By Trish | Are you a gardener who plants annuals for the cooler season, or do you call it a year and let your landscape be bare until spring? |
. Pansies have not arrived yet at my local nursery, but when they do I usually use 6 flats of them. They will be here in another couple of weeks. I have color for the entire fall and the pansies usually make it all the way through to spring - so I don't have to put in spring pansies - they are already there and blooming like mad 
! I also installed a number of lettuce plants. Lettuce is all I deal with in the veggie garden this time of year.
Here I am thinking how chilly it will be this weekend when the front comes through and the entire day's temperature range will be 50-60 degrees. 
Actually we got about 3 inches in the Jacksonville, Florida, area at Christmas time in 1988 I believe. I've seen a flake fall every now and then. But we do get some cold in the winter. In 1984 we had 8 straight days below 20 degrees. Pipes were bursting and well pumps were freezing! Last winter 25 was the coldest morning - but it was also bluebird clear skies. We cover plants that can;t take the cold and bring others indoors. The best solution for me is to grow plants that are cold tolerant. I get a big laugh at all the crotons being sold by the big box stores (Home Depot, etc.) in the spring. People take them home and plant them. Then the first frost comes along 8 months later and they are all dead. What kills me is that they buy them again the next year!! I raised crotons and air layered tens of thousands of them in the 1970's in South Florida for Caple Farms. They can't survive below about 40 degrees in my experience.
