{"id":2898,"date":"2019-11-11T06:54:56","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T14:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2898"},"modified":"2019-11-11T06:54:56","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T14:54:56","slug":"the-big-chilly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/the-big-chilly\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Chilly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Big<\/a>The rubber has hit the road in my garden.\u00a0 This past week, the weather people all forecasted the first serious cold snap of the late fall season.\u00a0 That meant that anything tender left outside was doomed.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t planning on this development, but clearly I forgot to notify Mother Nature of my plans.\u00a0 On the afternoon before the big chill, I was only halfway finished with the task of bringing in the houseplants.\u00a0 The icy fingers of the cold blast loomed large, the number of daylight hours was small, and it was imperative to get the job done immediately.<\/p>\n

The shivering plectranthus and the chilly geraniums would have been better off had they been able to walk into the house unaided, but they have a stubborn stationery disposition.\u00a0 Clearly some human help was needed.\u00a0 The five amaryllis residing in separate pots on the porch would have been easier to move if they had been in a single large pot, but the urgent situation made that idea irrelevant.\u00a0 My plants needed the kind of quick action that comes with desperation.<\/p>\n

Why did this happen after I told the world that I could easily multi-task my way through the fall chores?\u00a0 Because even my dedicated multi-tasking was not \u201cmulti\u201d enough to keep up with the large houseplant collection.<\/p>\n

Some might say that I simply have too many houseplants.\u00a0 I won\u2019t even go there.<\/p>\n

Back when I thought I had several more weeks of clement weather, I brought in the porch and backyard plants one or two at a time, washed out their saucers, wiped off the pots and positioned them carefully in the various plant areas around my house.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t risk doing that as the arctic temperatures closed in.<\/p>\n

It was time for horticultural combat conditions.<\/p>\n

I laid down layers of newspaper in corners of my kitchen, foyer and dining room, creating holding areas for the newly house-bound plants and saucers.\u00a0 Setting up holding areas allowed me to get everything inside right away so that I can clean, inspect and repot at leisure over the next few days.\u00a0 It is not ideal, but the plants won\u2019t die.\u00a0 In effect, I simply moved the multi-tasking to a warmer place.<\/p>\n

I grow several full-size rose bushes in large pots flanking the entrance to my lower back garden.\u00a0 These would most likely die if left outside in the winter, so while I was running in and out of the \"Big<\/a>house with plant pots, I paused to drag the roses into the garage for their long winter\u2019s nap.<\/p>\n

My daughter fell in love with cannas this year, extending a multi-year affair with tropical plants, including plumbago, oleander and hibiscus.\u00a0 Needless to say, all of them need overwintering.\u00a0 With the cannas, I had a choice–bring the pots into the house to overwinter, or dig up the bulbs, store them safely in the cellar and replant next year.\u00a0 My daughter would rather have them overwinter, but I saved them for last.\u00a0 With time running out, it was easy enough to dig up the bulbs.\u00a0 It also saves space, which is at a premium.<\/p>\n

For some reason, a number of plant saucers have disappeared.\u00a0 I have a dim memory of a few breaking over the summer, and some remain under the pots of annuals that are in the process of freezing outside.\u00a0\u00a0 A number of my plants will just have to stay on newspaper until I get to the nearest garden center.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good thing that I still get hard copies of the Times <\/em>and the Wall Street Journal.\u00a0 <\/em>Regardless of editorial content, they come in handy for all kinds of garden-related applications.<\/p>\n

Like many other people, I did not get all the bubs in.\u00a0 This first cold snap probably won\u2019t freeze the ground hard, and depending on the temperatures in the coming weeks, I will probably be able to get them planted in the ground. \u00a0In the meantime, they sit accusingly in a box in the coolest part of the kitchen awaiting installation.\u00a0 I can hardly see them amid the crowd of newly-arrived house plants, but my conscience knows they are there.<\/p>\n

If all else fails, they can all be planted in deep pots and join the roses in the garage for the winter.\u00a0 At least this method foils the critters.<\/p>\n

While I make plans for the bulbs, I also notice that I am also running low on potting soil, which I am going to need in order to consolidate the amaryllis and geraniums, not to mention potting up bulbs.\u00a0 My next multi-tasking effort will be combining a trip to the garden center with ten other urgent errands.<\/p>\n

The thing about muli-tasking is that it feels purposeful\u2014even when it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rubber has hit the road in my garden.\u00a0 This past week, the weather people all forecasted the first serious cold snap of the late fall season.\u00a0 That meant that anything tender left outside was doomed.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t planning on this development, but clearly I forgot to notify Mother Nature of my plans.\u00a0 On the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,5],"tags":[255,267,492,2201,2200],"class_list":["post-2898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-winter","tag-autumn-gardening","tag-fall-gardening","tag-houseplants","tag-overwintering-plants","tag-tropical-houseplants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2901,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions\/2901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}