Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Dormant Tropicals, 1 by glendalekid

glendalekid wrote:
Steven,

I would have thought the P. incarnata would be hardy for you, but, as you say,it could have been that the location was just not right for it. Or maybe your location is a little colder than zone 6a. Tuscaloosa is zone 8b, but we are out of town and up in the hills. I got a couple of thermometers that measure the high temp and low temp for the past 24 hours. I discovered that actually it is zone 7b or even 7a here, as our low temps are nearly 10-15 degrees colder than in town.

I thought my jacaranda had died also, again, because of the damp from the rain when it was in a pot this winter. That seems to have been my biggest problem. Lesson learned, though. However, when my grandson and I were planting out the potted up stuff we inspected the roots of all of them. The jacaranda did appear to have live roots, so we put it in the ground about a month ago. It has leaves coming up from the roots after all. Just saw it today. Yeaaa! I hope it will bloom even though it will probably never get big enough to be a tree. They use jacarandas for street trees in So. CA.

It's hard for me to winter over inside. I don't have any really good place for them to get enough light except in the dining room by the sliding glass door. Problem is I have cats and they play in the potting soil, throwing it all over the place. Winter before last I got white chunky rocks and put on top of the pots. Well, one of the cats decided it was even more fun to take the rocks out and bat them around the house. LOL. Keeping plants in pots and then having to bring them into the house is a big drag for you. No doubt about that. I sure sympathize.

But I do have two very small greenhouses now. I think I can keep them heated by putting one on the front deck and one on the back deck near windows and blow warm air out of the house into the little greenhouses. If this works, it should be a big help.

I did put my dwarf citrus trees in the ground this spring. They are doing fine, but next winter I'll need to cover them. I'm going to be building PVC "cages" like crazy to cover all this stuff. My daughter planted two red passionflowers this spring. In looking them up they should be okay with winter protection. They are kind of marginal here, too.

Karen

Here are my brugs coming back. They are about a foot to two feet high now. Excuse the weeds in the bed. I've pulled them twice and need to do it again.