- Author: Meg Grumio
Soon it will be time for Autumn Cleanup in the garden. Several years ago, I read in one of my gardening books to not remove the dead leaves of my herbaceous perennials, but to leave them in place to act as insulation from the cold. I am immediately attracted to any advice to avoid work so I was happy to adopt this laissez faire policy. Besides, it made sense that the plant knew what it was doing and cloaking itself in dead leaves must serve some function.
Alas, my perennials were ignorant of geography and did not know that they found themselves in a Mediterranean climate. They spent the winter buried in wet mush and if they did not rot at the crown and die away, they found an alternative strategy to survive. Finding the compacted leaves too difficult to send shoots through, the plants being as lazy as I am chose to sidle sideways like crabs around the garden. If I could have choreographed their movement, I could have had country line dancing plants.
My advice came from gardeners in climates that receive snowfall and leaves or straw would indeed make a cozy bed for plants under snow. But I should have remembered that cold temperatures mean dry conditions also because moisture in the air becomes ice. It just doesn’t get cold enough here to freeze the soil, so dormant plants don’t require insulation.
So remove the dead leaves and if you are going to mulch, keep the mulch away from the crowns of dormant plants. This way, the plant will stay where you put it.
- Author: Kathy Thomas-Rico
It’s been both interesting and frightening watching the drought unfold across the country this spring and summer. It’s a very serious situation, and may be a harbinger and an affirmation of climate change. I believe it is.
Has it dawned on anyone else that the dry, hot summer the rest of the country has suffered through is exactly like what we Californians endure most years? Could it be the rest of the country will soon share our Mediterranean climate, of relatively wet, warm winters and summers of drought? Now THAT’s something to mull.
Of course, our West Coast climate is changing, too. Spring seems to arrive and leave sooner than in years past. The winter and spring rains seem to fall torrentially, rather than a few days here, followed by a few days to soak in, and on and on. And the often-sparse Sierra snowpack melts sooner in the year.
But because we in the West are adapted to our summer-drought cycle, we have built a good system of water storage to catch those spring rains and snowmelt. The Midwest, South and East Coast do not have this same system. No need when you usually have plenty of summer rain that soaks into the soil and keeps the rivers running high.
A recent family vacation to Seattle was an eye-opener for me. While there, I saw nightly news video of the drought-ravaged Midwest. Even the mighty Mississippi River was too low for some maritime traffic. Graphics were aired showing the extent of the drought. About the only place on the map of the continental U.S. that was not in drought was western Washington State (including Seattle), which has had an unusually wet and cool summer.
Maybe we should have looked at property while we were there. I could see a land rush happening in the region; it’s where most of the water is.