Hardy perennials
20 April 2018 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe seedling date palms (germinated from date stones that sprouted) that got accidentally forgotten in their pots at the bottom of the garden over the winter turn out to have survived the frost and snow perfectly well.
According to the Web, date palms are actually hardy down to -8C -- possibly because they live in deserts which get extremely cold at night?
The alyssum on my windowsill overwintered happily and is now coming into bloom again; I got rid of the large old plants, so these are mostly the ones that hadn't reached any great size by last autumn. Oddly enough, I had one or two blossoms on the Virginia stocks through the winter (there are currently two, but obviously not the same two as a few months ago). I split some of the dried seed pods and scattered the seed back over the tray, so I'm hoping that the seedlings which are coming up now are second-generation stocks. They may of course be random weeds!
The tobacco-plants made it through the winter, to my surprise, and are now starting to grow again. The tallest one has flower buds. Unsurprisingly, the basil died. The tips of the fennel that touched the glass also died, but the sections further away from the window survived and are now sprouting fresh fern-leaves. The spiky-leaved thing and the presumed yarrow both died this winter without ever coming into identifiable flower (assuming they were actually flowering plants in the first place), and the nightshade died after setting its berries -- presumably in the end I shall have nothing but a tray of perennial alyssum again and shall have to restart.
According to the Web, date palms are actually hardy down to -8C -- possibly because they live in deserts which get extremely cold at night?
The alyssum on my windowsill overwintered happily and is now coming into bloom again; I got rid of the large old plants, so these are mostly the ones that hadn't reached any great size by last autumn. Oddly enough, I had one or two blossoms on the Virginia stocks through the winter (there are currently two, but obviously not the same two as a few months ago). I split some of the dried seed pods and scattered the seed back over the tray, so I'm hoping that the seedlings which are coming up now are second-generation stocks. They may of course be random weeds!
The tobacco-plants made it through the winter, to my surprise, and are now starting to grow again. The tallest one has flower buds. Unsurprisingly, the basil died. The tips of the fennel that touched the glass also died, but the sections further away from the window survived and are now sprouting fresh fern-leaves. The spiky-leaved thing and the presumed yarrow both died this winter without ever coming into identifiable flower (assuming they were actually flowering plants in the first place), and the nightshade died after setting its berries -- presumably in the end I shall have nothing but a tray of perennial alyssum again and shall have to restart.