Masterpiece Landscaping Blog

Because of this present November being exceptionally dry, pleasant, beautiful, and void of a killing frost until last Wednesday night here in the Twin Cities, landscape gardeners have been able to spend more time than usual amid their garden plants.  These following questions  arise for all of us and our answers may vary from year to year.

To water or not to water? 

Who expected the last part of October to be so dry?……and after a very dry August?   I had my watering system turned off two weeks ago, and had not watered for a week before that.   Yet, I was shocked while planting yesterday to see the soil so dry so deep into the soil.

I immediately hand watered all of the plants planted over the past six weeks…..beginning with the perennials whose root systems are much more endangered by drought.   I am able to use the sprinkler in the major portion of my landscape garden grounds, and again, watered the newer plantings as a priority.  

Overwatering could be a problem after mid August.   Many woody plants begin their winterizing shortly after the summer equinox.   This is called hardening off.   We don’t know much about the specifics regarding the vast numbers of plants now available for our grounds plantings.

We don know that watering heavily well into late autumn keeps some plants in summer growing mode.   They have not been allowed to adjust to the coming of the cold and severe, and can be killed.

About three winters ago, I lost four or five established yews, one of which was a beautiful tree.   I had never lost a yew on my grounds in 35 years of a dozen or more  plants of yew life.   Eventually, I discovered that their deaths occurred from a windy weekend in January.   There was plenty of snow, but with a temperature of ten or more below zero, and winds of twenty miles per hour over a twenty hour period, killed them.   I stayed warm  indoors that weekend day.   My yews had no place to hide.

To clean or not to clean?

This question is difficult to answer.    Fall cleaning the landscape garden is a major project in most grounds.   Size and time dictate the schedule.  Cleaning out the leaves whether from your or your meighbors’ trees makes the grounds appear, well, clean…and neat.   Lawns should be raked for their better health enduring winter.  

No one knows when the first major snowfall will occur.   Last year the tonnage was dumped over night and through the day starting on  Saturday, November 13, here in the Twin City area.   We got hit by a  35 inch heavy snow drop.   Much was damaged, but the ground never froze, because it was covered all winter long by nature’s best insulator, snow.

Plant debris and autumn leaf fall  are  typically blown to  obstacles, such as  neighboring plant stalks which entrap debris which  builds up protecting plant crowns until a sizeable  snowfall.   This is nature’s way some plants endure the rigors of an early winter.  

The real danger to our plants, whether perennials or the  more delicate woody shrubs, or sometimes even to the well established tougher reliables, is the “Test Winter”.

A test winter  is that winter in our Northland when the temperature drops to 10 to 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit before Christmas without any snow cover.   Perennials are especially vulnerable.   If you had left nature do its thing, leaf debris would have collected  around the stems of such plants for insulation.  It can also be that winter when the temperature drops to minus 30 with a driving wind which can be a real killer for many woody members of the landscape grounds not blessed with snow cover.

To weed or not to weed?  

Weed whenever you can, but remember a weed is “a plant out of place”.

I allow certain plants ‘out of place’  to grow in my grounds within limits.   Red and white oak seedlings, for example.   Both are in beautiful autumn colors….red and maroon and kept within a foot of the ground offer colorful highlights when other colors have already faded.    Pruned Ohio Buckeye seedlings can be made into  an attractive shrub.

Late autumn is an excellent time to scour the landscape grounds for buckthorn seedlings since their leaves are still green at this time.    Every year I come across a four or five foot weed tree of ash, box elder or  other maples, or elm and buckthorn or pagoda dogwood growing handsomely.   How did I miss noticing  these varmints for the past five or six years some even being in full sight as I walk by?   They blended in with the other greens nearby.

To plant or not to plant?    Late autumn isn’t the best time to plant, but survival depends on moisture available and good soil preparation.   Regardless of season, when planting woody materials, make certain that the roots are ‘loosened’, that is freed from the circular pattern forced by the pot in which the plant was housed.

Root bound plants do not have a high rate of survival if transferred from pot to grounds without freeing  up the root system.

To wrap or not to wrap young deciduous trees?

Usually one wraps these trees to protect them from the south and southwest sun during winter.    Some trees, such as young ash, apple, and crabapples, are very susceptible to sun scald, that is, the sun’s strength of warmth usually in February and early March warms up the exposed tissues during a sunny day.   Upon sunset the tissue freezes as the temperature plunges, and destroys the cells, splitting the bark on the south and/or southwest side of the tree.

Another reason for wrapping younger trees is to provide protection from rodents.   Last winter was a terrible, terrible time for trees killed by rodent’s, voles, mice, rabbits,  under the snow eating away at the young bar, girdling the tree, causing its eventual death.    Crabapples, apples, plums, even young oaks were killed.

For some reason wrapping with the corregated “Tree Wrap” confuses the varmints enought to make them forget about bark breakfasts and dinners.     If deer are in your neighborhood these late October and early November days, you know the hunting for does stags, like to sharpen their weapons on trees  up to fifteen inches in girth and your chest level.

This “Tree Wrap” wrapping seems to fool them as well….at least until I get reliable reports suggesting otherwise.