Plenty of gardening work needs to be done
Thunder Mountain glows under moonlight. Ribbons of bright snowy silver flow down dark slopes threading into the valley below.
David Lendrum is a master gardener and owner of Landscape Alaska. Responses or questions can be sent to www.landscapealaska.com.
The crisp air of the night invigorates senses and all about are the glow of the lights. Spreading along the eaves, spilling over the shrubbery and out into the forested areas between the houses, Christmas lights change the whole landscape, at least during the dark hours.
Illuminated trees, sparkling wreaths and homes filled with poinsettias and holly, the landscapes of our lives reflect the love we bear for this season. Joy, love and relief for the arrival of the time of rebirth blend with our deepest religious feelings, and we celebrate them with displays and handworks.
Cookies, gingerbread houses, toy trains and miniature Bethlehems adorn our homes. School will be out this week and streets will fill with sounds of released voices, some going away for the holidays, most exploding into open air to play in the snow, or run in the trees.
But this week we still have to work.
It looks like winter will come to us after all, and we should pay attention to the harsh lessons we've learned in the past few years. Last winter was warm. We had snow cover and the temperature stayed in the pleasant range until we were ready for spring. Then temperatures plummeted to 6 or 8 degrees and the plants were already starting to come out of dormancy. The combination of warm weather and sudden temperature drop made bark burst off the trunks of affected trees, it killed early emerging perennials straight off, and what it did to the wild world was astounding. We had a mixture of effects. There was no rain for nearly two months, the day time temperature would get up into the fifties, and when dark came it went back to the single digits. This was like a commercial freeze drier, and the Rhododendrons and tenderer evergreens just dried up and blew away. Their leathery leaves that seemed immune to the winter's worst cold succumbed to the drying effects of the spring.
The lesson of that season was that we had to focus on the moisture control, because the plants that were selected were plenty cold hardy, it was the lack of rain that made them so vulnerable. Native species, adapted to the harshness of the local climate and not tempted to come out of dormancy too early by a few warm days in February, were afflicted too. The exposed hillsides were the worst hit. The salmon berries died back to the ground, all the bearing canes were wiped out and the soil was exposed to the eroding forces of the rains when they finally came. The wildlife that depended on the fruits of the forest were in a hard way when the time came for them to eat. There were no berries.
Our lesson from that was to manage the moisture in our gardens. Older established plants are not in much danger. They have the resources to weather another similar spring. They can regrow their leaves and be back in business within a single season. Just look around at the older plants all over the town. They may not have flowered much this year, but they look great now.
The younger ones, those hundreds that were planted this season are much more vulnerable. Now that the weather is finally showing up and the bushes can begin going dormant, we can begin wrapping them up. I will be making the rounds of yards planted this year with rolls of burlap and stakes, building shelters over the new plants. A tepee of burlap or opaque white plastic, held away from the leaves so they don't burn, is the ideal protective structure.
When you are there, give them a winter feeding, use a couple of handfuls of fertilizer. It won't make them start growing. They are dormant now. The leaves get greener, and the blooms last longer, and when it's time for the next year's flowers to form, they are much more numerous.
Winter protection for the babies, winter feeding and micronutrients for everybody, and if the spring is dry, remember to water them all. That's the rhody lesson for this season. Now go ahead and get ready for Christmas.