DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9711010314

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: THE COASTAL JOURNAL 

SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow 

                                            LENGTH:   79 lines

NOW THAT COOLER WEATHER IS HERE, IT'S TIME TO PLANT SOME PANSIES

Recent chilly weather is perking up the pansies that carpet the ground at Heritage Plantation down on Princess Anne Road.

It's been a slow season for locally grown pansies, said Daisy Jones, sales associate at the plant nursery down in ``the county.'' Pansies are cool weather plants and the weather in August was so hot when the seedlings were just getting under way that the plants didn't take off until recently.

But now that humans are beginning to pull out sweaters and gloves, the cold loving pansies are raising their faces to the sun and looking jaunty. And they will continue to please throughout the winter unless we have a truly hard freeze, said Jones.

``They'll survive the winter to give you a cheerful look,'' Jones said.

Even when the temperature drops below freezing and the pansies darken, and fall right over, all is not lost. When the sun comes out the next day, the pansies perk up, too.

That's because the darkening you see in the stems is indicative of changes in the pansies' sap cells which protects the plants from freezing. When the temperature drops, pansies produce an ``internal antifreeze,'' explained Virginia Beach Extension Agent Randy Jackson, which prevents ice crystals from forming in the sap and rupturing the stems.

In return for many months' worth of winter cheer, all pansies ask is to be well fed. Jones suggests feeding the plants once a week with a liquid fertilizer.

The cheerful pansies at Heritage Plantation are a modern addition to the landscape in old Princess Anne County. In recent years Heritage Plantation, which has a local heritage hundreds of years old, has been a farm of a different sort. Where cotton once crew in the ``good'' old days, annual flowers are now the crop.

It was back in 1974 when Ronald Brock converted his centuries old family place into a wholesale nursery, the first such plant nursery in old Princess Anne County. Today, Heritage Plantation raises and sells annuals to garden centers and other retail establishments from North Carolina to Maryland. Ninety-five percent of the business is wholesale but retail customers are welcome to come shopping, too.

Brock and partner James Harrell have been planting seeds, raising seedlings and transplanting them to flats and larger pots for 24 years now. In spring, they grow everything from marigolds to zinnias, from dahlias to vinca in 27 greenhouses on nine acres. In the fall pansies are it, Jones said.

And they stretch out in bright alleyways of color at Heritage Plantation, hundreds of them in 6-inch pots and long flats. Old fashioned bright yellow and white pansies stand out. A few striking coal black pansies are in one corner. Cool icy blues and lavenders are in other rows. A wonderful pansy called Maximum Sunset is a two-toned red and yellow flower and then, there are the antique shades, beautiful close up but drowned in the riot of color from afar.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Blackbird pie is what Shari Ottesen wants for dinner these days. A naughty crow took two filet mignons from her second floor deck railing where she had put the steaks out to thaw. The big black bird devoured one and left the other riddled with peck marks.

Jane Brumley of Knotts Island saw a hummingbird at her feeder last Saturday and one came to mine on Sunday.

Joan Wright called to say there was an Italian POW camp at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base. It was at the intersection of Shore Drive and Independence Boulevard where base housing is today. She also has seen river otters in Back Bay and Linkhorn and Broad bays.

Virginia Ferguson reported that the peregrine falcon that has spent the past two winters roosting on the Virginia House returned to his old haunts a couple of weeks ago. MEMO: Heritage Plantation at 1255 Princess Anne Road is open from 8 a.m.

to 4:30 p.m. every day but Sunday. Call 426-7000. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY REID BARROW

Cooler weather has perked things up at Heritage Plantation's pansy

nursery on Princess Anne Road. Don't worry if you see them drooping

when temperatures drop - pansies can produce an ``internal

antifreeze.''

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