colder than alaska

It’s been a cool sum­mer so far, fol­low­ing on the heels of a sunny but cool spring. I’ve been watch­ing the tem­per­a­tures in the paper for Fair­banks, Alaska, and most days the offi­cial San Diego report has been cooler. In fact it’s been cooler than almost any­where in the US except for maybe Anchor­age in Alaska. Brr.

At my July 4th party I was talk­ing to some­one there with ties to the Scripps Insti­tu­tion of Oceanog­ra­phy, and his thoughts were that this is typ­i­cal for an El Niño year. The phe­nom­e­non that the locals call “May gray” would be slow to get started (as was the case this year), and the dreaded sub­se­quent phe­nom­e­non the we call “June gloom” would drag on longer than usual. All that seems to be happening.

The gar­den natives don’t seem to be wor­ry­ing about the tem­per­a­ture as much as I’ve been. In fact the late-spring bloomers seem to be hav­ing a field day, extend­ing their bloom, look­ing nice at a time of year when they don’t always. Black sage is often done by this time, but there are a few lin­ger­ing flow­er­ing stems.

For stun­ning flow­ers, though, the black sage has passed the baton to Cleve­land sage. Here’s the com­mon and gor­geous cul­ti­var ‘Win­nifred Gilman.’

…and here’s Win­nifred in closeup…

One of local live-forevers, Dud­leya edulis, has had one of the more amaz­ing years that I can remem­ber. Here’s an 18–20 year old plant from above, all cov­ered with flow­ers. In this photo it’s sprawl­ing six feet across from one edge to the other.

The same dud­leya, viewed from ground level as it cas­cades over a short lit­tle retain­ing wall.

The San Miguel Island buck­wheat that I grew from seed two years ago, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, is finally hit­ting its stride, finally look­ing the pho­tos I’ve seen in books. Maybe the cooler weather will keep it look­ing nice longer.

Among the many non-natives that call my gar­den their home, this is Clero­den­drum ugan­dense, finally perk­ing up after look­ing like a twig until late in May. I think it’s been a some­what slow start for this plant this year, but it always waits until the weather warms to look like a plant you want to keep in the garden.

The com­mon orna­men­tal sage, Salvia ‘Hot Lips,’ is grown for its red and white bicol­ored blooms. I’ve heard that it blooms mostly with white flow­ers when weather turns cold. In the left photo these are the only two red and white flow­ers I could find on three plants. The rest of the flow­ers are white. In the depths of win­ter, how­ever, this plant is often com­pletely bicol­ored, so I’m not sure if there’s any truth to this color change rumor.

Some of the plants that I worry about the most are my Amer­i­can pitcher plants, these Sar­race­nia from the South, where the daily low tem­per­a­tures these days are often run­ning ten degrees above the San Diego day­time highs. For­tu­nately these plants seem to respond more to daylength than to tem­per­a­ture, and the plants look pretty good. Still, they might be taller by now where they originate.

Cool as the days may be, one thing told me for sure that I do not live remotely near Alaska. Mon­day night was the grand open­ing of the first giant bloom of this climb­ing cac­tus, prob­a­bly Hylo­cereus unda­tus. Even if it’s prob­a­bly been slow get­ting started this year, it’s prob­a­bly the best proof that I’m over­re­act­ing. Hardy to not much below freez­ing, one hit of arc­tic cold and you’ll freeze this plant’s tuchas off.

At eight to ten inches across, the only shy thing about this plant is that it only opens as dark­ness approaches. Peo­ple in cold climes covet being able to grow plants like this–or in fact many of our more ten­der Cal­i­for­nia natives.

That’s def­i­nite proof, Dorothy. We don’t live in Alaska. It just might feel that way these cool sum­mer days.

July 07 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • • • • • • • • | 13 Comments »

my favorite garden gadget

There are peo­ple who go gaga over gad­gets, and then there are skep­ti­cal folks like me. If I buy gad­get it really has to promise to do some­thing I need it to do. (Case in point: I still don’t own an i-anything. No iPhone, no iPad, not even–gasp!–an iPod.)

But the gad­gets in the gar­den that I really enjoy hav­ing are my two maximum-minimum ther­mome­ters. Imag­ine a device that tells you how hot and cold it got any­where in your gar­den over what­ever time period you like.

I have one in the green­house, where it tells me how hot the tem­per­a­ture got inside while I was at work. This is infor­ma­tion you won’t get from a weather report.

You could also use a pair of them to iden­tify micro­cli­mates around your yard and to answer spe­cific ques­tions like, Is the lower part of a slope more liable to get frost than the top? Or, how much tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence is there between the beds on the north and south sides of the house?

The ver­sions I have are totally ana­log devices where the mer­cury in the ther­mome­ter pushes up a lit­tle piece of metal inside the glass col­umn on both the warm and cold sides. To reset the thing you pull the metal pieces down from the out­side using a mag­net. Prim­i­tive, but effec­tive, as befit­ting a device that was invented in 1782 by James Six.

Yes, I did say that the ther­mome­ters are filled with mer­cury. Mine are over twenty years old. Reg­u­la­tions in many places today would stip­u­late that the fluid be some­thing more envi­ron­men­tally respon­si­ble, but the devices would func­tion the same way. You can also get these in dig­i­tal ver­sions, as well as those that have a dial instead of fluid-filled glass cham­bers. (I gen­er­ally find dial ther­mome­ters to be less accu­rate in gen­eral, however.)

There you have it. My favorite bor­ing lit­tle device. You can’t use them to surf the web or make gelato. But then what use does a plant have with Hulu or Facebook?

May 16 2010 | Categories: gardening | Tags: • • • | 7 Comments »