Thursday, February 22, 2007

Safety in snow

We've seen few snow storms this winter: two fade-away attempts in December and a bracingly unromantic Valentine's Day nor'easter. Snow and rain are forecast for today and tomorrow.



I am happy to know, as we face this wintery precipation, that snow is a welcome security blanket for the garden. Snow functions as a white mulch, stablizing a micro-climate underneath for plants.



It's the unprotected cold temperatures-bitter winds combination and the spring freeze-thaw cycles that are the killers. I learned that lesson the hard way two winters ago when I mistook our lack of snow for a benefit and left unmulched my climbing roses. I now have one less climber to show for it.

Now, if only I could get the snow shovelers around here to abstain from using salt!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Same problem here. My main garden is out in the open, so doesn't have much protection, besides snow, to begin with. So, after losing plants in the past few years, I have started moving some of the more fragile things up against the back of the house, and then tossing snow on them. It takes time, but at least they live. This of course, isn't possilbe with very large plants.
By the way, we didn't anything from that last storm except a few clouds.

Doctor Mom said...

Ah, Sandy, what a brilliant idea to combine plant re-location and applied snow. There's beauty in simplicity!