Baby It's Cold Outside !

Projected shows this weekend:

Thurs. Jan 7th Safety Harbor Market 9am-2pm

Sat. Jan. 9th Sat. Morning Market ?? Hope so !

Sat & Sun Jan 9 & 10 Punta Gorda Gilchrest Park


Needless to say, this week continues to be a challenge for us and many nursery people and growers around the state ! The last 2 days here at our place in St. Pete, we have had ice on our vehicles and on the ground. We have been keeping a majority of our sellable stock up here in St. Pete as the nursery down in Palmetto could has as much as a 8-10 degree difference. Although we don't have greenhouses, we are protecting our stock down there by coverage under large trees, over cloth and running sprinklers.

Amazingly, even with the ice and frost here in St. Pete, our stock is doing amazingly well. Some tender plants got a bit zapped and have only lost a couple of things. We are keeping things well watered and letting the sun do it's warm-up thing during the day.

Last weekend, we couldn't attend St. Pete nor Tarpon Springs markets due to the temps and as much as we would like to stay inside all cozy and warm, we must venture out this weekend to try and keep making a living. Safety Harbor tomorrow is suppose to start out pretty cold, but is suppose to warm up during the day. For our plants protection, instead of loading our trailer tonight (the aluminum trailer will actually hold more cold), we will have to load in the morning. This means we may not get to S. Harbor until around 9am.

Saturday, Rick, our super helper is slated to do a set up at the downtown St. Pete Market, but if the temps are below freezing at daylight, he will not be able to get things safely there but we are optimistic that the temps won't go that low downtown.

Meanwhile, Mitch and I are slated to head down very early Sat. morning to Punta Gorda to Gilchrest Park, an event that was on our schedule. We are hoping that going 2 hours south will give us a bit of leg up on the temps? We will be part of the MY Promotions Arts & Craft Show that we partner with occasionally. We will be the only plant vendor there and are taking our most cold-hardy items.

So whats handling the cold temps the best? European Fan & Chinese Fan Palms, Areca Palms, Passion Vines, Guava trees, Xmas Cactus, Big Leaf Tibouchina, Cardboard Palms, Plumerica Pudica....not a lot of "color" items right now, but hardy landscape and interior items will be at all our shows this weekend.

Meanwhile, stay warm, we are looking forward to next week, when they are forecasting it to get back up in the 70's !!