Let’s do some horticultural housekeeping: The next meeting of the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be on Wednesday, May 15 at 7 p.m. at SIGN on North Street. It will be the famous “Iron Gardener” event! This is where three gardeners use their imagination and creativity to create a planter each, with a box of mystery plants that they don’t see until just that moment! It’s fun and gives all of us planting ideas! Everyone is welcome; you don’t have to be a member to come to the meeting.
While you are planning this year’s garden, be sure to allow space for a row or two of plants that will attract bees. Log on to www.cheerios.ca and sign up for free seeds to encourage bees to visit your yard. One in three bites we eat are made possible because of the amazing and hard-working bees, so they deserve any help we can give them!
And here’s a date to mark on your calendar: the Spring Plant and Bulb Sale takes place on Friday, May 24 beginning at 9:30 a.m. at the Parkland Mall in Yorkton. There will be a good selection of plants at great prices, and gardeners on hand to chat with if you have any questions. Don’t miss it!
If you have a mugo pine, have you noticed any browning at the end of the branches this year? Ours suffered some winter burn, so I thought I should do some homework and see if there is anything we can do to help the shrub. Winter burn is caused by dehydration from wind and cold; the moisture is leaving the plant, but the roots are frozen, and can’t replace this moisture. When we see those rusty-colored branches, the poor shrub has been hit.
I studied several articles in various books, and the same nuggets of information kept coming up: the first would be, be patient. The branches may look quite damaged, and while the brown needles will not recover, new growth may come if the tips are still alive. And here’s an important point: did you know that certain evergreens will only produce growth from the branch tips? So getting out the shears and lopping off the brown branches will not be doing the shrub any favors. Doing so may stunt the branches’ growth permanently. If we are unsure if the branch tips are still alive, we can carefully scratch the branch and see if there is any green beneath the bark, that’s good news!
Just a note: if you have a juniper that has suffered winter burn, you can successfully take out the burned branches with no further damage to the shrub.
But back to the mugo pine: we will wait and see what happens. The stems do have green beneath the bark, so we are hoping that the shrub will recover.
And to avoid the problem in the first place, we should make sure the plants are watered well before the frost sets in. If we are planting evergreens, we should do it in the spring and make sure that they are well hydrated all through the growing season. And if the shrub is in a very open and exposed location, we should protect it from the wild winter winds and cold by wrapping it up in burlap in the late fall.
There are always new garden challenges, aren’t there! But we do what we can and use our gardening optimism to hope for the best!
Remember, if you will be in Saskatoon next week, the U of S Hort Week happens May 4 – 12. There are many different events and free tours and free classes. Go to gardening@usask.ca to find out more! Visit the Yorkton horticultural society at www.yorktonhort.ca and have a great week!
