Winter Protection 



C. L. MELLER & c 



of Parks 

 N. D. 



COLD LESS INJURIOUS THAN LOSS OF MOISTURE— WHY A MULCH WILL SAVE AND HOW IT CAN SOMETIMES BE 



INJURIOUS— CAN A TENDER PLANT BE MADE HARDY? 



WINTER protection to be effective 

 must be intelligently done. This, 

 to some may seem a mere truism, 

 and to others an affectation, since 

 what intelligence is needed to wrap or cover 

 up a plant and so protect it against the cold 

 of winter? But there's the rub! 



Are you in fact protecting it against the 

 cold? Can you really protect a plant 

 against the cold with the thermometer below 

 zero and the frost penetrating the soil to a 

 depth of six feet and more? Obviously 

 under such conditions no amount or kind of 

 covering can long retain a higher temperature 

 than that which surrounds it. Covering, 

 however, does carry through the winter 

 plants that would otherwise succumb. It 

 cannot well be warmth since none is provided. 

 Then what is the adverse factor that covering 

 a plant counteracts? 



Consider a Rose that has winter killed. 

 All its canes are dried and shrivelled, just as 

 though they had been dried in an oven. 

 Compare these canes with those of another 

 Rose bush that has passed through the 

 winter beneath a mound of earth. . How 

 plump and pliable are these latter, how sappy 

 they look! Yet the two bushes may be of the 

 same variety, as, for instance, Gruss an 

 Teplitz which I have carried through the 

 winters of North Dakota by the hundreds, 

 simply by hilling about the bushes with a 

 mound of earth. Exposed bushes always die 

 down to the ground; and exposed portions of 

 canes die back to the soil covering. 



It is not the cold but the excessive evapora- 

 tion that " 'winter-kills." Protected against 

 evaporation (and soil is the surest means 

 of protecting against it), a Rose bush passes 

 through our coldest winter unharmed; ex- 

 posed, the bushes succumb save during an 

 exceptionally mild winter. What is true for 

 Gruss an Teplitz is equally true of a very 

 large number of hybrid perpetual Roses. 



So hardy and vigorous a grower as Spiraea 

 Van Houttei gives like evidence. During a 

 cold dry winter when the snow is always light 

 and dry, and much of it apparently freezes 

 away, this shrub comes out in spring badly 

 winter-killed, never down to the ground, but 

 with its top full of dead wood. During win- 

 ters when there is much wet snow, it passes 

 unharmed to bloom like a bank of snow in 

 spring. Of course no one ever thinks of 

 covering a Spiraea bush. 





Even in the extreme north the Prickly Pear will winter under 

 the shelter of a rock 



A piece of ice hung in a tree lost appreciably during Febru- 

 ary. Evaporation is the cause of winter-killing 



Evaporation of Ice 



A CHUNK of ice weighing nineteen and 

 -^*- a half pounds was hung among the 

 branches of a small Oak on February 2nd and 

 when taken down on the fourteenth it weighed 

 eighteen pounds. There was not a minute's 

 thaw during the entire time the piece of ice 

 hung in the tree, indeed the thermometer 

 registered below zero almost every day. 

 Thus in less than two weeks this ice, a solid 

 mass, gave up by evaporation very close to 

 8 per cent, of its total weight, a concrete ex- 

 ample as you will admit of what wooded 

 plants are called upon to endure. 



Again on February 27th another piece of 

 ice was hung among the branches of the same 

 Oak. This time the ice was placed in a pan 

 so that no water might be lost during warm 

 weather. Ice, pan and the wire supporting 

 it weighed twenty-four pounds. This hung 

 out until March 24th when only water was 

 left and the entire outfit then weighed eigh- 

 teen pounds, a loss therefore in a little less 

 than a month of more than 25 per cent, since 

 the weight of the pan remains constant. 



Let it be borne in mind that a plant is sub- 

 jected to this stress of evaporation while the 

 roots are in solidly frozen soil and have no 

 means of replenishing the moisture lost. 

 Under such circumstances evaporation has a 

 meaning all its own. It is apparent that a 

 plant with well ripened wood has a much 

 greater chance of living through such condi- 

 tions than one with its wood green and sappy. 

 That is one reason why native Roses pass 

 through our winters unharmed while many 

 of the improved sorts succumb if unprotected. 



135 



What We Must Do 



\ S AN axiom of winter protection it may 

 ^*- be stated that any method to be effec- 

 tive must protect against evaporation. The 

 extent to which it prevents evaporation marks 

 therefore the effectiveness of the material 

 selected. 



Given suitable soil, most of the climbing 

 Roses will grow in the Northwest, but a mat 

 of straw tacked over them against the wall 

 will never carry the canes through winter. 

 They must be laid down and covered with 

 about a foot of soil, and so covered they will 

 come out in spring alive to the very tip. 

 Where from some cause or other this cover is 

 removed in spots, the canes may be alive at 

 either end with a dead section here and there. 

 This of course means that only the part 

 below the lowest dead section will remain 

 alive. 



A Hardy Cactus in the North 



^TO ONE would at first thought associate 

 ■^ the Prickly Pear Cactus of our warmer 

 states with the cold of a Northwest winter; 

 yet, as our picture shows, it may be met with 

 growing wild on the prairies of Montana. 

 This photograph was taken about a mile out 

 of Glendive, Montana; and, the picture also 

 shows, the Cactus hugs the ground pretty 

 closely for in so doing it is assured of a plenti- 

 ful covering of snow and consequent pro- 

 tection in winter. The cold penetrates the 

 soil to such a depth and leaves it so slowly 

 that you may strike frost down in the soil even 

 in late May and sometimes in early June. 

 Under such conditions it does not seem reason- 

 able to suppose that this Cactus native though 

 it be to the sandy wastes of our hottest sec- 

 tions, requires any protection against cold. 

 That it does require protection against evap- 

 oration becomes apparent from the very na- 

 ture of its growth. 



Freezing is not injurious, but should the 

 plant be called upon to give up moisture at a 

 time when it lacks the means of replenishing 

 the loss failure is certain. As an odd and in- 

 teresting growth in the garden one may carry 

 this Cactus through the winter if planted 

 where boulders or a wall will protect it from 

 the searching winds of the north and west and 

 covered with a thick layer of straw. It is 

 expected of course that there will be no lack 

 of snow. 



In Montana this Cactus hugs the ground and gets natural 

 winter protection 



