JP Maples in the snow.

This is the first winter for my poor babies. They are buried in the snow. I hope they live to see spring. Does anyone else worry about them in this cold snow covered ground?

It's the best thing for them.

Dave

Snow is great insulation. It actually protects buried plants from "outside" lower temperatures. It's impossible for the temperature to go lower than 32º under the snow blanket even though the temp "outside" the snow is below freezing. That's the basic principle with the igloo.

Oh Thank you. I am just so worried, I took them from their pots that I put them in when I got themin the spring and planted them this fall. I just hope they do live. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

The only time snow can be a problem is when it is very deep and of the very heavy wet type that lands on a large dissectum... It then can break branches and sometimes severally damage a tree but mostly with large branchy dissectums . Oddly I have not seen this with ice and we have had very bad ice storms here. But overall Dave et al are correct. To put it differently snow cover skews knowing the hardiness of the tree ... if you have a winter with no or little snow and below zero temps ... then you can better judge hardiness. I think the absolute worse thing is to get heavy rain that sits on frozen soil or frozen over and /or around the roots ...then you are in big trouble in little Japan. Overall wetness is a much bigger killer than even cold for most JMs and a combination of heavy rain frozen earth as many are now getting can be a real bad thing. Davidsan

This message was edited Dec 24, 2009 12:12 PM

we have no snow cover here, and the temps are all over the place. just a weird winter.
I just hope everything survives!

I agree lynnie. I am always so worried when its the first winter for something. I am keeping my fingers creossed for a lot of plants. I did go outside this afternoon to play with my sons dog ( i am baby sitting) and I saw where the voles ate my lilies. They dug right down and uncovered all the dirt to get to the bulbs. I took the frozen dirt and crumbled it up and put back around them. I have hopes.

Every area is different even yards within a neighborhood and there are many many factors regarding winter damage . especially in borderline areas . All of my outside planted trees did great last winter at 17 below and a overall cold winter worse since the 80's...and NO snow cover. Two big factors are age of tree how long it has been in your yard . Folks planting sticks/twigs ebay trees in northern zones I guess don't have too much to loose except their time but they are pressing there luck. I personally think wet non - draining frozen earth is more dangerous than cold bare soil unless you are talking -25 or you plant a renowned tender tree. The other big disaster maker are late frosts and freezes.. Those that plant early budding jm's out in their yard...like Katsura in Chicago, as one dude did on another forum ... will live to regret his bragging.( oh did that yahoo brag).. All it takes is a year like we had a few years back , albiet a once in 50 year situation, and that tree will be toast and he will be humbled. On the other hand all jmsts who are really into this "pleasure sport".... totally addicted and who don't live in a "Doss" zone learn to accept Jm's dying from varias causes... and go on with their habit replacing the tree with something else usually something better as each year we addicts learn more and more and just don't pick willy nilly...It is just something folks have to come to grips with if they live in borderline areas you.win some loose some ...shed a few tears and move on ...but never give up. David(san)

well I should have built up a JM shelter before planting mine, but I needed the dirt therapy so in it went. If it survives I'll plant it some big brother trees before next winter ;)

lynnie you can help it a bit by wrapping it in burlap - at least that will protect it from cold dry winds some - i also have sprayed a sango kaku with wilt proof spray for added protection which also helped. The tree has been in the ground now for 5 years and i have stopped and it is doing fine.

so david talk to me about the katsura - i got one locally at the end of the season, about 5 ft tall and full with a large caliper, should i have planted this in a container and brought inside for the winter? I re-potted it into a larger leftover nursery container and "planted" it in the ground until i can put it in its permanent garden bed in the spring.

wha do you mean wrap the trunk in burlap? also, is it too late to spray wilt pruf on it now? I read on the directions to spray before a frost.

In the wonderful book "The Landscape Diaries" (http://www.shantibithi.com/diaries.htm) the author describes an estate garden they created/take care of for a client. It has many large Japanese maples, and they wrap the trunks of all of them every fall. And this is Connecticut! The author doesn't give precise directions, but it appears to be an insulating layer followed by an outer layer, reminded me of pipe insulation type of thing. I bought this book looking for bonsai information but ended up with a great read about how the author fell into gardening and owning a nursery. There are many fine JM pictures, very inspiring, and I hope someday to get to the nursery.

I thought it was the canopy that was damaged by winds....I have too much to learn! lol

i actually was referring to wrapping the canopy - i hope the snow takes care of the trunk - i do put on plastic trunk guards in the winter to keep the critters from chewing the bark.

ok. the neighbors will just think I'm redecorating for halloween *grin*

I think the reason for wrapping the trunk and major branches is the danger of early thaws followed by freeze.

makes sense

Yes, bark splits can be very damaging.

Splitting bark is a real killer as many of know from a couple of years ago. Although in a normal winter / spring it does not happen much .. if your trunk gets allot of sun in the winter it could be problem .. I have seen it happen twice... and the first cultivar may have been previous splitting I hadn't noticed .. it was also a fall planted tree from Oregon that was in poor condition upon arrival devoid of leaves or I should say leaves dryed like a hanging pot plant. It was a Dissectum called Ebony and I noticed the branches on one side (south west) were dying, I just couldn't figure out why but the split was in the back and I didn't realize it til about a year ltr upon inspection ,, The tree still lives but not well and only on the bark side with a few twigs for branches .. The split is over a foot long and slowing healing but still is about 1" wide. ... The other was with one tree in clump Bloodgood . It surprisingly was split on the north side so it may have happened in the spring freeze .. just noticed it this year .. These are big trees so damage is minimal. Generally speaking the trees that dies in the "big freeze" were dissectums .. they for most folks were hit the hard... I don't think it is a genetic thing I think it is because they were high grafted and more exposed bark and . These trees died back to the roots and then some sproated back up .they tops greened up but died from lack of food from roots thru trunk. My low grafted dissectums seemed to do ok...coincidence??? maybe ... but I hate high grafted diissectums anyway..so it gives me another reason to not have them .. ( by high I mean 12-18".) which is just a personal; thing with me nothing wrong with that look if ya like it... disgustingly high is 24 -48" like you see at Lowes ..gag me with a spoon PLEASE!!

Protecting a tree from spitting bark with wrapping may help as long as moisture and disease don't set
in. That's why wrapping for damage or criiter guards year round is never recommended .. for short periods only. You may want to unwrap during warmer periods to dry out if that becomes a problem .. I

I think low fencing and leaf mulch may be a better idea since you will have some air inside. For me I just have to live with whatever... way too many trees but if you are a normal person with a normal amount of JM's ;>) you may want to try that.. Covering canopy is good but if your tree dies down to the graft you are up the creek you have root stock only (which was the case with the "big spring freeze" I still have several green Acer Palmatum shrubs in my yard from that debacle).. whereas if you get upper branch dieback it is just self pruning in most cases ... not usually a bigf deal . some winter dieback fro late fall growth always happens anyway.

Generally speaking keeping the trunk area above the graft will save the tree ... whereas wraping branches will save the branches. With the spring freeze the sap came up and was running then froze and popped the bark like an exploding bottle . I have heard of grower's in Oregon going out in their JM nursery during a late hard freeze and hearing fireworks or a 22 automatic being fired off.as the sap was bursting on every tree thru the bark YIKES. My advise ids protect the trunk if you are worried .

As far as Katsura ...it is a great tree but is renowned for leafing out early and being susceptible to late frosts... how much damage done if any depends on the situation..If in a very protected area it may be ok ... most Jm's will do zone 5b some 5a but a few are for more southern areas mostly for this reason ... Katsura among them. As with all Jm's there are no hard faast rules just general tips for best success.. Like Bill's Sango some folks are just lucky or have a tree that is hardier. It is always best to pick the hardiest trees for colder areas but even that is no guarantee of success. Jms are not a tropical tree guarenteed to die north but it is not a tree everyone will have success with at least not the first time. Sometimes you have to experiment a bit to find JMs that work best in your area. But for most folks, unless you are in the great white north, or similar climates, you will be able to grown some sort of Asian Maple. David(san)

This message was edited Jan 5, 2010 5:56 PM

david thanks for the comments - will have to think more about putting the katsura in a container or the ground, this winter may be the test - had already planned to expand a bed and replace a disappointing flowering crab apple - could simply put it in a large container in the bad? - i know what you are thinking, what the heck am i doing with a flowering crab with so many jm's to choose from:)

Leaving any containers out is a crap shoot if it gets really cold no matter how big... I lost several 10 gal and 2 20 gallon potted jm's thinking that enough dirt would insulate larger ones and only smaller ones were at risk, boy was I wrong!!! ... of course we had no snow allot of rain and -17 below temps .. I didn't loose any of my in ground planted trees or have any damage to them in fact they had their best year yet!!!. and thats after the coldest weather since the 1980's. .. now if you mulch up around it or get significant snow fall you are likely good to go .; Burying it is allot of folks solution .. I guess they have a backhoe handy ;>) or just are masochists... burying a large pot is mucho work..

Yes my ears did pop up ( dog language) a bit when I heard about flowering CRAB APPLES ... Not that they aren't JM's but more for the fact they suck IMHO. I deep sixed all of my inherited ones years ago vowing to never own one again... twiggy dieing branched getting wacked constantly while mowing or walking around them .. They are beautiful in spring ...during a good spring stunning..and the fruit makes good bird food ( buy a bag of bird seed at lowes color it red if ya want) . and I did have to fight my wife a bit about it... but HALLELUJAH they are now history !!!... I would NEVER recommend planting one.. there are other much prettier flowing trees that are not rats nests of twigs and eye gouging branches along with rotting trunks ... BTW these trees get trunk rot and insect damage easily also I'm sure I can think of other reasons not to grow them ;>)...David(san)

This message was edited Jan 6, 2010 11:45 AM

This message was edited Jan 6, 2010 3:39 PM

i left out that i would bring in the container tree's either to over winter in the garage or shed - i have about 7 trees (6 are jm's) in the garage right now -all are pretty small except for one crape (here we go again) - don't know what i will when a couple get bigger - most are dwarf's - need to get one of those nursery tree ball two wheelers - normal one is doing some damage to the heavy plastic containers.

i must say it is nice to pull into the garage and see the branching of the jm's :)

yeah i have one other crab that looks ratty except for the spring - thinking of moving it into the back of the yard - and like yours my wife will have a fit - i will beg for forgiveness not for permission:)

If you got the bucks these work great .. but pricey .. you may be able to google something simiilar with free shipping thats cheaper but likely not as heavy duty!!. I love mine you can take a 250 lb person have em hold on tight and easily drive them around the yard :>) kind of like that guy who uses crazy glue to show how strong it is by attaching himself to the ceiling :>)
http://www.hummert.com/catalog.asp?P=12774

David

Did you have the Kousa or the Florida. The Kousa has cultivars that are fantastic in color and flower. The Milky Way is a plant that is loaded with flowers, Gold Star and Wolf Eye are plants that just keep giving all year long.

Dave

wow - pretty expensive! and straps for assessories too, for only 10 bucks they should throw that in!! :)

You can also try AM Leonard

http://www.amleo.com/index/help-desk/subcat.cgi?Cat=LA

Dave

thanks Dave i completely read over that David was refferring to dogwoods - i thought it was crab apples - dogwoods i love - i have several dogwoods here including wolf's eye, gold star, 3 satomi's (one from you), and 2 celestrial whites.

off the jm topic - what have you heard about cherokee sunset? i saw a few this spring and my wife fell i love with them.

thanks again - that is more reasonable, will have to remember they have them - thx!

I have stayed away from the white dogwood for sometime now ever since the blite started moving in. Lost too many. It seems that the Kousa does not suffer the same fate and Kousa offers about the same cultivars as Florida. So I really would know nothing about the Sunset.

Dave

I lost all my florida's - the celestial whites are a Rutgers hybrid as i'm sure you know and they are great no problems at all - the cherokee sunset is a florida although is "supposed" to be newer disease resistant variety - it is a variegated yellow/green leaf (mostly yellow) and has pink flowers - they are really stunning and the foliage stands out all season long

just did some quick research on the nursery carts - AM had the best pricing i could find - not sure why what looks to be a pretty basic thing cost so much

This message was edited Jan 15, 2010 1:23 PM

With my luck the resistant varieties would get the disease on my property. As for the carts, they are made of heavy duty material and the old horse I use can easily handle large containers and very heavy weight with just one person. I find it worth the price but then again mine is probably 40 years old or older and probably cost 50 bucks.

Dave

OOPS!!!! Actually not to put a wrench in this but I meant Crab Apples I am a bit out of it today I had dogwoods on my mind ( a new Willy Nelson song ;>).. i LOVE DOGWOODS ... so scrap that, OOPS, and all that humble pie... Bill was correct in not reading my screw up correctly ;>) I went back and changed it . The Kousa is a great choice without disease .. also Kousa x Florida.... the straight Florida I stay away from. I lost all of mine to disease except one pink one and the woods are virtually devoid of any dogwoods here at this time which I believe are all of that species FLA. Whereas iin years past they along with red buds were the predominant understudy tree around here. It has been a major die off from disease.

Wolf Eyes are very nice but the scuttle but is C. Samaritan has better heat tolerance and is an improvement over da "Eyes" and will soon replace it. whatever Dogwood that is disease resistant is a good way to go and is guranteed to smooth over any marital argumants over that awful Crab. But dave is the expert on this I( am just a mere mortal on anything NOT JM.

The Hummert cart is expensive but it is extremely heavy duty ... they have it made especially for them ... after breathing deep and laying out the cash I felt it was well worth it .. I see it lasting for at least my life time and probably my kids ...The difference in these is the extra set of wheels that alow easy rolling and it is much heavier duty steel structure and tires are bigger and I think the width is wider and side handles that most others do not have come in VERY handy... you are not comparing apples to apples. But you may not need this heavy duty of cart like I do!! Those same carts shown on ANLEO can be had much cheaper by googling tree hauling carts or nursery carts or some such on google and a couple had free shipping . I checked them out before I bought mine... but they are not apples to apples to the hummert... ANLEO is a great place ...but if you look in the hand truck sites on google they sell thousands to factories etc they have nursery carts also you can do much better for the exact same ones AMLEO has ... you won't find the hummert anywhere else. Davidsan

Aw-w-w... there are some excellent, newer cultivars of crabapples that are spectacular year-round. Flowers in spring, nice foliage in the summer, fall color and small, persistent fruit in the winter along with excellent branching structure (like Japanese Maples, most benefit from judicious pruning).

I will agree that the old varieties are / were not worth growing (and I've recommended to many a client to take out a worthless old crabapple), but a good flowering crabapple is a sensation in the spring. For those interested, check out: Dwarf and Semi-dwarf:...'Coralburst' (photo), 'Lancelot', Lollipop', 'Sargent', 'Candymint', or 'Sargentina'; Weeping... 'Red Jade', 'White Cascade', 'Louisa', or 'Molten Lava'; Standard Upright...'Prairiefire', 'Rejoice', 'Strawberry Parfait', 'Sugar Tyme', 'Golden Raindrops', 'Red Jewel', or 'Royal Raindrops'.

Crabapples have a bad reputation, like junipers and arborvitaes, because of old cultivars that are disease prone and ratty in growth. Newer cultivars are a vast improvement and there is a size and color for every garden, IMHO. Most times, if I can talk a client into trying a newer cultivar, they end up thanking me after a few years of enjoyment.

Hoosiergreen those are pretty, I have a molten lava and a very small prairefire.

well i have no plans to purchase one anytime soon so i will have to think on what i need - for trees i am not moving anything huge - however rocks i move and they weigh a ton literally so it may be worth going for a larger one.

HG thx for the crab recommendations - if there is any space here after jm's maybe..............

And back on subject here is a sango kaku with CQ in the back ground from the other night.

This message was edited Jan 15, 2010 1:27 PM

Lovely photo Wha. Your SK is a beautiful shape.

Although I have been retired from scientific work for almost ten years, the statements earlier in this thread about it being impossible for the ground under snow cover to go lower than 32°F sounded very suspicious to me. Unpacked snow is indeed a good insulator (mostly because of the trapped air), and temperatures many feet below ground level can be several degrees above freezing, but long periods of below zero air temperatures can easily penetrate even moderate amounts of snow cover. In fact, it seems likely that the reverse is true. If the soil is warmer, it will melt the snow, so the surface temperature would not go *above* 32°F, the fusion temperature of water.

One does not have to go to antarctica to find examples. A quick web search on "temperatures below snow" yielded millions of hits, but I found an example on the first result page about Bozeman, Montana where air termperatures were -19 to -25°F and the soil temperature under 4 to 7 inches of snow was +18°F, considerably below freezing. (I have friends living in the vicinity and they agree winters are harsh!)

In most of the US, it is probably true that snow cover is a good protection against freezing, we should be cautious about making too sweeping generalizations about its effectiveness.

I've always suspected there was a "flaw" in the statement about snow cover. I understand it's the same logic that applies to boiling water: The temperature of boiling water will never get above 212º F no matter how much heat is applied. However, with boiling water, as the water reaches 212º, it turns to water vapor and turns to water vapor gas. I would think that, since soil doesn't go anywhere, subjected to extreme cold, its temperature would continue to fall below freezing.

That said, everyone agrees that snow is a great insulator, and definitely better than no cover at all. And, remember that the ground is "heated" in a sense from deeper levels. Most caves remain at 55º year round. The deeper one tunnels, the warmer it gets. Mile-deep diamond mines are even hot. This ground heat-sink must affect surface temperatures a little. However, the top foot or so of soil must in turn be affected by the huge cold-sink of air masses, too.

Fascinating to think about. If it wasn't so cold out today, I'd take a thermometer outside and stick it under the snow to see what the temp is!

I hope I didn't say that in this thread if I did I should have been flogged or didn't word something clearly .. It is such a long thread I gave up looking for it .. NO NO NO snow only guarantees a warmer temp under it than than the air period and usually quite a bit warmer as stated above .. and that of course depends obviously on how much snow and if it stays on the ground thru colder periods . Hoosier is absolutely correct any amount off snow is better than no snow....but if you live in seriously cold area like zone 4 that is why no one in their right mind would say It's ok to plant out Jm's because you get allot of snow.. .. It still freezes to varying degrees under the snow and you have allot of tree above.that is still exposed!!. There are just some areas JM's will not grow period and some only a couple JM / Asian maples will. But overall give me a year with a good 4" insulation of snow when it gets 10 below zero any day. David(san)