Thursday, May 03, 2007

Too hot for them?





It's been a good year for tulips around here. (Should be, considering how many hundreds I planted last fall.)

But this article really depressed me this morning.

7 comments:

Jo said...

You know, NPR is doing their new special program on climate change...I wanted to ask them just this sort of question. As a farmer, how will climate change affect me over the next 25 years? How should we be planting and growing and raising things, and what should we anticipate in terms of crops and livestock changes? Scary stuff.

meresy_g said...

Lovely tulips. I love those fringey ones with the coloring that looks like colors bleeding together. I saw Camellias at my garden center last fall and was alarmed. But I must admit, the prospect of Crape Myrtle in my yard or being able to overwinter lantana makes me giddy. And don't get me started on a fig tree. I'm horrible. It will be interesting in Pennsylvania. I'm not sure that I'd want to see what Texas is gonna be like.

El said...

Yeah, what's interesting about the article is how we gardeners would be the only people that could see an upside to all this heat. But they do mention how toxic poison ivy will become, and how invasives in general will flourish in the new conditions.

So my rosemary made it through the winter outside. My laziness last year paid off. My figs were fine, too, in the garage. Is it wrong?

I think it's wrong when I saw frogs in December.

And farming. Some things can adapt. Lots can't. Many things really rely on hard frosts here (fruit trees especially). I just don't know, and I am disturbed and depressed by the whole thing.

Carol Michel said...

Thanks for the link to the article. It is quite thought-provoking...

Anonymous said...

Scary! I was worried this past winter about the bulbs I planted in fall. Since, as you know, winter didn't really start here in MI until mid January. While a lot of gardeners are looking forward to planting outside of their old zones, I'm old fashioned I think. I don't want my zone to change, I'm comfortable with what I have. Well.....I do have a weakness for avacados and homemade, fresh guacamole. To be able to pick them fresh from my yard.....oh no! It's got me too!
Seriously though, it is very disturbing. I can't help but worry for what life for my children will be like. Will they even be able to garden at all?

Jane said...

In Australia - where there are a lot of bizarrely "English-style" gardens, they put the tulips in the refridgerator to give them their 12 weeks of cold before planting outside.
Here in Scotland we have been basking in heat all April - instead of my tulips blooming over 5 weeks they all bloomed in a fortnight and are now finished.
J
x

Robbyn said...

We get crazy weather here all the time. I'm not a native Floridian, though. I'm more used to four seasons, and it's odd to me to have winters that are warm and unpredictable trends all the other times of year...either monsoon or drought. It's thrown what little I know of planting "off"...some things grow all year long here, yet there's not that vigorous rush of bursting and green, sleeping and waking. It's sort of like seeing pictures of a relative who had dark hair when he was younger, and who dyes his hair and in all his photos, whether 20 or 70, has the SAME hair style and color...ha!

What'll global warming do for us? They say it may put us underwater. Which'll reverse some of the pricey trends of all that "swampland in Florida" real estate ...maybe... :)