom so nice. Guess what? They sure are THIS year, ALL THREE of them at the same time. So it does figure that we have the first late cold snap ever since living here … this late, April.

Not only that, usually the two trees that are alike, Liberty variety, don’t actually “bloom” with their opened blossoms until later in April, and the third tree, MacFree variety, blooms after that (which isn’t really helpful since two varieties are needed to fertilize for apples.) There was definitely something funky going on with the MacFree and I was finally able to prune out major parts of it last year, when they suddenly got such long branches growing, it was obviously the root stock trying to take over. What’s is left untouched now is the real MacFree, as far as it seems, and this Spring 2007 is the first time it’s actually produced masses of buds.

We planted these trees in early Spring of 1998, and then did move them to another area a few years later. In any case, the Liberties have blossomed well in the past, but given us few apples. The MacFree never did blossom very well, though when it did better it was not of use to the Liberty trees. Last couple of years there were a few apples on the MacFree (so there is something else in the area that bees are using to fertilize my trees, obviously.)

Such promise I put in the apple trees this year, and then the Spring was so warm, and the trees started to form buds in March. That is not usual. We didn’t have a freeze in March really, it was regular last freeze around March 15, but nothing major, and temperatures were very warm most of the time, very warm indeed. Last (2005/2006) winter was a warm one, and things were so very mild, but the apple trees still didn’t set blooms until into April in 2006. This past winter (2006/2007) was fairly mild overall, and we didn’t have much “weather” in the way of ice or snow, no major storm at least. We did have rain more often than usual, though not so much overall. In any case, everything has been blooming so nicely this year, and that includes the apple trees, and unfortunately for them it’s not a good thing this year. :sad:

Dogwoods are blooming right now too. The Cherokee Chief variety we have in the front don’t have a lot of blooms, but where they do is at the top and they are lovely (we need to do some work on those trees, pruning.) We have a white dogwood in the backyard and it’s in full glory of bloom. It’s gorgeous. Driving around the area, Dogwoods are bursting forth in massive color and bloom. It’s a grand year for Dogwoods. Or it was. We’ll see later on. :sad:

So many other plants are past bloom already and in the process of leafing out, some leafed out in full already (like our Japanese ‘Bloodgood’ Maple tree, our Weeping Willow tree, and our wild Blackberries are in full leaf and actually setting blooms and some are opening already.)

As I write this the heat pump is starting to struggle for the first time this night-time. It’s not super bad, but does sound bad enough, so it’s near 32 or below a tad … but doesn’t “sound” like it’s in the 20′s, while currently accuweather says right now it’s 28, oh I just loaded the page again and now they say “30″ but that’s where anyhow? Miles away.

Hubby did put a blanket on my herb garden (which doesn’t have much in it, but does have a super-duper verdent perennial Chives that is just about ready for harvesting — already!) — it’s the whiskey barrel garden. I have lots of new herbs to plant in it, we got them last weekend, but I didn’t plant them due to the weather outlook. So they are in the garage awaiting their time to transplant.

I have lots of seeds to start and since it did snap so cold I’m fine with the fact that I haven’t even started my seeds yet –it is something I do need to do in the next couple of days, though.