What a great way to start the day 1 week out from the first national show in Gisborne.
A very frosty last 3 days here in Canterbury NZ and the prospect of a couple more frosts also.
Oh well thems the breaks as they say.
Malcolm
Frosty morning
Malcolm ..
The photos you post show something that we Americans go through on a regular basis. I didn’t think this happened in New Zealand! It seems like southern hemisphere is going through a Northern Hemisphere (American Mid West) Spring Season ! !
I remember a very early spring season when on February 27th we had 70 degrees F and a Canadian cold air mass came down quickly within 24 hours and our temps dropped 61 degrees or more ! We only had 24 hours to get ready to cover quite a few clumps of Daffodils in full bloom!. You should have been here to see myself and my Mother running around the place with every bucket and pale we could find, covering everything that was about to open, or was already open. The result was a morning temperature of 8 degrees F (or Minus 13.33 Degrees C) and everything was frozen solid, almost like being dipped in liquid nitrogen. Most of the lower quality clumps ended up like mush withing the week when things warmed up a little more. BUT, most of the things that we covered were not too bad. These had stems broken, but the blooms were generally good.
I empathize, but hopefully you’ll have the late season blooms to work with yet. All the crosses made outdoors prior to this cold snap will also fail, or at least this has been my experience.
I hope everyone down under ends up with something good this season.
Tom Stettner
Malcolm and Rozanne wrote: