It's Florida, hot is to be expected, but boy is it ever hot. Temperature gauge on the car read 103 the other day. The plants wilt even when the soil is wet and nursery hang tags that recommend "full sun", never had Florida sun in mind.
I love going to the nursery and seeing plants for sale that have never lived in Florida. By the way their heads are hanging, they aren't too thrilled about visiting either! But the unsuspecting tourists buy plants slated for zones a tad further north than hell or ones that are okay for hell but like it that way all year. Here in central Florida, we do get a break from the mind-numbing heat for a few weeks each year, just enough break to kill those truly tropical plants.
Central Florida, North Central Florida, anything above Tampa makes gardening an extreme challenge. You better be able to survive disappointment. We've started tomatoes indoors to give them a good head start before the blazing heat gets here. We wait until March 1 to put them out and then we get a late frost. Bye, bye tender tomato plants. We go ahead and put out more that are small, purchased from the nursery, they grow, they're green and beautiful and full of blossoms, then the devil breathes, the temps hit 90 the day after the low was 50 at night and the plant is yellow, blossoms are falling off and fruit never sets. If one little one was brave enough to form, the bugs, the heat and the wilt finish him off. It's a hard life for plants!
I do have two Surinam cherry bushes in my yard, but I have to baby them all winter with lights and blankets. They're worth it when I see those little pumpkin-shaped fruits appear in Spring. This is their third year in the ground and they actually seem to be acclimatizing pretty well. It was touch and go for awhile, but they look better this year than ever.
Hibiscus will survive here too, but they do like to be up close to the house and on the coldest days, they require a blanket to protect from freezing. I feel sorry for our neighbors whose banana trees are lovely this time of year, but die back to the ground come winter. I don't think they've seen one banana, let alone a bunch, but they persevere. (Yes, they are northern transplants and got suckered into the purchase at the Lowe's sale). Lowe's should be ashamed of themselves for selling the plants they do.
If a tag says the plant survives temperatures of -10 or lower, the poor thing is not going to survive a heat index upwards of 110. It just isn't possible. I even saw primroses for sale this Spring and a poor man so excited to have found them here. All Lowe's did was set up him for disappointment. They will not survive long enough to re-bloom. By the end of April they will be fading and dead, dead, the middle of May.
I'm a Floridian by birth. I've lived all over the state and I truly resent the northerners that say we're slow or lazy. We aren't slow, we're conserving energy. It's hot here! We are strong and resilient and able to withstand disappointment. Remember that tomato crop? I hear those of the northern persuasion gripe on and on about the heat, the bugs, the storms. Those of us born here, just roll with the punches and accept what we're given to deal with. We learn life is full of disappointment, but it's also full of joy and amazement when we actually collect enough tomatoes to can for the winter. (Thankfully, that's only a month and a half, we can make those 8 cans stretch that far)!
I love going to the nursery and seeing plants for sale that have never lived in Florida. By the way their heads are hanging, they aren't too thrilled about visiting either! But the unsuspecting tourists buy plants slated for zones a tad further north than hell or ones that are okay for hell but like it that way all year. Here in central Florida, we do get a break from the mind-numbing heat for a few weeks each year, just enough break to kill those truly tropical plants.
Central Florida, North Central Florida, anything above Tampa makes gardening an extreme challenge. You better be able to survive disappointment. We've started tomatoes indoors to give them a good head start before the blazing heat gets here. We wait until March 1 to put them out and then we get a late frost. Bye, bye tender tomato plants. We go ahead and put out more that are small, purchased from the nursery, they grow, they're green and beautiful and full of blossoms, then the devil breathes, the temps hit 90 the day after the low was 50 at night and the plant is yellow, blossoms are falling off and fruit never sets. If one little one was brave enough to form, the bugs, the heat and the wilt finish him off. It's a hard life for plants!
I do have two Surinam cherry bushes in my yard, but I have to baby them all winter with lights and blankets. They're worth it when I see those little pumpkin-shaped fruits appear in Spring. This is their third year in the ground and they actually seem to be acclimatizing pretty well. It was touch and go for awhile, but they look better this year than ever.
Hibiscus will survive here too, but they do like to be up close to the house and on the coldest days, they require a blanket to protect from freezing. I feel sorry for our neighbors whose banana trees are lovely this time of year, but die back to the ground come winter. I don't think they've seen one banana, let alone a bunch, but they persevere. (Yes, they are northern transplants and got suckered into the purchase at the Lowe's sale). Lowe's should be ashamed of themselves for selling the plants they do.
If a tag says the plant survives temperatures of -10 or lower, the poor thing is not going to survive a heat index upwards of 110. It just isn't possible. I even saw primroses for sale this Spring and a poor man so excited to have found them here. All Lowe's did was set up him for disappointment. They will not survive long enough to re-bloom. By the end of April they will be fading and dead, dead, the middle of May.
I'm a Floridian by birth. I've lived all over the state and I truly resent the northerners that say we're slow or lazy. We aren't slow, we're conserving energy. It's hot here! We are strong and resilient and able to withstand disappointment. Remember that tomato crop? I hear those of the northern persuasion gripe on and on about the heat, the bugs, the storms. Those of us born here, just roll with the punches and accept what we're given to deal with. We learn life is full of disappointment, but it's also full of joy and amazement when we actually collect enough tomatoes to can for the winter. (Thankfully, that's only a month and a half, we can make those 8 cans stretch that far)!
