Garden death list

This was the worst winter in 30 years and a lot of plants took a beating.  Here's the obits so far.  Two species of beauty berry (2 bushes of each), one well established, one new last year.  Status: to be replaced unless some sprouts appear from the base. A rough-barked Japanese maple - ouch!  This was no big-box store cheapie and it was doing very well.  Status: no breaking buds and no sprouts as yet. This one will be hard to replace without visiting crazy Japanese maple guy again.  Vitex (chaste tree) frozen back or frozen in toto?  This has frozen back before and then sprouted from the base almost growing like an herbaceous perennial, so we'll wait some more. New little plum yew died; it had not yet gotten well established and probably wasn't quite hardy either.  Status: already replaced by bigger and better shrub in its 1st appearance in local trade.  Heliantheum (Cistaceae) - no sign of life after surviving previous several winters.  Sad.  Status: will seek hardier replacement. They said zone 5, but not sure this means what its supposed to mean.  Leptodermis - Again, zone 5?  Who are they kidding?  Status: An underwhelming plant; replacement uncertain. An ornamental hemlock; it was ailing from the heat and drought, and the winter and rabbits did the rest.  Status: if replaced, it will be in a different location. TPP's hemlock batting average is terrible - zero for several plants. Established trees do OK here, but tough to establish in our hotish and dryish summers.  Bought and planted B&B Japanese snowbell in place of the hemlock, but it has failed to break bud - seems it didn't survive over-wintering at the nursery. Someone owes TPP a new tree, but another of the same? Status: rethinking the whole idea about what to put in the center of this bed.  It's been a tough spot for some reason. Corylopsis (winter hazel) - hasn't broken bud yet, but holding out hope still. Status: uncertain. If replaced it will be in another location. Several others were damaged, frozen back, but expect them to recover, eventually.  All the rosemary and lavender froze, but the sage is tough. Lost a really good dwarf Nova Spy apple tree.  Status: will replace.   New Pterostyrax  (epaulette tree) was a worry, but it was undamaged as were the pearl bushes (Exochorda) and one even flowered! OK, they're hardy.  Itea took a beating but is now showing signs of life - a close call. Tree peonies all survived with minimal damage - yea!  

Treacherous rainfall & garden watering

Things have been dry here abouts for a month now.  A few days ago storms passed through over night and in the morning everything looked wet and fresh.  Great!  Actually not so great with another week of dry, seasonally hot weather in the forecast.  Do you have a rain gauge?  If so, you would have recorded barely 1/4" of rainfall, and you need at least 1/2" of rain a week to keep a garden going, but in a dry spell, 1/4" just wets the surface.  This is exactly the type of situation where amateurs make the mistake of thinking it rained more than it did, or that the rain did more go than it did, and they get behind in watering.  So get out there and keep watering!  Water those things newly planted!  Water your fall garden!  Water less well established trees and shrubs!  This is the type of weather and the rainfall conditions where you kill trees, but you won't know until next spring, and then people will say "winter kill".  But no, it was lack of water several months earlier.  Which is now!  A neighbor was surprised TPP was watering just after we got a rain.  Well, dig into that mulch a bit and look at the soil underneath.  Dry, dry, dry.  He began watering only a short time later. 

Keep watering!

The Phactor is issuing a general warning that the great inequalities of precipitation we have been experiencing pose a grave danger to plants, especially any planted this year. After two weeks of no rain locally, a day of light rain helped a little, but not a lot. The rain gauge said it was barely 1/3d of an inch, barely wetting the surface, and not even that under the crowns of some of our large trees that not only are tremendous competitors for water but creators of their own rain shadows. So in marked constrast to the eastern USA, it remains a drought out here. Now here's the problem. Many people noted the recent rainy day and are mistakenly thinking things are OK for awhile, but they aren't. The soil water was not replenished and many plants are suffering stress. If you do not keep watering newly planted trees in the mistaken belief that nature has taken care of them they will die during the winter, fail to leaf out or grow in the spring, and winter cold will take the blame for your neglect. You see winter is actually a drought season, a cold dry desert effect takes place which is bad enough by itself, but when the plant enters winter already water stressed, the deck is stacked against survival. A number of new plantings around our town are already good bets for "winter kill" including almost all the city's mandated landscaping around new buildings because after meeting the letter of the regulation, the plants are routinely ignored, and the town is not very diligent at holding feet to the fire for replacement plantings. Some official exqamines the required landscaping, check, everything in compliance, everything dies, no one cares. So what's wrong with a 1 year check up? So unless the weather patterns change considerably the fall looks to be dry so lots of plants will die as a result. When you purchase a plant, especially a nice big expensive one, in my case an 8 foot tall weeping white pine,you must protect your investment by watering, watering, watering, and yes that costs money, but so does buying a replacement. Don't waste any water on the lawn; any grass in your lawn will just go dormant, so no worries. The general rule of thumb is that it takes at least an inch of rain a week to keep things in good shape. Lastly my apologies to those readers who have gotten way, way too much precipitation; it just isn't fair, it's nature, who just doesn't care.