Winter is hitting this weekend

[redcrx]

The forecast is for low 30s this weekend which means about 28 here. That should knock out most stuff. I am bringing my non-hardy plants into the garage today - pulled them out of the garden yesterday and left them sitting on the side of the house last night letting them get hit with the sprinkler. A flex oncidium orchid has two huge branching spikes on it. I have an aphid problem with it in the garage that I have to watch all winter. One of my night blooming cereus has four small buds which I will probably lose in the garage - it already had two flowers on September 5 which I was lucky enough to see - they opened about 9 PM.

[Tigger]

Yeah, Steve is on agave patrol today, moving those dangerous things indoors. We'll see if this snap is enough to knock down the big tropical canna (which has to be overwintered under lights, not as bare tubers).

I just hope there's enough juice left in the hostas to ripen some seed pods I want. I might have to cut them and try the sugar water thing. I got a number of streaky pods from 'Lightning Flash'; they were controlled crosses (mostly with 'Ringtail'), but I didn't keep records of which pod got which pollen.

[lessa's dh]

It's just for the next 2 days - should be back to seasonal on Monday .... still far too much to do!!

[ViolaAnn]

Up in Ottawa it didn't get warmer until today and that's just for one day, The temps are heading back into frost area. We had a good killing frost over the weekend. Fortunately, I got most of my potted hostas sunk into my veggie garden over the weekend.

[kHT]

Been watching the news and love the snow photos from back east. They say we are going to have a warmer
winter and I'm seeing some of the azealas bloom now.

[Chris_W]

Hopefully everyone got to their tender plants taken care of in time. We really lucked out and didn't get frost in our hosta growing areas. Up on the hill the hostas are down for the count, but down below there was enough moisture to prevent frost from settling and some hostas still look pristine, which is kind of nice. We have all the rows tagged and now I just have to get the maps and inventory done. Next frost here is predicted a week from tomorrow, so should be plenty of time. In the meantime we are busy planting the fern crops for 2016 and 2017. Some ferns develop faster than others but we really ramped up production on ferns this year to hopefully keep up with the demand.

Enjoy the fall while it lasts - winter isn't too far off

[redcrx]

I mentioned that I brought my night-blooming cereus into the garage for the winter. I said it had four buds - it actually had six and five developed and opened. Of course since was in the garage and out of sight, I forgot to check on it until today. So no good pictures.