It is common wisdom in this part of Normandie that you don't put out your pelargoniums until after "les Saints de Glace." (Ice Saints). These are the names days given by the Catholic religion to the 11, 12 and 13th of May: Estelle, Achille, and Rolande. Up until Achille our very cold spring had been without late frosts, and although temperatures rarely passing 12C have kept leaves small there hasn't been any appreciable frost damage. Achille changed all that. The well named Ice Saint put a damper on the festivities with a frost at -3C. (According to local farmers.) Damage is very uneven: The (large) silver maples have great swaths of dying leaves throught the canopies. Other taller plants like trident or capillipes the same. Some areas of the garden appear more or less OK, some just the smallest new leaves are dying back, in others there is pretty heavy damage with a few plants losing all their leaves. Only time will tell if these recover. Sigh. And so it goes. The pelargoniums, anyway, being in window boxes, are just fine. (The seedling maples are all OK too.) -E
Emery, we seem to have had the same weather, but not quite as cold and less damage here. The weather news said the UK experienced its coldest May night temperatures for over ten years on the night between the 11th and 12th; Weather forecasters record coldest May night since 1996 , and some regions reported the coldest for 40 years between the 12th and 13th: Second coldest May night on record. The night between Achille and Rolande was the cold one here. My local weather station 5 miles away reported -0.6°C, but I suspect slightly lower depending on microclimates etc. Fortunately most of the Japanese maples were completely unscathed but some burning on a few, 'Beni tsukasa' showing the most damage. In contrast last night the low was 13.6°C, and we are in for a hot and sunny weekend.
My heart reaches out to you! Where I live we frequently have late frosts that cause significant damage (even death at times). It is the curse of our region. Farmers can have entire crops wiped out. Very sad..
Interesting links, I hadn't known the problem went so far north... It was indeed the morning of Rolande that did the most damage; for some reason I tend to consider it the 12th until dawn of the 13th. :) I was not actually here that night, in Paris it didn't freeze (I've put a few maples on the balcony including a pentaphyllum) but my wife and I both remarked on how cold it was when we noticed that the building heat was turned off. Here Beni tsukasa seems to have escaped unscathed, even though it's not in a particularly sheltered position. Hard to figure. Thanks for the thoughts also K4. It could have been much worse, that's for sure. -E
Fortunately we seemed to escape the worst of it... my Acers are in a pretty sheltered position and are still looking healthy. It was lucky we had some firewood left though! It was chilly in the house that night.
Ah les Saints de Glace!!, it was generally admitted that, with global warming, they had lost their jobs and had been forced into early retirement.... Sorry to hear that Emery, but it sound like a mild frost that did not last for too long. Plants are likely to recover. Each year we have the same thing happening somewhere in the world and I recall some good threads with a lot of feedback on damage thresholds etc., maybe our admafistrator-in-chief could find them and link to them via an FAQ. Gomero
Our last frost days in northern sweden are said to be in 3-4 june,we dont plant the anuals outside before that date. Or you can do an ABBA.... Take a chanse...
Around here the saying is "Ne'er cast a clout til May is out" (don't take off your winter coat until the end of May). Certainly had some sharp frosts last weekend, but they didn't do much damage as the spring has been so cold this year that trees haven't lost their winter frost tolerance yet. But more frost in the next 2 weeks wouldn't be very surprising. I've known June frosts in several years, and once, a centimetre of snow lying in early June.
June frosts! I don't recall seeing that here ever. In fact the worst danger seems to come now from very warm Februaries which cause many maples to leaf out. We saw this 3 winters ago, 20 cm of snow and an ice storm in mid march killed some earlies like pensylvanicum back to ground level. (It's recovering well now, anyway.) Of course pensylvaticum has the problem of ripening wood that we see with many North American maples. So Michael, I take it you say "Eddera, Peddera, Pit" rather than "Tothery, Fothery, Fant?" :) -E
the volcano Eujafjalla...with dust in the sky have alterate the meteo conditions in E.U. this season is like october,in north Italy the rose sleep again! of course in my zone acer are very happy ! only buergerianum have some problems like Emery's garden
