N~ 



ovemoer, 



1921 



763 



Providing the Plants With Winter Overcoats 



FLORUM AMATOR 



IN November or December many herbaceous perennial 

 plants and some bushes, shrubs and trees should be 

 provided with Winter overcoats. In the case of some 

 this must be done to keep, so to speak, the breath of life 

 m them till Spring returns. Others might be able to come 

 through the Winter without top coats, but are in better 

 health when the swallows come again, if they have this 

 extra clothing. There are still others which though de- 

 void even of leaves, defy old Hiem's freezing breath, and 

 Boreas' chilling blasts, and when Spring returns are as 

 rugged as ever. 



There are then two factors which determine whether 

 wfc will give our plants heavy or light weight Winter 

 overcoats, or none at all, namely the character of the 

 plant, whether hardy or tender and the latitude in which 

 it is growing. If a plant needs Winter protection at all, 

 as a matter of course, it will need a certain amount, for 

 example, in the latitude of New York ; less as we go 

 farther south, say below Washington, D. C, and more 

 in a latitude north of New York, except in those sections 

 farther north where the ground soon after it freezes hard 

 is covered by the snow, and remains snow covered till 

 Spring returns. In such sections, plants need no more 

 protection, indeed perhaps not as much, as in those lati- 

 tudes where the \^'inters are characterized by the alter- 

 nate freezing and thawing of the ground. 



Bushes, Shrubs and Trees 



Rose Bushes 



Tea-scented and Hybrid Tea rose bushes in latitudes 

 where the Winter temperature ranges from 20 degrees 

 above down to below zero need protection, and the H\^brid 

 Perpetuals, Climbers, Ramblers, and other classes of roses 

 are benefited by such care. The old method of protecting 

 rose bushes in the Winter was to nearly or quite cover 

 the Teas and Hybrid Teas with coarse, strawy manure or 

 leaves or meadow hay, and to pile up such material high 

 around the Hybrid Perpetuals and others and to bind a 

 sheaf of straw around that part of the bush above the 

 manure or hay. \\'hile these coverings made a protection 

 for the bushes, they also provided Winter houses for the 

 field mice, which in \\'inter when other food was scarce 

 would nibble off the bark from the rose bushes for food, 

 and in so doing girdle the bushes close to the ground and 

 greatly injure or kill them. The newer, and far better 

 way of protecting rose bushes is as follows: Set strong 

 stakes about as tall as the bushes firmly in the ground 

 close to the body of the bushes in late .\utumn ; prune the 

 bushes just enough to take awav their ragged appear- 

 ance ; tie a soft string on each stake about opposite the 

 middle of the rose bush, and pass it around the bush and 

 draw this together and up against the stake; in case of 

 the Hybrid Perpetuals two or three ties may be neces- 

 sary. After the ground is crusted by the frost to a depth 

 of about two inches, heap rich soil u]) around each bush 

 to the depth of eight to twelve inches. This is all the 

 protection necessary, though in very cold sections after 

 the heap of soil around the bush is frozen hard, coarse 

 manure and leaves, or similar material may be placed 

 above the heap of soil and the taller Hj'brid Perpetuals 

 may be given a sheaf of straw around them above the 

 soil. If the rose bushes are so close together that taking 

 the soil from near them to bank them up will expose any 

 of their lateral roots, as might he the case when bushes 



are set in a bed, the soil for placing around them must be 

 brought from elsewhere. 



Shrubs 



Shrubs, especially the more tender kinds, may be pro- 

 tected in Winter in much the same way as rose bushes, 

 namely, tied to strong stakes which will prevent heavy 

 snows from breaking down either rose bushes or shrubs, 

 heaped up round about with rich soil, and this wdien nec- 

 essary covered with manure or leaves after the soil has 

 frozen. We may say here that manure or other material 

 placed above the heap of frozen soil is not so liable to 

 harbor field mice as when these materials alone are freely 

 used around bushes or shrubs, and that the heap of frozen 

 soil acts as a defense to keep the mice from girdling the 

 bushes or shrubs. Rich soil, alone", however, is prefer- 

 able, unless extremely low temperatures make the addi- 

 tion of leaves absolutely necessary. 



Trees 



Young trees of all kinds, and the more tender kinds of 

 other trees should be protected in much the same way as 

 shrubs. The staking and tying, and the soil heaped up 

 around them helps the trees as well as the shrubs and 

 taller rose bushes to meet the bufYeting of the \\'inter 

 winds. 



Herbaceous Plants 



The Winter overcoats suitable for herbaceous plants 

 are coarse strawy manure, marsh hay, straw, leaves, 

 branches of evergreen trees, rather than the rich soil 

 which we use for protecting bushes, shrubs and trees ; 

 not but what the rich soil would protect herbaceous 

 plants but because it would make too heavy a covering 

 and have a tendency to smother, especially the smaller 

 herbaceous evergreen plants and would be difficult of 

 removal in Spring without injury to the tender sprouts 

 of the plants which would be then appearing above 

 ground. 



Herbaceous plants may be divided into two general 

 classes, the deciduous, comprising those plants whose 

 tops die right down to the ground in late Autumn, for 

 example Peonies, Phlox, Gaillardia, Lily of the \'alley, 

 and most of the Lilies, and other bulbous plants ; the 

 evergreen, comprising those plants whose foliage, remains 

 more or less green all Winter, for example, Oriental Pop- 

 pies, Lilutm Candidum. and Digitalis. The dead tops of 

 the deciduous plants should be cut off close down to the 

 ground and thrown back over the plants to form at the 

 same time a partial protection and a support, as it were, 

 to keep the six to eight inches of coarse manure or other 

 material, which is used as a W'inter protection for the 

 plants, from bearing down too closely and heavily on 

 them. 



In the case of the evergreen herbaceous plants the same 

 material used for a covering for deciduotis plants should 

 be placed to the depth of several inches around and close 

 to them, but not on them. Six or eight inches have been 

 given as about the proper depth for a cover, but these 

 figures are not arbitrary ; observation and experience 

 will teach how thick a covering each of the several kinds 

 of plants need. In the case of evergreen herbaceous 

 plants whose foliage hugs the ground, it is advisable to 

 ]>lace over these, small branches of evergreen trees or 

 (Coiiti)tucd 071 jya(;c 764) 



