Hug your houseplants!
Salute your sago palm and congratulate your cacti, because Saturday, Jan. 10 , is 鈥淗ouseplant Appreciation Day.鈥� And I鈥檒l bet you didn鈥檛 even get a card.
聽De-ice your walkway without doing it in your lawn
Looks like we鈥檒l be getting a little dose of that dreaded “wintry mix” next week. That makes this weekend the perfect time to make sure you have a nice supply of ice-melt to make your walkways safe — alternative ice-melt, that is, to avoid the damaging effects of rock salt on lawns and landscape plants.
In my opinion, the absolute best choice is straight calcium chloride, available in large bags and easy-to-handle shaker jugs.聽 It works well even at the most frigid temperatures we鈥檝e been enduring this winter (rock salt does not) and it鈥檚 much kinder to lawns and plants (and outdoor surfaces, and cars,聽 and鈥�) than rock salt.
Can鈥檛 find calcium chloride? My second choices would be potassium chloride and/or magnesium chloride.
Although at first glance, these de-icing alternatives seem more expensive than salt, you use such smaller amounts that the price pretty much equals out.聽 (And you don鈥檛 get dead spots on your lawn; that鈥檚 a real plus.)
To use these products most effectively, sprinkle a small amount on walkways just before the weather event begins; that way, the ice can鈥檛 form to begin with. You can prevent ice with one-fourth the amount of chemical it would take to melt existing ice. This way you and your plants will stay safe — and you鈥檒l save money.
Note: The new lawn care laws in Maryland and Virginia strictly prohibit the use of lawn food and other fertilizers to melt ice — and that includes products specifically packaged and labeled as “ice melt” whose active ingredient is 鈥渦rea,鈥� which is a high-nitrogen fertilizer.
So read the label carefully. Pay just a little bit of attention and you can melt dangerous ice while protecting your plantings and the Bay!
Deer dine more maliciously in cold weather
Nancy Burns, who performs fine work promoting the National Capital Orchid Society, recently relocated to Gainesville from Alexandria鈥檚 Old Town, trading loud and lively Friday and Saturday nights for thousands of four-legged herbivores looking at her landscape to supply some of the six to eight pounds of food each deer requires each day. And our unwelcome stretch of cold weather has reduced the amount of wild food available to the nasty nibblers.
So the former City Girl has discovered the joys of gardening next to a forest overrun with deer — at perhaps the worst time of year to initiate a reliable defense. Thus,聽 she is herself hungry for helpful suggestions as opposed to hydrangeas.
Cage them out!
At this time of year, the best answers are deer repellant and physical barriers, such as wire cages — which might not look as terrible as you鈥檙e thinking. If you look around, you should be able to find fencing coated with green vinyl, which often disappears against the landscape.
And professional deer fencing is designed to be 鈥渋nvisible鈥� when viewed from most angles. Now, true deer fencing is eight feet high, but it鈥檚 very flexible, and with a little skill and patience you should be able to cut it to size and wrap it around a set of stakes to protect individual plants or a group.
Whatever you use, keep the outside edge a foot away from the actual plant (or the deer will just “nose in”),聽 and be sure to cover the top.
Use deer repellant wisely
If you don鈥檛 want to protect your precious plants with cages, look for spray-on deer repellants whose active ingredient is putrescent egg solids. (Yum!) They perform the best in university studies. If you have several choices, get the brand with the highest concentration of active ingredient.
Good repellants are expensive, so use them wisely. Instead of spraying the entire plant weakly, concentrate on the “strike zone” — about two and a half feet off the ground. That鈥檚 鈥渂rowsing height,鈥� where studies have shown that the majority of deer take their first nibble.
Really concentrate on this area, spraying heavily from about two feet to three feet off the ground. Deer who just get a little taste of repellant from a weak spray will keep on eating — and the more they eat, the more diluted any negative sensations will be. But deer that get a concentrated mouthful of rotten egg on their very first bite will generally move on.
聽Which plants need protection the most?
We all know that deer love to dine on azalea, rhododendron and arborvitae, but what about the other plants in your landscape? Heath and heather? Yucca and yew? If you know the plants that deer most prefer, you can allocate most of your deer repellant budget to soaking them regularly.聽 And you can avoid wasting time and money by spraying plants that deer rarely — if ever — eat.
A great new resource from Rutgers — new to me, anyway — will help you do just that. It鈥檚 an exhaustive list that rates virtually every landscape plant on a “deerability” scale of A to D.聽 ‘A’ plants are the ones that deer won’t eat — at least until they’re starving. The designation ‘D’ means that the deer bring condiments and silverware to your yard.
And the list is searchable in several ways. You can look up the plants in your landscape by their common or Latin name; search by type of plant (vines, shrubs, trees, etc.), or browse an alphabetical list of all the plants in a specific letter grade, allowing you to design a deer-proof landscape by choosing only 鈥淎-list鈥� plants.
If you are besieged by Bambi, be sure to bookmark in your Internet favorites — it could save you a lot of time and money!
Long-term deer proofing
Research has shown that the only certain way to keep deer completely out of your landscape is with a fence that鈥檚 11 inches taller than Shaquille O鈥橬eal. These specially designed eight-foot deer fences are touted as being invisible from most angles, so after a professional installation, it won鈥檛 look like you鈥檙e doing time for pilfering pensions. (Yes, deer can and do jump over six- and seven-foot fencing.)
Just be aware that you also have to gate the driveway or install some sort of in-ground deterrent such as cattle guards (here鈥檚 a about them that will answer all your questions) or the deer will just follow your Renault right to the rhododendrons.
Seems extreme, doesn鈥檛 it? And yet, many people with expensive landscaping have learned that it鈥檚 actually an excellent and cost-effective long-term solution.
The next best deterrent, say researchers, is a dog that roams your grounds every day but is restrained from chasing any deer past your personal border by something like an invisible fencing system. Dogs hate deer, and deer are terrified of dogs, and simple as it seems, having a pooch outside as often as possible has been shown to be one of the best alternatives to fencing.
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