Welcome Back!
Week Five of our 52 Weeks of Lawn & Garden Maintenance is proving to meet us with great opportunity during this quick thaw. It is always precarious spraying products in the winter months, especially the winters in Ohio, with the exception of a few. The weather is so undetermined in North East Ohio from one day to the next that we determined gardeners find it hard to set our garden schedules too far out.
Scheduled or unscheduled, www.NEOhiogarden.com is recommending that you take advantage of the warmer temperatures this week to re-apply your Liquid Deer Fence and re-apply Wilt-Pruf to your wind and salt exposed evergreens.
When applying any liquid product in the winter months you want to make sure the temperatures are above freezing during the application and stay above freezing until your application dries completely.
The weather forecast for this week calls for temperatures above 40 degrees through Wednesday night; this should give you plenty of time to get your product applied. The weather is also calling for some scattered showers so you may want to keep an eye on the sky and get your application in during a dry spot.
We discussed Liquid Deer Fence during week three; here is a link if you would like to review the information on it.
What is Wilt-Pruf & Why do I need to use it?
Wilt-Pruf is the trademarked name of a product that, once applied, literally protects your plants from wilting. You may have heard of it by the more technical name – Anti-Transpirant –
What is an Anti-Transpirant?
We have glands all over our skin called PORES through which we perspire.
Plants have glands all over their tissues called STOMA in which they transpire.
We have Anti-Perspirant and plants have Ant-Transpirant.
Plants are so very much like us, and in the same way you would get chapped lips from standing in the cold winter wind for too long, the tissue of certain plants are susceptible to winter drying from the same cause. Plants do not need these products to maintain their fresh smell, as we would use deodorants, their need is much like ours for Chap Stick. An Anti-Transpirant such as Wilt-Pruf acts much like Chap Stick. Most good organic Chap Stick is made from wax such as bees wax and Anti-Transpirant are an emulsified wax that is sprayed over all of the tissue of the plant above as well as beneath the leaves and stems.
Some of the Rhododendron around North east Ohio the past week have looked like the song lyric “I am half the man I use to be” as they have curled their leaves and retracted themselves to the best of their abilities from the harsh cold and wind. They are reacting to the moisture that is violently being stolen from their precious being. It is a very violent feeling for the plant and they will not normally tolerate this for long extended periods of time without deciding to check out on you, which normally happens early spring when you are expecting a bounty of blossoms.
Wilt-Pruf is safe for the environment and the plants and it will wash away with natural precipitation. You can apply Wilt-Pruf to Rhododendron, Azalea, Inkberry, Arborvitae, Alberta Spruce and any other evergreen that may experience a hard time in the cold wind of winter.
Anti-Transpirant are commonly used amongst the garden industry in the shipping of cut flowers and bare rootstock to minimize water loss during shipment. It can also prevent damage from salt spray some plants receive when they are close to roads and walks if the product is applied beforehand.
Enjoy the garden this week and enjoy the weather as this is Northeast Ohio and the temperatures are predicted to drop below 30 degrees again by Thursday morning.
We are prepared!
Don’t you love Ohio!
We will leave you with a Nugget in regards to the cold weather;
“The extreme cold weather is not so great for the plants at the nursery though it is great to decrease the invasive bug & pest populations as well as the non-beneficial native garden pest population in general”.
We’ll take it!
Until next week…NORTHEAST OHIO ROCKS!
