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December13, 2000
Gift
Giving Gardener Style...
Ok, we're doing things a little differently this week.
Shelly's birthday is Thursday and I agreed to write this week's
opening as one of the many gifts I will shower upon her.
She works so hard at this and deserves at least a one week break.
Want to wish her a Happy Birthday? Click
here...
I don't
want to give away any secrets (Shelly will proof-read this) but
whether it's a birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever the reason
for gift-giving don't overlook the garden for inspiration.
Gardeners of course love to while away the winter pouring over
books that make spring arrive even faster. We have
convenient links to both Amazon.com
and Timber
Press for great gift choices. Really nice tools and
other garden accessories make great gifts but are often forgotten this
time of year. Personally I would love any
garden tool from Spear & Jackson. These are the kinds
of tools that you will hand down to your grandchildren some day!
No need to tell you it's
cold and snowy. I am much more tolerant of the
chillier weather than Shelly but this stuff is rough! With
a substantial blanket of snow covering everything the best thing you can do is stay inside and daydream about next year's
plantings.
Shelly's
back next week!
~
Kevin
Snow and
Ice Removal...
This week's double whammy of sleet and snow coupled with wickedly cold weather have many Savvygardeners trying to
deice their walks and driveways. But what to use?
There are a number of chemicals that will help melt the ice but
they have very different properties. While they can be used
alone, they are often blended together or combined with other
materials to improve performance, decrease cost, and decrease
potential damage to plants, concrete, and ground water.
Performance of a particular deicing agent is determined by
factors such as temperature, traffic conditions, shape of deicer
particles, duration of the deicer's melting action, and the time
it takes the deicer to form a brine. Here are the most
common agents available:
- Calcium
chloride (CaCl) is available in flake, pellet, or liquid
form and often outperforms other deicing products especially
at lower temperatures. It produces an exothermic
reaction, giving off heat as it melts. Calcium chloride
also has a greater capacity to attract and retain moisture
directly from its surroundings, which enables it to dissolve
faster and start the melting process. Harmful to plants.
- Sodium
chloride (NaCl) also known as rock salt was first used as
a deicer in the 1940's. It is an effective deicer for
areas that receive road traffic. It draws heat from the
environment rather than releasing it and it loses most of its deicing effectiveness when temperatures are below 25
degrees. Harmful to plants.
- Potassium
chloride (KCl) is a naturally-occurring material that is
also used as a fertilizer. Because of its high salt
index and the potential to burn foliage and inhibit rooting,
its use is relatively limited. Less harmful to plants
than sodium chloride or calcium chloride.
- Urea
(NH2CO NH2) is synthesized from ammonia and carbon
dioxide. It is primarily used as a fertilizer. As
a deicer, it has a lower burn potential than potassium
chloride.
- Calcium
magnesium acetate (CMA) is a relatively new salt-free
melting agent made from dolomitic limestone and acetic
acid. It causes little damage to concrete or plants and
is used as an alternative to salts in environmentally
sensitive areas.
Source
Two Out
Of Three Wise Men Recommend...
The holiday season is full of traditions involving the plants
we grow. Wreaths, mistletoe, Christmas trees, the list goes
on. How about frankincense and myrrh? What is that
stuff anyway? Well, they are both resins - dried tree sap -
that come from trees of the genus Boswellia (frankincense) and
Commiphora (myrrh). The way that people collect
the sap is similar to the way people collect rubber tree sap or
pine tree sap. Cutting the tree's bark causes the sap to ooze out
of the cut. The sap used to create both of these famous
resins comes slowly and is allowed to dry on the tree. Both in the time
of the three wise men and today, frankincense and myrrh are most
commonly used to create incense.
Gardening
questions? Answers from gardeners! Check out SavvyChat,
our on-line gardening forum where local gardeners share
their wisdom, experience, and maybe even a secret or
two...
Click
Here To See! |
All
Wrapped Up...
You've seen tree trunks wrapped up for the winter but do you
really know why? The aim of tree wrapping is to keep the trunk from heating
unevenly on bright, sunny, winter days. Bark tends to split as it
cools rapidly after the winter sun has warmed the south and west
sides of the tree. Most Savvygardeners use commercially available tree wraps or put up canvas or
burlap screens to shade young fruit trees. But even a plank leaned up
against the south side of the trunk will help. Painting trunks
with white latex paint is a technique common in orchards to achieve
the same purpose. You should consider these protective
measures if you have young,
tender-barked trees like fruit trees.
Household
Humidity Help...
You know that dry feeling you get in a heated house all
winter long? Your houseplants like it even less than you
do. They actually prefer a relative humidity of 40 to 50
percent but suffer under humidity levels of 10 to 20 percent
common in many homes during the winter
months. What to do? Humidifiers are an excellent
way to increase the relative humidity in the home. Grouping plants together is an easy way to raise
humidity levels as well. The water evaporating from the potting soil,
plus water lost through the plant foliage, will increase the
relative humidity in the vicinity of the houseplants. Another
method is to place houseplants on trays (saucers) filled with pea
gravel or pebbles. Add water to the trays, but keep the bottoms
of the pots above the water line. The evaporation of water from
the trays increases the relative humidity.
By the way,
misting houseplants is
not an effective way to raise the relative humidity. The plant
foliage dries quickly after misting and would have to be
done several times a day to be effective at all.
Source
Poinsettia
Pointers...
Poinsettias are often bought this time of year, set in a
pretty place, and left to dry out and die (hopefully after
the holidays). The Sweet Onion's Master Gardener Yvonne
Garman has written an informative little article on the proper
care of poinsettias through the holiday. As an added bonus
she tells us how to keep those beauties alive for use again next
Christmas. Her article, Poinsettia
Care, can be found here...
Winter
Wisdom...
You think you're cold? Those houseplants next to the
window may be even chillier. Read all about houseplants and
adequate room temperatures in this
week's Winter
Wisdom...
Pacing
Your Paperwhites...
As the holidays near, you can adjust the bloom time of your
forced paperwhites. If they are coming along too quickly,
place them in a cool room (50-60 F) and water less
frequently. If you need to speed them up a bit, place them
in the warmest room in the house. With a little luck
they'll be blooming right on time!
Finally... "Nature
has no mercy at all. Nature says, ‘I'm going to
snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's
tough. I am going to snow anyway.” ~
Maya Angelou, American Poet, Author |
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