Add Photo to Journal
|
|
| Photo Credit: Sarah Landicho |
| This is my sickly Japanese maple – struggling to hold onto its leaves and branches. |
Spring gets crazy here in the Midwest. Sometimes we seem to move from winter straight into summer come April or May. Other years, like 2008, we trod ever so slowly through the season, and summerlike temps seem too far away to even imagine. But as frustrating as the lingering cold weather is to us, it’s even worse on our gardens.
Take for example two of my favorite trees: Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) and ‘Forest Pansy’ redbud (Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’). I’ve got one of each planted out in front of my house. My Japanese maple is now 4 years old, and my redbud (a memorial tree planted in honor of my dad) will turn 1 in my garden this fall. Chicago winters have been bad before, but this past one and our really (really) late spring have done my trees wrong. Winter dieback isn’t uncommon in my neck of the woods. And it seems like some of the branches on both my trees succumbed to the cold. (This is the second time for my Japanese maple – I lost its original leader two winters ago.) There’s not much I can do about that now, but when winter rears its ugly head once again, I can make sure there’s a good 2-inch layer of mulch at the bases of my trees for insulation, as well as keep both well-watered whenever temps rise above freezing. | Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Felder Rushing | | This is how my Japanese maple should look – flush with lovely red color all over! |
The second problem my two trees are facing is late-freeze damage. We did have a couple of below-freezing nights late in the season that zapped some emerging leaves. In fact, my redbud didn’t even flower this year. (A local nursery professional suspects the buds literally froze off and blew away – not terribly uncommon.) While I do have some leaves that have emerged nicely, my trees also have some limp leaflets trying to force their way into the sunshine ever so slowly – some currently wilting in our steadily below-average temperatures. There are also some buds that are trying to break, but they just don’t seem to have the will. So basically what I’m left with are two scraggy-looking specimens.
So I asked the professionals what to do. Their advice: Beef up the soil around the trees, adding a nice layer of compost around their drip lines; fertilize – but not too heavily (neither tree will prosper with overfertilization); and make sure I’ve got that nice 2-inch layer of mulch surrounding the base of each tree – but not up against the trunks’ bark, so that means digging my finger in around the base of the trunks and creating a ring of space.
|