Areas with very low humidity sometimes have sharp drops in temperatures once the sun goes down. Could that be the case in Melbourne, Australia? If so, it may be that your night time temperatures are the culprits.
Jim Shields At 04:17 PM 1/15/2011 -0500, you wrote: >As a gardener who is always trying new plants, many of which are unlikely >to succeed under my conditions. I m also interested in ways to retain >plants adapted to climates very different to my own. Speaking very >broadly, the easiest plants to accommodate in this regard are herbaceous >plants which are not in active growth during the winter and not cold hardy >enough to survive without protection of some sort. Herbaceous plants of >comparable winter hardiness but which are in active growth during the >winter form another group for which, under my conditions, cold frames have >often provided an acceptable solution. > > > >After you ve been doing this for a while, it becomes apparent that it is a >lot easier to accommodate slightly cold tender plants than to accommodate >plants which do not thrive in heat and humidity. Other than Nearing >frames, I don t know of any practical solution for such plants. I don t >consider putting plants into the refrigerator a practical solution, >although I ve done it for certain plants. > > > >Here s why I m bringing this up: where I live, in the greater Washington, >D.C. area, I grow a few martagon lilies but am not notably successful with >this group. I m not the only one, and the traditional explanation for >their poor performance is that they can t take the heat. Until recently, I >never much challenged that explanation. But I ve learned that martagons >are grown successfully in the State of Victoria, Australia. One Melbourne >area grower I ve had a bit of correspondence with experiences temperatures >in the range of 30-35º C (86-95 F) in the shade, but on rare occasions up >to 45 º C (113 F) in the shade and even higher in the sun. > > > >But there is one big difference between here and there: the relative >humidity during Melbourne s hot season is about 5%; here it s closer to >100% at times. > > > >So I ve changed my lament from blame the heat to blame the humidity . > > > >If it culprit is the humidity, can anyone explain in layman s terms the >physiological basis for that? > > > >Jim McKenney > ><mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] > >Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 > >My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com > >BLOG! <http://mcwort.blogspot.com/>http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ > > > >Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS > >Editor PVC Bulletin <http://www.pvcnargs.org>http://www.pvcnargs.org > > > >Webmaster Potomac Lily Society ><http://www.potomaclilysociety.org>http://www.potomaclilysociety.org > > > > > > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Alpine-l mailing list >[email protected] >http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
