The Garden Gate

Garden tips for every month of the year!

January

Happy New Year! Now is the time for you to develop a plan to ensure that it is a better year for your landscape and gardens.

Each year most states set aside a day to recognize the importance that trees play in our environment and call this day Arbor Day. In Florida this is always the third Friday in January, and the National Arbor Day which is celebrated on the last Friday in April. Plan to join your local Arbor Day Celebration and plant a tree.

Trees are important to us all beside just the enhanced dollar value they give to a landscape they are planted in. According to the American Forestry Association, trees have other significant monetary benefits.

In the right spot, each year, a single tree provides $73 worth of air conditioning savings, $75 worth of erosion control, $75 worth of wildlife shelter and $50 worth of air pollution reduction. Compounding this total ($273) annually for 50 years at 5% interest results in a tree value of $57,151. The overall benefits far outweigh the initial cost of each tree – and this doesn’t take into account the aesthetic rewards provided by trees. Plant a tree this Arbor Day!

Not only is Arbor Day a time to consider planting a tree, it’s also time to take stock of how we are treating the trees we already have. What things might we be doing which we need to stop?

• Don’t stack wood against tree trunks – this needlessly injures their bark.
• Don’t drive nails into trees, build tree houses in them, or hang swings from their branches – this again causes injury.
• Protect trees from injury by allowing mulch to lay over their roots making it unnecessary to mow or use line trimmers close to their trunks.
• Don’t drive over a tree’s roots or build structures within 15 feet of their trunks so that major roots remain undamaged. When possible, do little under the entire canopy of the tree.
• When dead branches, or mistletoe infestations are observed, have them cut out – get it done by professionals (certified tree arborists) if the tree is too large for you to work with.
• Don’t use weed killers (especially weed and feed products) under or near trees if the label says not to use them near the roots of desirable woody plants.
• In the end, planting new trees is a great thing to do at Arbor Day, but how about also treating the trees we already have a little kinder?

There are still a few flowering plants that we can set out now because they too are cold hardy. Among the flowering annuals you might find at garden shops and which should do well are Alyssum, Bachelor Button, Candytuft, Carnation, Chinese Forget-Me-Not, Dianthus, Gypsophila, Larkspur, Lobelia, Pansy, Petunia, Phlox, Scabiosa, Sweet Pea, and Verbena.

Among bulbs, tubers, corms, or rhizomes you could plant now we list the Agapanthus, Amaryllis, Aztec lily, Calla lily, Crinum lily, Gloriosa lily, Lycoris, Clivia, Walking Iris, African Iris, Narcissus, Spider lily, Tuberose and Zephyr lily.

January and February begin the period when we prune most of our fruiting plants. By the end of February, we should have pruned our Pears, Apples, Blueberries, Grapes, and Persimmons. Peaches, Nectarines and Plums are not pruned until they actually start to flower. Pruning them before that may cause them to blossom too soon and then be injured by late cold. If it’s a Peach, Plum, or Nectarine, let the tree tell you when to prune it!

For the gardener who wants to start a garden as early as possible to come into harvest well ahead of the summer vegetable pests, a prime consideration is garden location. Vegetable plants "perceive" time of year and start to grow by how quickly and for how long each day garden soils heat to the 50’s and above. Cool soils slow root growth from happening and thus stunt top growth. Selecting a garden site with morning shade insures slow spring growth and a delayed harvest date.

In such sites, even though the sun comes up, the dew and night wetness may not begin drying until nearly mid-morning. This can set vegetables back as much as 30 days or more from their normal harvest date. Always choose your garden site so it is in full sun by 8:00am each morning.

Another way of getting vegetables off to an early start is to grow them in pots or shallow trays so they can already have some size to them when they are finally set in the garden. Starting vegetables from seeds in pots or trays in January will give you as much as a 6 week jump on things. It’s important however to make sure these young seedlings get plenty of light to be strong – you don’t want to plant spindly, weak plants. Use shop lights suspended right over the plants (left on 14-16 hours a day) or move the seedlings out each day to full sun (unless the day is too cool for this).

There are many vegetables that will tolerate temperatures near the mid 20’s and continue to grow. They are ones the gardener can still plant in December and January. Among them are broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, onion, beets, kale, kohlrabi, parsnips, rutabaga, and turnip.

Watch those weather forecasts. If a hard freeze (temperatures in the 20’s) is predicted and it’s been more than a week since there was rain, check the soil to see if it is dry. If dry, irrigate the lawn with a ½ inch of water at least 12-36 hours before the freeze. This will prevent unnecessary root and runner injury to the grass. This is because, when surface soils begin to freeze, the ice crystals need water to form. If it doesn’t come from the soil, it will come from roots growing there. Often what we call winter freeze injury is in fact severe winter "desiccation." This can be avoided if the soil is well moistened. That extra moisture will also store daytime heat longer into the night and may mitigate how cold the soil becomes and for how long.

Special note: Don’t, however, water going into the night so the top of the grass is wet. This causes ice crystals to form there which usually leads to grass runners being exposed to colder temperatures than they would have been, simply from the air temperature. Winter injury will be increased. Be sure also to have your automatic sprinkler system turned to manual so there is no way that system can come on during the night of the freeze. More than once I have seen whole yards covered with ice when this has happened. Such events lead to more winter injury than would be normal to both lawn and shrubbery.

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