Frozen hair

When I was in school there were always kids in the winter who came to the bus stop with wet hair. When it was cold enough, there'd always be somebody who said something like "your hair will break off if it freezes". I personally doubt this will actually occur, but I'm pretty sure I know who started this rumor (if it in fact is untrue).

It was a gardener, somebody who loved growing tropicals and annuals in cold climates, in a surly winter mood. Once the first freeze hits these plants suffer greatly, losing all of their "hair" (okay, leaves) and go from the lush wonders that we relish through the warm months to crispy or mushy, brown or black reminders of the long winters ahead.

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The bananas (pictured above) certainly do. As do the cannas:

The flowering vines:

The castor beans:

The salvias, which always seem to keep some lower growth alive until surprisingly late in the season:

I guess that's why the salvia is always a prime candidate for producing frost flowers.

The purple fountain grass, which doesn't look too bad until you notice the "grey" look of the leaf blades, showing that they've frozen and are now dead:

Finally, the elephant ears:

I've got so many elephant ear tubers to dig up, it's not funny. Well, I guess it is a bit funny. Here's a small sampling of them after digging and trimming:

I'll store them in the garage (which stays around 40ºF/4ºC all winter), but will also keep a few small plants of the "special" varieties alive inside over the winter as a backup.

Besides the elephant ears, I also dug up cannas for the first time ever (since I've never grown them before):

I love plants that are really colorful underground. They're always such a nice surprise when dug or pulled up.

I trimmed the leaves from the bananas and ensete too:

The pseudostems will spend the winter in the garage, from the huge, amazingly heavy ones to the small potted specimens. I may keep one or two in their pots, but I'm hoping to reduce the number of potted plants in my garage this winter. I'd rather find shelf space for a large tuber or pseudostem than floor space for a large pot.

In any case, a lot of the plants in my yard are finished for the year, and cleanup is under way.

Thankfully the weather is cooperating this year, with lots of warm, sunny days after that first freeze. It's made this sad task of winterizing the tropicals much nicer.

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