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Via EnjoyGardening)
Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-02, 07:19:57
First published April 24, 2008
A foot or so of snow, strong winds and sub-zero temperatures have a funny way of sapping the strength of even the most stalwart gardeners. One has to search pretty darn deep for something positive to say about midspring snowfalls, and anyone who says “but we needed the moisture” is lucky if all he or she gets is the evil eye.
But while gardeners might have a tough time laughing off a snowstorm, there is one bedding plant that doesn’t consider snow anything more than a nuisance. That plant is the pansy.
You’ve got to admit there’s a certain amount of irony at work when one of the cold hardiest of annuals is referred to as a pansy. But the modern pansy (Viola x wittrockiana) is actually thought of as a winter annual, meaning it can survive some pretty cold winter temperatures with little damage. Cue the snowstorm!
About four days prior to this past weekend’s wintery joke, we put about 100,000 pansy plants (growing in flats) directly outside onto the pavement. Just like every other year, a light, woven blanket was spread on top of the pansies to protect them from moisture loss. Beyond that 3-mm thick cover, the pansies are exposed to whatever Mother Nature throws their way—which turned out to be about 30 cm of snow and -10C night temperatures.
Adding to their fabulousness is that once the snow melts, these pansies will not only look none the worse for wear, they will also be tough and thick from exposure to the cool temperatures. Had they been left inside the greenhouses, the inevitable result would have been stretchy, soft and weak pansies that once transplanted into gardens, would be unable to endure our capricious prairie weather.
The reason that pansies can withstand freezing temperatures and emerge unscathed isn’t because they don’t freeze—because they certainly do; it’s a case of how they freeze that’s the magic. When pansies experience a few days of cool weather prior to a freeze, they learn to move water out of their cells and deposit it between the cells. If the water were to freeze inside the cells, the cells would split open and die, but ice outside of the cell walls causes little injury at all to the pansy plant itself. I have touched pansy plants that one would swear were beyond resurrection because of their cryogenic-like appearance. But once the weather warmed up, they resumed their growth, unscathed by icy weather.
The blooms of pansies are a little less resilient than the foliage when the weather is really cold, but the beauty of these little plans is that as one flower is falling off, another is right there to take its place. And really, it’s typically the weight of the snow (not the cold) that causes the most damage to the flowers.
Once the snow finally gives way to warm temperatures, pansies are excellent plants to transplant into flowerbeds and pots. They aren’t overly fussy about soil pH and have a fairly low demand for fertilizer, but the key to keeping them looking great is to grow them in as bright but as cool a spot as possible. Heat causes pansy foliage to stretch and their flowers to fade, so leave that hot and sheltered spot on the patio for your tomatoes and other fussy favourites.
I know that pansies won’t make one forget how disheartening spring snowstorms are, but they will offer some hope that spring really is just around the corner. Speaking of happy thoughts, the name pansy is actually derived from the French word pensee, meaning thought. Apparently, when the flowers bent over in the fall, they were said to be reminiscent of a person bent over in deep thought. Well…I’m not sure that I see the similarity, but I will say that that when spring snowstorms and spring planting season collide, the pansy is the one tough plant that definitely puts some thought into the conundrum.
