Care of winter-sensitive plants

Your Winter Sensitive plants, such as camellias and figs can be protected through our cold months by the simple act of insulation. Insulation comes in the form of items you may have in your yard already (uh, if you haven’t already raked your leaves to the curb before our huge snow storms!), or by the purchase of a bale of straw (make sure to purchase straw vs hay, as hay has seeds, straw does not... I pull hay every single summer from my veggie garden due to this mistake made TEN years ago!). Is it too late to protect your winter- tender plants? Believe it or not, but no, not too late. Snow aside, our coldest month is coming right up - January, where temperatures can get well below zero - those temps which can kill your prize camellia.

So - here are a couple easy steps:

• Check the location of your tender plant. If it is a plant, like the Brown Turkey Fig, and itʼs in a rather protected area, it will probably do fine. If itʼs on top of a hill, such as our Demonstration Garden at Ida Lee Park figs, it will be exposed to drying, chilling winter winds. Plants out in the open are more susceptible to the ravages of a cold spell, and these are the ones which need to be addressed before the thermometer plummets. Believe it or not, snow is a great insulator, but as we donʼt really get that much snow, we must take other precautions.

• Stake around the plant with garden stakes, bamboo, twigs, leftover lumber, or whatever you have on hand - try to stake outside the drip line of the plant.

• Buy some inexpensive chicken wire, netting, or snow fence and staple, tie or otherwise affix the material to the stakes. Leave yourself a “door” so you have room to place your insulating material.

• Stuff straw or dried leaf materiel into the fence as thickly and as high as you can. to protect the plant. Really, about 2 feet is fine to protect the roots of items such as fig trees (or shrubs, in the case of Northern Virginia). If you have a favorite camellia, and itʼs in an open location (vs next to the house in a southern exposure), know that you will have to do a little more to protect the foliage and early blooms. Keep some burlap or old sheets on hand to cover the shrub for the mid-to-late spring freezes. However, if we have a hard freeze in the spring, you will likely loose your blooms.

Now it’s spring ... danger of frost has passed ... what to do with the leaf or straw you’ve used to insulate your plant? This is great “brown” material for your compost pile! And, knowing the number of weeds (“green” compost) you will soon be pulling and adding to compost, this is not a bad thing. If you can, layer the green and brown in your compost pile to get the best mix - of course, if you are hard core, everything will go into your shredder then to the compost ... but we cannot all be so lucky. If you do not compost (do check first with your HOA, if applicable - you may be surprised at how the “green movement” has affected rules!), bag the material as landscape refuse and let someone else benefit from your winter insulation.

Linda Shotton, Loudoun County