South Florida

Where are all the folks from S. Florida?

I'm here learning how to navigate through all of this

Hi Val

Jan

Hi Jan, how are you doing?

Exciting stuff this cubits thing. Have been lurking for a while trying to get the hang of it. Still a bit confused (age is showing up lately), but enjoying what I'm seeing so far. Have some ideas for some of my own, but not sure if I'll have the time to manage them properly as lately I just don't have the time to spend in front fo the putter most days

How did your garden fare with the cold weather we had? Mine took a beating and I actually lost quite a few plants. That was a first (from cold) in the 30 years I've been gardening here in SFL.

Hi Val
I brought in some plants so they were good. Lost all my coleus but took a few cuttings first, I got alot of browning but there is new growth starting on most, I have alot of aroids in small pots tay I covered with about 6 inches if hay that actually faired well. It has been a miserable
winter so far,

Gee! I'm surrounded by north or south fla's. Are there no central??

Jan, that's good news. Your coleus would hopefully come back nicely.

All of the plants that I brought inside fared well. My orchids on the other hand did suffer because I had them for 12 days inside the garage with little light, and no humidity. I will have another year without flowers it seems. I kept them outside during the cold snap at the beginning of 09 and that set them back. Now it will be worse.
Many of my plants are recovering, but some are taking longer than expected. Time will tell.
Last year was a bad year for my garden. Between drought, then drenching rains, drought again and cold snaps they got weakened and every bug known to mankind attacked them. At times I feel like giving up. It's been very frustrating.
One thing for sure, mother nature took care of what I needed to get rid of
I have a ton of work to do to get my garden back to normal and this time I will pare down considerably.

Good morning all, very glad to see this "cubit" getting active, hope it continues

Yep, it take time for new things to happen.

Val, are you going to "deep water" what you have outside? I just got finished in anticipation of our newest cold front that's coming. I did it during the last cold spell and can verify that it made all the difference in the world. Nothing died.

Jim, my plants are looking so bad right now that I won't be doing anything special for them this time around. Some have new growth on them and this surely will hurt them even further, but I just can't (and don't have the energy either) to start covering them. I have thousands of plants and it's just not feasible. I will bring my Vandas, Phals, and any other orchid that has buds or flowers inside. Also, some of my rare plants that are in pots. My Lisptick Palm, Taccas, a couple of rare Anthuriums and a few more will go in my garage as soon as I'm done here.
The rest will have to fend on their own. Tonight my sprinklers go on so they'll get some water.

What can I say, out of lemons make lemonade so I see this as an opportunity to have nature do the selection for me. I needed to rethink and redo portions of my gardens and it's being done through these series of nature problems. Those that are strong, and healthy will remain, the rest will come out. When replanting, I'll be replacing many with sturdier species and a lot more natives.
It's hard for me to say this because I've always been drawn to rare plants and those are the first to suffer when nature is capricious, but this time I will be more selective.

BTW, I said that after Wilma and got carried away when I redid my whole garden. You should think I would have learned my lesson, but no HA HA HA
Maybe this time I'll learn

See, it's a truism,"we grow too soon old and to late smart" , I sure do understand about your lack of energy, I get tired just thinking about what I have to do on any given day.

One of my kids I call Mike gonna, because he's always "gonna" do his chores, later. I guess I've turned into dad gonna. I'm gonna weed if the weather breaks, I'm gonna try bog gardening (some day) etc,etc.

Jim, that's a good one I should start calling my son that too

I think we probably all have kids with that middle name although mine usually answers to "later" or "tomorrow".

You are right Jan, they all do. A generation of tomorrow, later, or gonna. We are in trouble

There is a lot of wind right now and although it's supposed to get warmer it doesn't feel so warm at this moment. I'm keeping my plants in the garage until the temperatures normalize a bit.. Many of my orchids are in my dining room. I should take them out for a little while to spritz them with water, but I'm not in the mood to move them in and out right now.

I'm in the same boat Val, but I went out shopping and starting sweating with my jacket on, so I put all my seedlings out and watered them. They dried out quickly due to us having the heat on, I've lost 7 of my seedlings.

Oh no Jim, sorry to hear that. What kind of seedlings did you lose?

In a month or so I'm going to have a few plants to give away. If you are interested you can come get them. The only catch is that whoever wants them they'll have to dig them out. I'll post a list of them by the time I'm ready. It wouldn't be good to be moving plants around with the yo-yo temps. we are having.