I recently got a gardening question from a reader on facebook that went something like this: “We have 3 acres and a small cabin. . . . Any ideas of perennial food plants I could set in a cold climate and let grow wild? . . . probably zone 4.” There are lots of options [...]
Tag Archives: environment
Preventing Freeze/Thaw Damage
You may think that you’re safe from freezing temperatures if you have very cold-hardy trees in your landscape, but there’s a sneaky way in which winter can seriously damage your trees even if they’re cold-hardy. Damage can be caused from the freeze/thaw cycle that occurs on the south, or sun-facing, side of a tree trunk [...]
Snow: A Good Insulation
In temperate areas of the world (where winters can be cold and long), it is a good thing for your plants when it snows. Snow is actually an excellent insulator. Surface ground temperatures underneath a thick blanket of snow will stay fairly constant around 32 degrees even if the outside air above the snow is [...]
Plant Adaptation for Freezing Temperatures
It’s amazing how plants can adapt and survive even in some of the most severe of climates. In the case of freezing cold, many plants have developed a unique adaptation that allows for their survival in this weather extreme. The adaptation is made possible by an anti-freeze protein. Plants such as evergreens that grow year-round, [...]
Ecology of Early-Rising Plants
You may wonder why there are some plants that bloom and grow in very early spring. Sometimes these plants will even grow right through snow that’s still on the ground. Crocuses are an example of this (hence the well-known name of Snow Drops, pictured to the right.). But why would some plants have adapted to [...]
Starting from Seed
A lot of gardeners like to get a jump on the season by sowing seeds in pots indoors in early spring when it’s still too cold outside to start gardening. This is a good idea particularly for gardeners who live closer to the poles and thus have a shorter growing season. When starting a garden [...]
Cold-Blooded Plants
I’m sure you’ve seen or at least heard of reptiles sitting out in the sun for several minutes or even hours at a time. They do this because they get the warmth they need, in order to carry out bio-chemical functions within their bodies, from the sun, not from their own bodies. Plants are the [...]
Soil pH
What to do with your soil’s pH The basic idea: Acidity and basicity are measured on a pH scale of 1 to 14. A pH of 7 is considered neutral, lower numbers are acidic and higher numbers are basic. Depending on a soil’s pH some nutrients may or may not be able to be absorbed [...]
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