Suzann Erlenbush of Downs looked at rhododendrons and azaleas covered with drifts of snow in her backyard, but she wasn’t worried.

Snow insulates plants, which is why she wishes it would have come earlier, before this month’s sub-zero temperatures.

Like other gardeners who were caught off-guard by winter’s mild start, she’s particularly worried about her roses, which she didn’t mulch. Roses aren’t supposed to be covered until after a couple of hard freezes.

“I usually cover all my roses faithfully but it was so warm,” said Erlenbush, who holds a designation of Master Gardener. “This is the first time I haven’t covered them so I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Don Meyer has heard similar concerns from other gardeners. The extreme cold may have caused some plant damage, said the director of the McLean County Extension Service. “The big concern so far is whether the plants were protected when we went from a cold December to a warm January.”

Plants usually have a “hardening-off period” as temperatures gradually cool, but that didn’t happen this year.

“I think we’ve had winter now. Let spring begin,” Meyer said.

Erlenbush is ready for a warm-up, too. On Tuesday, she swept off snow from her water garden. Water gardeners need to keep an opening in the ice, she said, to allow plant gases to escape and oxygen to reach fish or they’ll die.

And while most of us would be happy if the cold weather killed off the Japanese beetle population, that probably won’t happen, Meyer said.

“It may have thinned it out a little but a lot of the beetles over-winter as larvae. Some of them could have been frosted but I think there will be some survivors,” he said.

Debby Funk of Funks Grove is ready to tap the sugar maples at Funks Grove Maple Sirup. The bitter cold will make the sap sweeter because the roots store more sugar, she said.

Last year, tapping started the end of January, but this year, it was too warm and then too cold. For the sap to flow, temperatures need to be in the 40s during the day and 20s at night.

“It really won’t start to flow until it warms up,” she said. “We never know year to year when it’s going to happen but it’ll happen.”

source : www.pantagraph.com