I feel your pain. The coldest temps in the last 3 years predicted for the DC area beginning today. Not quite as cold as you but with the wind chill we are in the single digits right now. Actual temps are in the mid teens. Once it gets below 50 I don't go out of my house unless it's to the airport! lol

Nancy, what a good friend! Nice to have help in the garden. I'm so jealous that you could plant in Sept and have bloom. I'm sure even the hardiest of mine would have died had I tried fall planting. I put in a bunch of spring bulbs last fall and some of them sprouted due to Indian Summer, then I lost a bunch of them when the cold came in. The ground froze hard the day before Thanksgiving and stayed that way until mid-March. Unusual for us. We usually have more freeze/thaw action. Of course there was little to no snow cover for most of that time. Ann, sounds like your babies have a snug little bed with all kinds of good stuff in it. Jan, I may try some direct sow next year too. It would be later for me and I probably wouldn't see bloom for at least 2 yrs but it's a much easier process. Linda, interesting observation about having so many per pot. I wonder if you transplant them to larger pots before they go outdoors if it would help or hinder? Jodi, brave soul...if they live through a late frost I guess you know they will be northern hardy! Even my recently aquired "adult" fans were pretty damaged by a late frost last week. I tried to cover them but the wind was whipping too much and blew anything I tried to put on them away as soon as I put it on. I also divided some Stella d Oro and Happy Returns last fall and both of those are suffering horribly from winter damage. Fortunately they both left hidden rhizome fans in their old spot so I still have some healthy ones to move. I guess that's my other learning is that I need to plant/divide, etc earlier in the year. FSG, sounds like your babies have a good start to the season too. I look forward to seeing everyone's pictures. I will be lucky to see any bloom at all this year (almost everything has been moved or is new) so yes, even the dogs would make my day to see.

1.) What difference does it make how cold it gets in winter, when snow cover is such an excellent blanket insulator for the soil. We have an average frost depth of 32" here, but I assume Ely's is quite a bit deeper. But how does that affect cold hardy plants? Because Ely's frost goes deeper, the surface and near surface temperatures of the soil are colder also. Certainly not like the air temps, but just as significant, as root and crown hardiness of plants don't evolve to be hardy at colder air temps, simply because, over the millenia, they have not needed to be. Indeed, woody plants are more vulnerable to temperature extremes due to their above snowline exposure. Yes, fava beans would be a good example of what can be grown in zone 4 and not in Ely. Other shelling beans, okra, cotton, some winter squashes, most varieties of muskmelons and honeydew melons will grow in Ely, but don't perform satisfactorily (a subjective judgment) compared to zone 4. Just like most places where the terrain is changeable and not fairly flat, soils are diverse in the Ely area too. Yes, they are all very acid based, sandy gravelly rocky for the most part, often thin, but sleuths and valleys soils are high in organic matter, yet comparative poor in nutrients. This is due to the relatively slow breakdown of organic matter because of much cooler temps, lack of worms (non are native, even in most if MN) and the kind of organic materials that predominate. I wouldn't call the climate/soil there finicky. A perusal of local gardens will reveal a multitude of well grown perennials and annuals, and vegetables. My parents and grandparents lived in Ely. One Grandmother fed her husbands logging crew of of 5 to 10 men, largely with what she grew in the garden. She had large cold frames for her early crops since 1915. My other Grandmother grew pole beans from seeds brought from Slovenia, as did many of the immigrants in Ely. Northern climates are not necessarily unworkable, just different. You've seen photos of the giant cabbages they grow in Alaska. That's something we can't do here. Likewise there are just plants that are adapted, or adaptable to an Ely climate, and locals don't see it as an amazing feat. Grandma had rotted horse manure applied annually to her huge garden, but the color of the soil was still sandy brown, yet very productive. Remember too, that even though the season is shorter the farther north you go, the days are longer and the sun more intense. Things may not grow as large, but they can produce more. Rick

You have a lot going on with Black pine. If it's a seedling then you have roots that you want. The problem with Pinus thunbergii is humidity. That's where your plant will first become weakened. Then it's a chain of events. The humidity will lead to foliar diseases which upon insects will become attracted (immune system is failing) and when the species can't hack it anymore it will eventually die. Now that being said, if you bought a grafted Pinus thunbergii and do not know what the roots are that it is grafted onto, you may not have a compatible root-system for your soil. That attraction to Japanese black pine because of salt tolerance can easily be thrown out the window if it's not on Japanese black pine roots. Pines are easily grafted on other species, and that is what I'm talking about. No matter what though, whichever root system is in place, the foliage of Pinus thunbergii/Japanese black pine will not tolerate in the long run humidity. That pine will shut down just like that Prunus you bought. 15-years tops. You may get six or eight good years out of it before the needle issues fully develop. Sorry to pass along the bad news. There are people chiming in on this thread like myself that have been doing this stuff nearly 100% as a hobby/line of work for a long time or a very long time. Dax