Can we talk a bit about Zone Denial?

I'm new to gardening so help me out. I'm a bit confused about "Zone Denial." Is it one or more of the following?

Zone Denial:
A. Moving half or more of your plants indoors when the season changes.
B. Keeping plants in a temperature controlled greenhouse... for life.
C. Buying replacement plants once a year.
D. Successfully growing things where it was said it wasn't possible by covering things with sheets and / or shadecloth as needed.
E. Successfully growing things where it was said it wasn't possible and NOT covering or shading.
F. Other (no name calling!)

Now I bring this up because I've been working up a sweat (very much out of character) the past few days in my formerly barren Tucson courtyard. Every label *claims* it lives in my zone but I get a lot of "Are you really going to plant THAT? In our heat and sun?!?!" So I dig and I worry about the blazing sun and searing temperatures to come... and my water bill. And I try to figure out how to rig up a few beach umbrellas - just in case.

So then tonight I get a call from a neighbor asking if I had heard it was going to freeze tonight. I hadn't. Out I went and covered 98 plants. 98. Okay I skipped a few but you get the idea. Thank goodness I grouped them - and had 40 or so nicely clustered together in their pots, patiently awaiting my rocky soil. Plus I moved another 7 inside. Maybe I didn't need to move or cover all that I did but I didn't have time to check through my list of things to see which needed it and which didn't. Perhaps I should do that before the next freeze... but I digress.

I will cover for frost (because I'll only have to do it, I don't know, maybe 20 times a year at most) but I was kidding about the umbrella. If something gets wilty on me I *may* dig it up and move it to a shady spot. If it doesn't make it in the shade... *sigh*

I figure that no matter what True Zone Denial entails, I don't yet qualify - if ever. My plants would have to get through a full year first. Perhaps I am a Worried Optimist. Or maybe an Optimistic Worrier.

Am I the only one here with a confidence deficiency?

Jen (54 in the ground, 44 to go... if they survive tonight's freeze, that is)

I'm definitely zone denial type A. LOL

I plant lots of things in pots so I can haul them into the crawl space in the fall for winter storage.

This involves letting them go dormant and lose their leaves in the garage first. (DH hates this part, ...but..., I think it's best because then the leaves aren't in the crawl space. At least I can sweep the garage). Then I store them for 6 months in the crawl space, and haul them out again in the spring.

It's a disease. :)

I love your definition! I suffer from Zone denial, too. I have two greenhouses full of zone denial, Love it.

BettyDee

Maybe we need a support group. My husband has back problems due to my ZD. We could have a 12 step program but we'd probably have to add a couple steps just to make our lives more complicated.

My Zone Denial has taken over most rooms in the upstairs of my house and has filtered quite liberaly downstairs .

Zone denial? Why, of course not! It's perfectly natural to have lemon and mandarin trees, banana, passionflower and pineapple plants in Nova Scotia. I'm not in denial. Really.

Rhonda

I developed my zone denial early in life. When I met my husband, I was teaching high school bioIogy and chemistry. I was asked to teach, through night school, general and organic chemistry to some community college nursing students who couldn't handle the accelerated speed of college. This led to being asked to teach a on houseplants. Naturally I needed to know my subject better and I needed samples to show the class so I went wild buying different kinds of house plants. I didn't realize how bad I had gotten until my husband made me take down the hanging ivy that I had hug by the window directly over his head . He said he drew the line at seeing this thing hang over him everytime he opened his eyes.
BettyDee

Well, Rhonda in NS, we might outta trade some plants. Would you like a Lilac? They are notoriously impossible to grow in Texas but I spent all winter putting ice on it so it might flower for you by mid-spring. 'Course, right now her survival is a little doubtful. I have several others you might be interested but I'd miss the extra work so much :>)!

I blame the online nurseries. If they wouldn't make the catalog and online photos so enticing we wouldn't have to insist on trying to grow them. And then there's always our parents who forced us to be such overacheivers :>) Who else can we foist responsibility on for this problem we're having?

The Jones's?

I was beginning to think this thread was never meant for my attention, but since we have another Southern here, I feel more comfortable.

I can't talk about bringing plants in, or having a greenhouse, or any of that. When I started gardening 3 years ago, I bought everything that was pretty. Being in the tropics, I do get a little bored with the sameole sameole. Almost 100% of the plants I bought online the first year died, due to my ignorance about zones and sun and heat etc.

Well, I'm not so ignorant anymore, just stubborn and determined. I WILL buy plants that I like for zone 9 or less. I just have to take extra care in placement etc. I am growing hostas, heucheras, violas, rudbeckias, coneflowers, sedums, spiderwort, leonitis, and many others, so many things no one down here has even heard of (unless they are snowbirds).

Zone Denial? You bet I got it, and I'm keeping it!!!

Molly
:^))))

Edited to say: I think there is probably no hope for my lilac either. Maybe if there are still viable roots, I will take her up for the Florala Roundup and send her north.

This message was edited Mar 16, 2005 7:28 PM

Oh heck, I thought you were gonna talk about ME!

I didn't even think about someone having that screenname! Please say you aren't offended!?

LOL at zonedenial! I've actually thought that certain foods and flowers were named after me... ;)

I'm a C, D, E, and F Please let me know when the 12 step meetings will be held. :-)

A......Florida is taking over my house! Ü The semi & tropical plants have all available windowspace for 9 months of the year and my basement fridge is filled with waterlilies.

This message was edited Mar 17, 2005 6:32 PM

So denial ain't just a river in Eygpt, eh?

Geez, you think it's contagious? Let's take that subject up at our first meeting. Which, by the way, I need to postpone. I have to water my new plants every two hours... at least until I get the misting system installed. ;)

Oh, Jen, you didn't set up this thread just for that punch line, didja?! ;)

Say, have I got the plant for you! Got refrigeration? It's only hardy from Zones 2-7, but oh, so pretty... *giggle*

Oh, gotta have it, gotta have it!

LOL! :)

What about type A, subtype TZ (tropical zone)? Where you *refrigerate* plants so they get enough winter chill...

I started the old lady syndrome this year where you have the sweats all the time? I asked my DH for a meat freezer thinking that my lilacs and I would spend the winter in it but he thought it was unreasonable...can you imagine how pretty my lilacs would be right now? AND in BIG D, no less!

LOLOL........it's amazing what we will do for plants that aren't meant for our zones. I'm always amazed how many in the higher zones want to grow Lilacs but then I think about what I want that isn't ever seen here.

Aren't most of us who grow brugs in zone denial. If I didn't have so many brug seedlings and cuttings in my gh, plus the 5 in large pots, I would have lots of room for the 100s of seedlings in there. and then i am moving my largest tomato seedlings, some special house plant cuttings, and lots of other things that aren;t ready yet for zone 5 weather. Well at least it is at last raining lightly and no frost tonight. DonnaS

I guess I gotta sign up

I don't like to think I'm in denial

I'm simply have blond moments when I see the zone on the tag

all that means is if it says zone 7 I have to buy 7 of them so they can stay on the same zone together

'course my GH wouldn't have gone up if I
acted like I knew what was ment by those silly ZONE numbers
BEFORE I bought the plants
But since I had them,and paid money for them
Had to save them....LOL

I am most definitely in zone denial. Proof is the fact that I am in love with Tropical Hibiscus and live in a Hardy Hibiscus zone-and I'm planting the Tropicals. What confuses me even more is that I have done most of my studying of plants from the Western Garden Book so I have Sunset's zones neatly in my mind then I have to try to corolate that with the USDA zones and they are in the process of changing their zoning. Oh, for a Greenhouse, and I could stop worrying about zones!!! Dotti

Dotti,

When I lived in San Jose, CA, Sunset's Western Garden Book way my gardening bible. USDA zones will only tell you plant hardiness. Greenhouses are great. My younger son built an 8' X 8' greenhouse a year ago this past December.. I quickly filled it with orchids and pitcher plants. My zone denial led me to start a citrus collection. My dear husband gave me a large greenhouse from FarmTek this past Christmas so I could overwinter my zone denial purchases. Poor babies had to spend a month in the barn! Not everything does well in a greenhouse. I had to scramble around wrappping pots to keep the rootballs from freezing. My mini apple trees are in pots.
BettyDee

I am trying to figure how to afford a greenhouse, but my DH keeps pointing out things that really have more priority - such as bills, food, car payment, new glasses for me, repair the floor in the hall, and I am sure he could think of a half-dozen more. I will get one eventually, but when is the question. In the meantime he get to listen to me cry when I lose a plant. It serves him right. LOL. Dotti