Viewing post #1291564 by RoseBlush1

needrain said:That's a huge difference between me and you, then. Once the daytime temps are reaching into the 90sF and above, the nighttime temps are in the 70s-80sF. It generally stays warm overnight. After a few weeks of it, the soil temp rises and stays warm well down into the fall months.

I think that's going to impact on which plants will perform well for you.

Absolutely. It was a real "first" for me and it was difficult for me to understand exactly what I was seeing. I knew I was giving the plants more than enough water, but they were still looking water stressed. It was only when I couldn't sleep at night because of the heat that I realized that the night temps were not cooling off ...

The other really big inhibiting factor here is the erratic temperature swings in the winter months. We might have 3-4 weeks of really warm day temps with lows only into the 50sF, followed by a week where the night temps are in the teensF and day temps hovering somewhere in the 30sF. Those temperature extremes can happen even into the early spring months. Plants have to have the ability to recover if they've been tricked into active growth by a spell of warm temps. That ability is variable among plants and, as a grower, even when they do recover a whole season is lost as far as the purpose of growing the plant.

Generally, I only have that problem at the end of January and then temps get cold again and then gradually start warming up through the end of March. No more real ups and downs. It doesn't seem to hurt the plants much, but then I don't have a wide variety of plants in the garden, yet. The roses just stall until conditions are right for them to get going.