the joys of spring... in JANUARY!

Hi

So I have been noticing over the last few weeks that my garden thinks it's april. Here are some images I took an hour or so ago to illustrate my point (sry rubbish pics taken on my phone):











as you can see there are flowers that are coming out or have been out for some time and plants putting out new shoots. The orange flowers in the 3rd shot came out in early December!

Down here we are used to warm wet winters but I have lived in this part of the world for 30 odd years and have not noticed this before and it definitely hasn't happened in recent years.

There were recently articles on the bbc news site about the daffodils blooming in December at the eden project in Cornwall, which is vary rare so it seems it's not just my garden Not to mention a recent doco on the bbc about the bonkers year we have just had.

So the weather has been bonkers recently with records being broken all over the place, both uk and globaly, such as the coldest temps ever recorded in the uk last winter, the warmest October ever in the uk this year, the sun coming up 2 days early in Greenland this time last year, massive tornado's in the states, floods, huge super storms, massive flooding etc etc, not to mention the increase in whale and dolphin strandings and ongoing animal die offs

here are some recent uk news stories:

weird year!

more weirdness and strawberry

record year for stranding

second warmest uk year on record was 2011

mild weather could mean veg shortages

Scottish weather warnings hit record high

Keresley residents mystified by apple shower

I could go on...

Anyway does anyone have an explanation for my bonkers vegetation or any thoughts on it or the above weirdness?

thanks

dd

Most likely El Nina. It's like that here too...maybe not blooming but there's a lot of green where there shouldn't be.
Personally I'm ready for snow. If it doesn't snow a fair amount soon the bugs and snakes will be out of control this summer. Not to mention how this warm to cold action is giving my family the sniffles.

We have had a warm windy winter too.
They are controlling the weather to make it warm, they will call it global warming and then blame it on us so they can charge us carbon tax.

here in Utah, so far we have had NO considerable snow in the valleys. By now, normally we have had probably a foot or two of cumulative snow. Also the ski resorts are at this time on average used to about 60+ inches of a base. Right now most of them are sitting in the 18-24 inch region. right after Christmas, we had 2 days in the upper 50's and low 60's where normal temps for this time of year are rarely over 45. December went down as the driest in Utah history. Same thing last year, but not quite this bad or as late in the season. So our results appear to be very similar.

Im in Colorado at 6600 feet above sea level....
the past couple of weeks we have had (where I am) about 10 inches of snow on ground.....barely melting....

this week we will be close to 60, most of the week.

but this is normal for CO....freezing, warm up, freezing, warm up.....repeat.
cant put away spring/fall clothes in CO in the winter!

Let's hope it doesn't just get cold all of a sudden, if it does these plants wont be ready for such a thing. I have a sad feeling a lot of everything will die if it believes its time to blossom and then BAM winter hits and it might mess up the cycle.

reply to post by forevertruepatriot


Cheers neighbor to the south I am in Idaho and we are experiencing the same thing here. Warm and dry. It was around 50 degrees just following Christmas, and this week it is supposed to climb back up to the high 40's...not to mention the wind! I thought my roof was going to blow off two nights ago.

My father in law has shoots coming up from his flower bulbs already. It has been this way for at least the last two seasons, dry winters followed by prolonged, super wet springs. It is like our weather has shifted forward about 6 weeks.

Well here it was -30C/-22F this morning and it's gonna be like that all week.

So unfortunately it's not spring here yet.

reply to post by doubledutch


im getting insanly warm weather where i am to, last year in winter it was freezing, tempretures below -15(celcius) everyday, and huge snow banks. this year the weather has been warm, 3-4 days a week over 0(celcius) and very little snow. its weird ive never seen a winter likee this

thaks for the reply's

found a really interesting vid explaining the weird weather this autumn here in the uk...

The meteorology behind an unusual autumn

It's funny, I have debated numerous times here on ats about the weather not being normal, now feel that I can say with 100% certainty that whats going on at the moment isn't normal... where do we go next I wonder?

Its 40 above out there, it should be 40 below.

Your 3rd picture...pot mum's (marrigold family I believe) in December!

The only thing we have to worry about now is as somebody mentioned is food shortages. It's not just because of may be a cold snap. Take for example the strawberries...they flowerd a second time, I can attest to this because mine did, problem is they wont bear fruit because at that late stage we don't have the bees et all to pollinate etc.....so poor strawbs are totally confused......probably thrown them into some sort of plant menopause!
So going along with that, almost any plant that is now reacting 'out of the norm' and there are no insects etc about..goodness knows what is going to happen.
I was out in my garden yesterday doing some 'foraging' and general tidy up. I thought the carrots I had left would have had it by now because of all the wet weather we have had....not likely...they are great! So I have carrots out of the ground in January! I was going to take out my onions too, because they are still tiny but planty of green leaves still. Decided to leave them in to just 'wait and see'!

Rainbows
Jane

reply to post by doubledutch


I still have impatiens growing in my garden. These are gone with the first frost but so far we have not had a killing frost and usually we do by the first week in Dec. I have roses blooming in my yard right now and Camalias that should bloom next month but thats not too extraordinary if its warm.
I am in coastal Virginia.

reply to post by angelchemuel


I think photo three is a tithonia a relative of the daisy like the gerbera if I am not mistaken . The leaves are like the shasta daisy but the color of the flower is more like the tithonia. The gerbera likes it a little cooler here in Virginia.

Here,in Kentucky,it has been very nice and mild,in the 50's and 60's.
Then yesterday,BAM,winter arrives and we didn't get above freezing.
Even had a little dusting of snow.
I have had several of my plants starting to bloom before Christmas.

But,by the end of the week,we will be back to the milder temps.

Missing South Carolina this time of year.
3 more months of winter,yuk.

I'm all for global warming as I get older.

You know, I have thought of starting a thread similar to this several times over the past two months.

Something is off.

I live in the NW corner of Washington State and I am telling you that our foilage is very confused. We have had several days where we got well below freezing, but things are STILL growing.

I have been noticing a strangeness ever since fall. Things just never really progressed the way they should.

I have three four pots of plants out on my back deck. Three of them contain flowers that should be long dead by now. Yesterday I was ouside (VERY warm day for January, almost 60) and all three of those pots have new flowers in them and new buds. I had put one of my potted plants out on my back gardening table to re-plant the bulbs this spring........and a few weeks ago (when it was very cold) to my surprise there were three inches of new shoots filling the pot!

We have many trees in our backyard and around it. Maple/cottonwood/alder....so you know the seed pods that we like to call helicopters??? Well a few weeks ago those seed pods were covering my yard...and a couple of weeks ago they were starting to sprout! The strong smelling pods from the cottonwood started falling last month. NEVER has that happened at this time of year before.

I have had similar thoughts as to what will happen come next year. What is going to happen to these trees and plants that seem so confused? WHY are they behaving this way? Because it isn't just about temperature. I have lived here for over 30 yrs and we have had mild winters before...something else is up I dunno what.

reply to post by westcoast


A few years ago I witnessed a similar situation when all my apple and pear trees started blooming early.
Then we had a hard freeze and killed of the buds and I had no apples or pears that year.

This summer was weird cause the squirrels raped my apple and pear trees mid summer ,just shredding the green fruit and eating the seeds,leaving me nothing by fall.
They have never done that before.

reply to post by kdog1982


Ha...the squirrels have been going crazy around here lately. We always have some...but in January? There seems to be twice as many as normal and I can't remember seeing them this active this time of year.

Also in KY here. We had roses blooming 2 weeks before Christmas, forsythia in full bloom sending out the green leaves as the blooms dropped. Hope it takes the forsythia out in the spring, can't stand the stuff. But what was most apparently curious was the iris full long leaves as tall as your hips, sending blossom shoots out Christmas day. We have a lack of squirrels, usually several in our trees, none all this year. Just harvested my chocolate mint a month or two ago, brought it indoors, and its already sending long tendrils, will have to trim again before setting back out next spring. Two harvests in one year!

Enough to make you wonder if the fig trees bearing fruit out of season...? Odd weather and seasonal patterns even for the periodic cycles that happen. Signs of times? Maybe maybe not.

But am taking a more active approach to planting more of my own vegs this coming year. Canned pears, dried apples from foraging with permission from neighbors who had trees not using their produce. Joined a CSA community supported agriculture, local farmers selling shares into their production, thus supplementing their costs, gets me fresh produce. Lots more tomatoes to dehydrate and can. Can't wait to dry green beans, love then crunchy instead of canned, plus they rehydrate just fine.

Weather has always impacted growing cycles, this spring will prove to be interesting to see what comes back, and what suffers. Just be aware of your surroundings, prepare accordingly.

Towards the end of last summer there was a thread about the trees all starting to loose their leafs I believe it was around the first part of August. I'm not sure.

Right after Thanksgiving my iris were blooming. A couple of weeks ago the pecan and fruit trees started budding out here.

Yesterday a friend of mine from Ohio said her snap dragons were in bloom and she said it was strange she had never seen that before.
99
I've never seen the squirells strip my pecan trees like they did this year and they did it in september instead of the middle of October. They say that squirells will take 1/3 of a pecan crop well they took 99% of mine.

We had tornados two days before Christmas. It is strange weather and it started at least in the summer months.