Although spring is not yet “just around the corner” the home gardener cannot help feeling that it is not far away. Spring always seems nearer in January to a plant lover and gardener than to anyone else, because it is during this month that seed catalogs arrive for those in the North. There is nothing like these popular publications, except garden magazines to put one into a springtime fancy.
Besides giving many evenings of pleasure, they serve as a basis for next season’s operations and activities. While you are pleasantly browsing through the pages, you are making decisions as to what to grow during the coming season. New varieties are discovered. Some seem so interesting or exciting that they must be tried.
Speculation and hope runs high when you are contemplating the garden with these new plants. Although a high interest in the new is justified, many of the old tried and tested varieties should not be discarded, for they will continue to be the backbone of the color garden.
Mum Varieties
Varieties that are developed specifically for your own area, tested for several years and proven superior, usually measure up to the claims made when they are introduced. This, for example, has proven true of the garden chrysanthemums developed and introduced by some of the universities. Garden mums are being developed specifically for the North where until recent years there were no really good varieties that would flower early enough to be enjoyed before hard frosts destroyed them.
Winter Protection
It has always seemed a waste of good winter protective covering for flower beds when Christmas trees are discarded, hauled or ground up when they have served their time as holiday decoration.
Branches cut from the main trunk and placed over flower beds will give added protection to plants already mulched. In addition the branches will help hold down mulching materials that might be blown away by winter winds. This is an easy and useful way to dispose of a Christmas tree.
Young fruit trees and maples, mountain ash and basswoods planted last year (spring or fall) should be protected from sunscalding of the bark by wrapping the trunks up to the lowest branches with a special tree wrap which can be purchased from garden stores and nurseries.
This wrap will shade the tender bark from winter sun that often causes burning, especially on the south and southwest sides of unprotected trees. The wrap will also prevent excessive moisture loss during the dormant season and protect the bark from the ravages of rodents that are desperately hungry during the winter.
Heavy snow on the branches of evergreens should be carefully brushed off to prevent breakage or permanent bending. Great care should be used when brushing off accumulation of snow because tree needles and branches are especially brittle and easily broken. Although this does not happen so often, branches of deciduous shrubs may be burdened with snow following a severe snowstorm, and become permanently damaged or distorted unless relieved.
Do not shake or carelessly lift branches to remove deep deposits of snow, because branches and twigs are brittle and easily broken. Gently brush the snow and return to your armchair gardening. Could it be that spring will be early this year?
