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40 Tri-City News Friday, November 19, 2010
Never let your guard (or garden) down IN THE GARDEN Brian Minter
O
ur first cold spell of the season is on its way any day now, so this is a final call to complete all the winterizing in your garden. Severe weather is a fact of gardening life, but we can take some steps to minimize the affects. The first suggestion I would like to make pertains to hardiness. Most of us know which hardiness zone we live in and should therefore be planting only those plants which will tolerate that zone. Certainly slight variations will exist, but as a rule of thumb, most of the plants zoned for your region will take the worst most winters have to offer. If you don’t know your zone, you can easily find out from a local nursery. From experience, however, I know that no gardener worth her or his salt pays much attention to zones. Virtually all gardeners set out plants they know are not hardy in their region, but they insist that with a little extra protection these plants will survive. Unfortunately, that protection is not always applied until it’s too late. There are, however, some techniques that can add a few degrees of hardiness
to many plants. One thing I noticed after an early November cold spell three years ago was that plants growing in very welldrained sandy soil survived the cold with the least amount of damage. It seems that if a plant’s roots have had to work harder for moisture and food, the plant is tougher and stops growing earlier in the fall. As a consequence, its branches and buds become dormant earlier, preventing severe damage from the cold. These plants also tend to stay dormant longer and suffer far less root damage because with a lower moisture content, the soil is not moved about so much by the frost. Planting all your plants, particularly the softer ones, in well-drained sandy loam is a sure way to toughen them up. The best protection for many plants is a good mulching with fir or hemlock bark mulch or even with sawdust. Mulching makes an incredible difference. It retains critical moisture necessary around the roots and slows down the freezing and thawing process. Roses, in particular, need at least one foot of mulch over their bud union. This will get them through any winter. Immediately after a cold spell when the temperature is on the rise and the frost is coming out of the ground, it’s essential to get moisture back into our plants. Soak
the living daylights out of the foliage of broad-leaved plants and thoroughly penetrate the root system with water. A good watering can really make quite a difference to the amount of damage to so many plants. Desiccation from cold, drying winter winds is another major problem. As if the severe wind on our poor broad-leaved plants, like aucubas, photinias, camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas, is not bad enough, winter sunshine can really burn them. Not only is it important to create wind breaks around our plants, it’s also essential to keep winter sunshine off them. The simplest and easiest way to achieve this is to put three or more strong bamboo stakes around as a tripod and wrap the plant with some of the new nursery insulting material that is easy and quick to apply. In-ground hardy palms and bananas need to be wrapped in the same way. Make sure you cut the leaves off the bananas and mulch around the base. It’s also important to prevent water from getting into the crown of the palms. Outdoor containers full of winter colour are one of the major concerns. As a rule of thumb, when we get below –7 or -8°C I always move them to a more protected location out of the cold winter winds. If they are frozen, they can be
moved to a protected shed or garage where they will be fine. If they are on a deck with no alternative, simply put proper insulation (I mean home building insulation) around the pots and over the top, simply make a tripod of three bamboo stakes and wrap with either bubble poly or the new nursery insulating cloth that makes about a 10°C difference in temperature. In your vegetable garden, simply mulch your root crops and use either Remay cloth or insulating cloth on top of all you plants like beets, swiss chard and hardy lettuce. Experiencing numerous years of cold winters in our gardens has taught us many good lessons. First and foremost, never let your guard down. A couple of years of mild winters can lull us into winter complacency. Make sure you always prepare the appropriate winter protection. Secondly, as bad as it may seem, don’t assume the worst until new growth appears, or doesn’t appear, in the spring. Only when the weather warms up will you know for sure if your plants are okay. Finally, cold winters are just a part of the gardening cycle. Passionate gardeners will keep on planting tender plants - losing a few is part of the learning curve we all go through.
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