Snow Cover Is Good For Your Home Garden
Last week I read that 49 of the 50 states in the U.S. have snow cover somewhere in the state. You may be wondering how that snow outside your window affects your home garden. Here’s the deal:
Snow has a remarkable insulating effect. It protects dormant perennials, bulbs, and plant crowns from freezing and thawing cycles and thus keeps plants from dying over the winter. If the snow wasn’t covering many of your plants, their cells would be exposed to freezing temperatures and when they thawed, they would die.
The snow also insulates the soil and protects it from a deep freeze, which could damage the root systems of trees and shrubs. On the flip side, if the snow wasn’t covering and insulating your soil, the soil would freeze and then warming temperatures on mild days could create soil or frost heave, which might snap root systems and dry out plants.
Of course, snow has its downside to plants as well. After a snow, you should always clear the white stuff from bushes and trees that might be damaged from the weight. I experienced this one year after a particularly hard winter when snow falling off of my roof smashed the branches of a bush apart, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the bush. Fortunately, I roped the bush up in the spring and it grew to hide the hole.
Did you know that your plants can experience a drought in the winter? Look at bushes and other plants under the eaves of your house. If snow doesn’t fall there, take some snow and fill it in around the base of the bush or plant so the crown and root is insulated and the plant gets moisture as the snow melts. That’s called snow mulching. Don’t go overboard and pack too much around it, because you want to make sure that the melting snow easily drains away when the thaw comes.
Please note that you should never use snow mixed with chemicals for melting ice – like from the edge of your driveway, street, or sidewalks – that snow might be high in salt and can quickly kill just about any plant.
My grandmother always used to call snow the Poor Man’s fertilizer. Personally, I think it makes a winter garden look beautiful too!
It must be super exciting when spring gets here for all you snow covered gardeners… today in San Diego it was sunny and warm