permaculture

["Lisa Rollens" <rollens@fidnet.com>]

I live a few hours south of Kathy, in the MO Ozarks and the tree situation 
is terrible.  They say old timers called this a "black spring", altho nobody 
remembers anything "this" bad.  The sassafras trees took it very hard.  I 
heard one person say he thought close to 100% of them in the Ozarks are 
dead.  He had an over-100 year old one in his yard, 122 inches 
circumference, and it appears dead.  Sycamore trees were also very hard hit. 
They are still easy to see as they have very few leaves and the white trunks 
stick up suspiciously among all the green surrounding leaves.  The oaks seem 
to be coming back altho they have lots of dead twigs that are now falling. 
The acorn crop is a moot question....none.  Mimosa trees got hit very hard 
too, killing plenty to the ground, and maybe permanently.  Japanese maples 
seemed to die easily and I have even heard reports of dead redbuds and 
dogwoods, altho both of those could come back from the roots.  Many grape 
vines are dead, some of mine included, and the tame blackberry crop is 
barely there this year.  Blueberry crop is non-existent, and there are 
hardly any strawberries either, but the plants have recovered.

I think a lot of it depended on where one lived with all these hills and 
hollows.  18 degrees was predicted, but one acquaintance had 12 degrees, and 
it even killed most of what was in her unheated greenhouse.  Those of us 
"permie" types around are really thinking about future plantings, given even 
more erratic weather predicted for the future.  One thing I thought is 
interesting is that there is talk of changing the climatic zones, due to 
global warming.  Summers may be warmer, but if winters come and smack us 
like it did this year, we will have to add that to our plans, too.

By the way, I had frost the last two mornings down in my bottom field 
garden.  Not a killing frost, except for the basil, thank goodness, because 
all but hot season veggies are already planted, but highly unusual anyway.

Lisa, in the MO Ozarks


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Marimike6@cs.com>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2007 8:03 AM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Frozen trees


> Last month Kathy Evans had this comment:
>
> "In the Midwest USA, we had a bad cold snap a few weeks ago, preceded by 
> very
> warm weather. Everything had been blooming and leafing out, and the new
> leaves and catkins and such were frozen. Now, 3 weeks later, many of the 
> large
> trees throughout our woodlands, oaks and sycamores and hickories and more, 
> look
> completely dead. Does anyone have experience with this....will they come 
> back
> this year or at least next? Thanks, Kathy "
>
> Have all your trees leafed out by now? We had the same problem down here 
> in
> Zone 7 (North Carolina), where a late frost blackened our new leaves and
> flowers.
>
> Crape myrtles, saucer magnolias, crabapples, tulip poplars and a number of
> other species all looked dead as a doornail for weeks. All are now doing 
> fine.
>
> Has your experience been as good?
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