Snow in a Southern Garden

Here in the Deep South, we don't get snow every year. When we do, it's usually less than an inch. So when we got three inches of snow last night, it was quite a big deal. It started after dark and continued well into the night. I was so excited when I woke up this morning, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning--except instead of presents from Santa, I got snow! I woke up early in anticipation of the winter wonderland that would I find outside my window, and waited anxiously for my husband to wake up so we could go outside and walk in the snow together. I took a few pictures to share with y'all. Enjoy!

Our house covered in snow

Our backyard

Up close, snow looks like miniature sculptures.

No birds using our birdbaths today.

Water droplets freeze on the tips of camellia leaves.
Camellias don't mind occasional snow.

The irises don't seem to mind the snow, either.

Onions are the only thing left growing in my square-foot
garden after all the cold.

I think holly bushes look loveliest with a fresh coat of snow.

Leyland cypress

Evidence of a nighttime visitor.

The Beauty of Winter

People up north laugh at our idea of winter down in the South. Things like ice and snow are rare sights for us. The highs usually are in the 50s and 60s, lows in the 30s, and typical skies are gray, cloudy, maybe a little rainy. Though the weather is mild compared to other parts of the country, I generally dislike January and February. Being from South Florida, I get tired of the cold well before spring arrives. Even if we don't have blizzards, the weather is just icky. We had a freak cold snap last week (the "polar vortex"), with highs in the 20s and 30s, lows in the teens. I was hoping for snow, but no precipitation came. You would think a blizzard came, though...we turned the heat down to save electricity, built lots of fires in the fireplace, cooked soup, and bundled up to make it through the crazy weather. Our old house just isn't built for the cold.

So when skies are gray, temperatures are cold, and not much is blooming, I have to make a little extra effort to find the beauty in my garden. I spent a few minutes in the garden checking on things during the freeze, and I thought the ice in my backyard was beautiful in the sunshine.

It rained a lot the weekend before the freeze, and my
wheelbarrow turned into a solid block of ice.

There's just something about leaves and ice in a
birdbath that's beautiful to me.

When we finally had some nice weather on Sunday, I took a walk around the yard to discover that the half-dead dogwood tree I had been meaning to cut down had fallen on the nearby holly. (We had some storms over the weekend.) Even if I was relieved that Mother Nature had done half of the work for me, it was kind of sad to see the fallen tree covered in buds. I decided to make the best of it and cut armfuls of branches to try to force inside.

Difficult to capture with my cheap digital camera, but the
colors in a dogwood bud are stunning up close.

"Forcing" means taking branches from trees and shrubs that typically bloom in spring or summer and getting them to bloom in vases inside, before they'd normally be blooming outside. Branches that can be forced include cherry, crab apple, flowering almond, dogwood, quince, forsythia, and redbud. It takes a little effort and some patience to coax the branches from bud into flower, but it's simple enough for anyone to do. You simply put the branches in a tall vase or bucket with plenty of water in a cool, dark room. The water should be changed daily, and the branches should also be sprayed or misted with water at least daily. Some people suggest bruising the cut end with a hammer to help the branch absorb more water. Once the buds open up, the branches can be moved to a warmer, sunnier room.

Aren't dogwood branches laden with buds
just lovely?

I have mine in a vase in the living room because I think the branches are beautiful all by themselves, even without flowers. Also, if I stick them in a closet, I'm afraid I'll forget to change the water. According to what I've read, it takes dogwood branches a whole five weeks to bloom! If you don't have much patience, try forsythia--it only takes 1-2 weeks to bloom.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have photos to share from some of my winter-blooming plants that aren't yet in flower. In the meantime, bundle up and stay warm!

What to Do When Your Garden Freezes

The weather has been crazy this month. The temperature this afternoon was 84 degrees. Just last week, we reached a record low for November 14 in Macon: 21 degrees.

Fortunately, I was prepared for the freeze. My husband and I bought more sturdy supplies to cover the vegetable garden. (Our last cover involved bamboo stakes and duct tape.) We created a frame using two 10-foot, 1/2"-diameter PVC pipes and covered it with a 6 mm-thick plastic drop cloth. It didn't keep the summer vegetables (or zinnias) from meeting their inevitable demise, but the fall vegetables were quite happy with the arrangement.

My vegetable garden with PVC framing
for cold protection the day after the first
freeze

The freeze killed all the peppers.

The fall vegetables are loving the cooler temperatures.
Clockwise from top left: onions, lettuce, radish, and
cauliflower

 As for the rest of my garden, the ornamentals had a mixed response. Growing up in south Florida, temperatures just don't ever get to 21 degrees, so I still look at freezing temperatures like a fun science experiment. Like any good science experiment, I carefully documented the results. My hydrangeas looked dead the next day. Fortunately, I know they're cold hardy, so I expect they'll look fine come spring. My hostas also took the cue to start winding down for the winter. My roses didn't notice the difference. Both the rose blooms and leaves looked exactly the same as they had the day before. The pansies, too, were unfazed by the cold.

The hydrangea leaves wilted and blackened from the
freeze. The roses and pansies were unaffected.

With some plants still thriving and others dying back for the winter, you may wonder what you should be doing right now in your garden. The combination of sudden cold snaps and surprisingly warm weather confuses plants and people alike. Here are a few tips for caring for your plants in November:

1. Resist the urge to prune shrubs. You might want to jump in and trim back your pathetic-looking hydrangeas (or other shrubs), but the best thing you can do is leave them alone. Pruning signals to plants that they should branch out, and especially in the warmer weather they are likely to put out a bunch of new growth. Even if a plant is cold-hardy, all that tender new growth will be easily damaged when the next freeze hits. Wait until late in winter, when the plants are good and dormant, to do most of your pruning.

2. Resist the urge to fertilize...almost everything. Just like with pruning, fertilizing encourages tender new growth, which can be damaged by a freeze. Your plants need to be sleeping, not growing. Here in zone 8, we have some exceptions. All of your winter annuals, such as pansies, snapdragons, and ornamental kale, should be kept on a regular feeding schedule to maximize their blooms. They will continue growing quite happily through the winter. Your cold weather vegetables, too, can be fertilized as needed.

3. Plant or transplant shrubs. This is a good time to plant roses, blueberries, azaleas, and other shrubs. The cooler weather gives the roots plenty of time to get established before the summer heat hits. (Even when plants are bare and dormant, their roots are still growing.) This is also a good time to move plants to a new location. One of my hydrangeas looked unhappy every afternoon this summer, so I'll probably dig it up and move it to a shadier location in the next couple of weeks.

4. Keep watering. Just because plants are dormant doesn't mean they don't need water. The harsh wind, especially, can dry plants out fast. They don't need to be watered as often as they do in the summer, but if we go through a dry spell, throw a little water on your sleeping shrubs. If you just planted shrubs, they need  frequent water. If your pansies look wilted after a freeze, throw some water on them and they'll perk right up.

5. Rake leaves. As I mentioned in my post on fungus, fallen leaves make the perfect place for plant diseases to hibernate until they return in the winter. For the health of your plants, you should rake up the leaves and either compost them or haul them to the curb.

Happy gardening!

Spring is Almost Here!

Here in Middle Georgia, spring is just around the corner. Even though the highs over the last couple of days have been in the 50s (that's cold for us!), you can see signs of spring all around the neighborhood. Even in my own yard, there are a few flowers that started blooming in February. Those late-winter/early-spring blooms fill me with hope! Here are a couple currently in bloom:

Vinca major aka periwinkle

Gelsemium sempervirens aka Carolina jessamine

Of course, many of my plants are still dormant. My husband told me the other day that my hydrangea looked dead. I reassured him (and myself) that it was normal. The hostas look non-existent. As soon as spring comes, though, they will both burst forth with new leaves.

I can't wait to start planting. We have a very narrow window where the temperatures are right for planting. Too early, and they could accidentally be killed in a late frost. Too late, and they will simply wither away in the heat and humidity of our summers. I planted several things last fall with the hopes they would have plenty of time to get established, but there were several plants that simply weren't available at the garden centers in the fall. 

There are a few things you can plant in March: bareroot hardy perennials (not usually available at garden centers, but you can order these online), roses, shrubs, and trees. If you like vegetables, this is a good time to plant asparagus, lettuce, cabbage, onions, radishes, turnips, and carrots. Look at your seed packets for exact dates. They are based on your "last frost date" (the latest date a frost is expected to occur, on average). Here on the border between zone 7 and 8, our last frost date is April 9. Here's what not to plant right now: most of what you see at Lowe's & Home Depot. I saw tomato seedlings for sale last month! They must have thought they were in Florida.

Whether or not you are planting this month, it's a great month to prepare new flower beds. I did this last fall on one of my beds. I have a lot of compacted soil. Whether or not your soil is compacted like mine, most soil can be improved by some compost or other organic matter (such as aged manure). I sort of did a lazy version of "double digging". My husband and I broke up the soil real well to a depth of about 6 inches, pulled out rocks we came across,  and then hand-tilled (mixed) in some store-bought compost. Here's an action shot of my husband at work:

I recently talked about the benefits of soil preparation in a comment on another blog, Your Easy Garden, and  won some rose bushes for my tip! I can't wait to try out my new Flower Carpet roses. The bad news: I guess I need to prep some more beds for planting. What flowers are you enjoying in your garden this month?

Winter Garden Maintenance

In my last post, I talked about resolving to spend time working in my garden every week--even if just for a few minutes. Well, there's not much going on in my garden right now, and there's probably not much going on in yours. The only things noticeably growing in my yard in this cold weather are the camellias and pansies. You might be wondering: what does one do in the garden in the winter time?

One of my neighbor's camellias that I
can see from my yard.

Well, to keep my pansies blooming, I'm feeding them with some all-purpose Miracle-Gro water-soluble fertilizer every couple of weeks. I brew it slightly on the weaker side just to safe in this cold weather--there is  such a thing as too much fertilizer. Better too little than too much. I also keep them deadheaded (pinching off the faded flowers) to keep them blooming. I water them occasionally, but it really depends on how the weather's been and how the soil feels. The weather has been really erratic this month--we had really warm weather a couple of weeks ago, followed by really cold weather, and raining off an on. I probably water them once a week on average to keep them from drying out. My little violas stopped blooming for a few weeks, so I took a closer look at them and discovered they were covered in aphids. I broke out an insecticidal soap I had and sprayed them down yesterday. Hopefully they will be covered in blooms again by next week.

I continue to build my compost pile, alternating kitchen scraps with leaf litter from my yard. I water it occasionally when it looks dry (it breaks down faster when it's damp). I don't turn it, though--turning it just slows it down this time of year by letting all the heat escape.

Cuttings on my windowsill

I held on to two of my cuttings that didn't root when the others did, but still looked healthy. One was a scented geranium and the other was a hydrangea. They're covered in roots now! Even though it took them probably twelve weeks to root (twice as long as the other scented geranium and hydrangea cuttings), I didn't mind them sitting in their pretty little glass containers on my windowsill while I waited. I finally got around to potting them up this weekend.

If you're looking for a garden project, it's not too late to plant pansies here in Middle Georgia. This past week I saw they still had plenty of 6-pack plugs of pansies at Home Depot, but I don't recommend planting those this late. Head out to your local garden center and look for pansies in individual pots--3" pots or larger. If you buy plugs, they will stop blooming for a few weeks while they try to put out roots in their new home, and who wants to wait another month to have flowers in your yard? The pansies in larger pots will already have enough roots to keep blooming happily until summer.