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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.

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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