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Showing posts with the label plant protection

Winter Protection for Roses - Mounding Biosolids on Crowns - December 2023

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Every Fall, I've gone about protecting our Disneyland Roses (Floribunda Roses) from Winter using an insulation method of laying Fall leaves around the bush.  Typically, I take a small ring of chicken wire and create a ring.  Anchored by a bamboo pole, I erect the chicken wire ring around the rose and fill the center with leaves that I pick up off the lawn.  Some of those leaves are chopped up with the mower, some are just raked up and piled in there. This post from November 2022 shows how I set up that Winter Protection for roses last year .   H ere's another post showing Fall 2020 that shows similar chicken wire rings and leaves that I used to overwinter the crowns of our Disneyland Roses. That system seemed to work just fine.  It wasn't elegant, but (*knock on wood*) I haven't lost a Disneyland Rose yet.  But, my roses are starting to get large and unwieldy.  That has made the chicken wire rings more challenging every year.  So, I went off on the Web to see if there

Dang Rabbits - Fall Damage and Winter Prep - November 2022

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I took a walk around the garden this weekend thinking about what I needed to do to button the yard and beds up for the Winter and came across a bunch of rabbit-caused problems.  The dang rabbits are giving me a lot of worries about this Winter.  I posted about some of the problems they've caused over the years including how they went whole hog on our small Oakleaf Hydrangeas last year .  We didn't get ANY blooms because of their chomping.  They ate off ALL the most recent growth - and Oakleaf Hydrangeas bloom on 'old wood' (aka...last season's growth) .   Those dang! rabbits have destroyed all of my Toad Lillies , killed a Canadian Hemlock tree , stunted some of sedges and chewed off a bunch of branches on our Hicks Yews.   Knowing my enemy, I've started to protect things with cages of chicken wire - including these Arrowwood (Chicago Lustre) Viburnum  and some of our Hemlocks .  And...(this year)... ALL of our Oakleaf Hydrangeas .   However...it is clear that

Toad Lillies - No Flowers - August 2021

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The last time, I posted on our toad lilies that I planted this Spring was earlier this month when I shared some photos of the buds that were about to burst and show flowers for the first time in our yard.  Fast forward to today and when I was out in back, I noticed that ALL of the flowers were gone.  Cut right off below where the buds were located.  I say 'cut', but what I really think I mean is 'chewed' right off.  By whom?  I'm guessing rabbits.   I planted these in late Spring . See below for a photo showing how these toad lilies were clipped/chewed right off.   This means that we didn't get ANY flowers from these.  Or at least, I didn't SEE them.   Note to my future self:  protect the toad lilies with some pest-fencing next year.  Maybe with some poultry wire to ring these up?  Seems like the critters like the buds and not the leaves.

Using Floating Row Cover on Newly Transplanted Perennials - Frost Protection in April

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This photo is from Tuesday, April 20th.  When, we had snow.  And two straight nights of below freezing temperatures in Northern Illinois.  I was totally unprepared for these temperatures, but thanks to Nat's quick thinking, we grabbed a couple of sheets of floating row cover from Amazon that had 'Same Day' delivery.  I unrolled them, covered a bunch of things that I've recently moved (the Fanal Astilbes, a bunch of random Peonies, some new ferns and hostas and an impulse-bought Japanese Maple.   You can see the snow coming down in the photo below: I went out the following morning (when the temperature was still below 30 degrees) and found my tulip blooms looking not so happy: I'm guessing that we'll have a much shorter season of tulip flowers this season, but by the afternoon - when the temperatures had risen to the upper 40's, they mostly seemed to bounce back.  Some of the flower petals had dropped, but nothing like what happened with the Saucer Magnolia o