Gosh, after a very late start because spring just couldn't make up its mind to get here, things have been going just about non-stop to get ready for the summer season here at Wiese Acres. I've had time to think about writing more blog installments, but no time to do anything about it. We are getting close to the point where it will be "maintenance" rather than spring re-building, so I'm taking advantage of a little down time.
I've been pleasantly surprised that winter kill was not as bad as I feared it would be after our very cold, very long, and quite dry winter. Winter can take a big toll on plants if it is too warm, too cold, or with a lot of freeze and thaw cycles. We can get any one of those in a normal winter, or we can get all three of them thrown into the months between October and May.
This year, it was primarily too cold, coupled with minimal snow cover. We are officially in USDA hardiness zone 4 in this area. This winter's temperatures were much closer to zone 3 temperatures. Thankfully, the thick foliage left over from last summer's growth in the gardens, held what little snow we did have and protected many of my plants. I even found my zone 5 helleborus poking its brave head out with a beautiful yellow flower. But, there were some things that didn't make it.
I hauled the remains of both of my peach trees to the compost pile yesterday. Both Reliance and Contender peach varieties are hardy to zone 4. They clearly didn't appreciate the long periods of negative 30 temperatures, however. I also lost a Sungold apricot that had managed to survive 10 previous winters, but apparently it said "I'm out of here if they are going to treat me like this". That is a big tree, so it will take some digging to get that removed from the orchard. Those losses, in addition to the loss of the plum, pear and apple trees in that October snow, left the orchard looking pretty bare.
Some hostas I thought were lost have finally begun tentatively showing some new growth, almost a full month after they normally would be coming back to life. And, of course, there were a few things that I wished would not have made it through the winter that did - and they invited all their relatives to camp out in my garden, too. I hauled four wheelbarrows full of campanula (Canterbury bells), saponaria (Soapwort), and valeriana (Valerian) out of the Woodland Fairy garden. The campanula and saponaria spread by rhizomes and they were very close to taking over the entire garden area this year. The valeriana spreads by seed and even though I destroyed the parent plant several years ago, every year I deal with an abundance of valeriana seedlings in all of my gardens. No matter how beautiful those three plants are, once I finally succeed in getting rid of them, I will never invite them back!
We've also spent a fair amount of time continuing clean-up from the October snow storm that damaged so many trees. Some that were weakened, but not destroyed in the storm, were further damaged by days and days of extreme winds over the winter. Now, those weakened limbs have snapped off or are ready to snap off, so they need to come down.
That storm also left us with the pond that was damaged when a tree broke off and came down into the pond, poking holes in the liner. I'll write more about the process of re-building the pond in future blogs.
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