New weeds for old

I seem to be taking up old weeds to make way for new weeds.   In this instance it’s a thin strip of gently sloping soil behind the giant miscanthus grasses.   Actually torwards the potager end of this bank it’s very steep and very bare of soil.

But one must be optimistic. I’ve removed the weeds and sprinkled a huge amount of verbena bonariensis seeds in their place.

If all goes well I’ll dig up some of the more established verbena plants in the potager and transplant them here.   The tricky thing is that verbenas are on the edge of their range at this winter altitude.   They seem to die of cold if grown out in the open.

The ones that came through the last cold winter (where we reached minus 18C for a week) were protected by stone walls.   The ones in the strawberry bed are right in front of the barn wall and seemed to have a bit of protection.   They came through well.

But then just to baffle me, some of the plants in the open in the potager were also fine.   Have I bred a cold resistant variety? We shall see.