We are suffering from peculiar weather in the south-west Scotland area. We’ve had a mild, wet winter and now it’s warm, dry and sunny with frost at night. There is a problem with the plants being a bit confused about whether they are full of the joys of spring or if they should be hibernating. It is confusing me as well because I spend time bringing plants back into the greenhouse at night when they should be safely outdoors by now.
The magnolia tree was in bud for so long and the moment the buds started to open, the frost got to some of them, thankfully it was just the early buds and the rest of it is bursting into blossom unscathed.
The cocktail kiwi has again started to throw out leaf buds, first attempts by earlier ones were killed by the frost. Lime caviar trees are frost-tender and I am so surprised mine is still alive. It was kept in the greenhouse then put out when I thought the frost had passed. How wrong I was, it came back with a vengeance (the frost not the tree) and the poor tree was suffering just as much damage getting moved in and out the greenhouse so I tried wrapping it with fleece. The spikes on the tree are lethal and trying to wrap fleece round it was not the easiest of tasks, especially when it not only held the fleece in a death grip but I was constantly getting impaled on the spikes.
The arctic bramble seemed to disappear completely during winter, so it was a
welcome sight to see little green shoots appear, even surviving the frosts and now starting to produce the little magenta flowers. As one of the pleasures of growing edible produce is being able to beat the slugs to a tasty berry now and again and the arctic bramble doesn’t produce a large harvest at any particular time, but fruits throughout the summer.
My Victoria plum tree was new last year so I am pleased to see a few blossoms on it this year. Whether it will produce fruit this year, I will just need to wait and see. In the meantime I have an unusual spell of dry weather to deal with.
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