No idea D, good luck and have fun with the snow, I thought I'd share some as I had too much for my taste today lol.
That was the hardest Spring frost in decades here. The leaves that were out have been hammered. A very sad day for my maples !!!
I feel sorry for you and your maples D, hoping they will push new leaves as soon as this bad weather will be gone. I did not check mines yet but I had only -1C this night and should have -3C tonight...they may get damaged at some point after this coming night although I try to protect them the best I can. My worries are for my biggest Kotohime that had leafed and got fully damaged last month....he has already made new leaves but i wonder seriously if he can handle a second loss and make a third come back...seems to much energy asked IMO.
A third flush is really hard work for them, but they are survivors and stronger than we often give them credit for. I checked my garden thermometer at 0500hrs and it was reading -7° C, although the weather app was saying -5 ° C. Ridiculous for so called Spring. Hope your snow gave you the insulation we were talking about, I hope it did. Good luck for tonight, I will be keeping my fingers crossed for everyone.
Really sorry to hear it, D. -7° is a difficult frost to withstand. Indeed, as I understand it, maples have only 1 set of "emergency buds" and once the are used up the plant will die. That is not to say that all of the buds are used in the second flush, but as D said it is hard for them. The good news is usually that between the first and second flush there is typically around 6 weeks, enough time to rule out further frost. We had "only" -2.8°C last night along with some welcome snow, so hoping for the best. There will certainly be damage but these days I just hope to get through spring with no outright losses... Still expecting between -1 and -2 tonight before the end of the episode. 'Orange Dream'
-3 in Northampton in the early hours but my garden is very sheltered..all looks ok so far.. sorry to hear it was harsh elsewhere
BBC just put up this video demonstrating some interesting frost fighting techniques. Not too far from @AlainK in the Touraine: 'Smokescreen is like sunglasses for the vines'
Don't think my neighbours would be to pleased with this technique, lol. But a 'very good' point made. I sprayed last night and first thing this morning to carry out a similar effect. ie, To stop them drying out too quickly and dehydrating the leaves.
The prospect of being locked down with only New World wine is not a great one for me..apologies to New World contributors!
When on TV they showed record temperatures, with Orléans : -5.4° C, the coldest recorded temperature for 6th April since 1938, it was... -1.7 in my garden, in the coldest place exposed North/North-West. They also "predicted" some snow and hail, none of that at all, and moderate wind, even that it felt cold at soùme 9°C in the afternoon. -0.5 this morning, 11° c this afternoon, and probably no frost tomorrow morning.
Is it going to be yet another year of records?? Sadly I think that this is the shape of things to come.
The climate in the Loire valley has always been lauded for being mild, "la douceur du pays angevin", etc. Years ago, in the south, where they grow apricot, one technique was to water the trees so the ice-film on the buds would protect them down to -2° C, and another method was to burn... used tyres so the smoke, and the soot falling on the flowers would prevent them from being frozen. Now, the "greens" would crucify them, but I'm pretty surte that it is still done in some places... I love apricots, one of my favourite fruit, and I prefer to buy locally.
I've been doing this for quite a few years now, a tip from an old maple grower. It does work, to about 80 % of the time, but -7° C, not so sure...
LOL. Especially the New World wined we can buy in France: wines from outside the country are barely acknowledged here, most places will stock sort of "one of each" meaning Spanish and Italian, maybe cheap Chile and US if you're "lucky". The Drome man! My favorite apricots, amazing concentration of flavor. You're lucky to be able to get local ones, but that's what comes from living in "the garden of France." It would be nice to be able to grow them, but we've failed here twice, and since it takes so long for fruit trees to get going, that's enough. I don't know anyone who is successful with them here, though just a bit south in the Sarthe the do pretty well.
Thank you for the informations about emergency buds, always good to learn new things. At the same time, when i look at your pictures of Orange dream you don't seems so worried so maybe i should not aswell... Still looking forward to see the frost gone and enjoy more warmer days.
Let alone a bottle of English sparkling wine from the south coast in Intermache..I dont think so lol..some of which are very good as it happens. Unsurprisingly - the French stocking of foreign wine is reciprocated in the US, I could not find more than one token bottle of French wine in a supermarket the size of a small town! I think we are very lucky here in the U.K. we get a pretty good selection all in..aside from a good selection of French wine, which is my go to..we do get some great Argentinian Mendoza and some V.good Californian Zinfandel, if you know what you’re looking for. I would however grumble about the cost.. a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse, Fume, Sancerre orCrozes-Hermitage is well north of £20!
The best wines you can taste are those from local producers, and all of them have their own characteristics. I don't really appreciate wines that are made with chips of oaks in metal barrels to artificially give them some taste, most of the time very "heavy" wines. I much prefer local wines like ones you can have when having a meal in a cheap restaurant near Napoli, slightly sparkling, very refreshing, or if you like something with more "body", a red wine near Cahors. With a real "cork", not plastic - not to mention metal screw tops. Fake art. For making wine is an art. In Britain, I drink (excellent) local ale, beer from the keg, not the kind of white vinegar with sugar and chemicals they call "wine"... Buy local, drink local ;0) And be sober, oeuf corse.
Ah, well now! I agree there are some good sparkling wines from the chalky Sussex hills now. They're coming along. There are bad ones too, but that's true of anywhere including France. The subject of wine closures is fraught, bark closures of course being relatively (a century or two!) new and bringing plenty of problems of their own. Not to mention the state and availability of cork from oaks. I'm a fan of the natural, slow interchange of oxygen with wine through bark, somewhat of the mystery of old bottles. But to keep a Alsace Riesling fresh and clean, not to mention most whites or reds (given that a huge majority of wine is made to drink young), a screw top is far preferable for quality. There is a problem that they aren't really recyclable, there are glass corks too but they all have a plastic seal. But who can forget the "premox" scandal of white Bourgognes, so many spoiled by bad corks, perhaps 10-15 years ago? I agree that making wine is art, why spoil the picture with a poor closure? Let the terroir and skill of the maker speak frankly. I lived in SF for over 4 years, and can't really agree that French wines aren't available, they are often less dear than CA wines even there, and less than in France too since no 20% VAT. There are some very good wines being made, though often expensive indeed. Not to many oak tea bags outside of the big industrial producers, the same as in France, Australia, SA, etc. I truly love some of those Paso Robles Zins. As you might guess from the tenor of all this, we're big wine fans and have traveled quite a bit, and transported a lot of wine, to maintain a cellar. We're lucky to have had good ones, cold, that permit long aging. Although we do of course buy from the Intermarche :) most of what we have is bought on site, including the 1990 Font de Michelle pictured below, which we drank on Easter. It was incredible, and by far the best bottle at that age we've had in some time. The price in 1992 was the equivalent of €10, which is why it's worth it to put up wine. We were given the glasses during the visit, our first there, so I guess we were enthusiastic! Now we see the children of the then owners every now and again. We more frequently visit the Loire, it's closer, and there are some wonderful wines being made, though sadly (for me) not the bargains they once were. To move back towards the topic, this little A. negundo 'Aureomarginatum' in the other picture seems OK after the frosts, though I took the picture before. They're pretty tough maples, the negundos. Ben, oeuf. (Knock on wood).
@AlainK @emery I thought this was flamingo, what do you think??? it lost its label a few years ago..first two photos were taken just now, the last was June last year.
It doesn't look like mine at all. I don't think it's a "negundo", I think it could be a different species with the same cultivar name.
