Winter Watering Alert!
The weather’s been wonderfully mild, but a bit DRY! All this sun and wind, with just a little rain or snow, is stressful to our plants, so don’t forget to give your plants some water.
This is especially true for new plantings, evergreens, and roses and most any plant that was planted in September or October. These plants are especially vulnerable and are more likely to suffer or die from dehydration than from cold.
If the soil is not frozen, you will need to water deeply once a month, sometimes even if we have received what appears to be a substantial amount of snow. When snow falls it is commonly accepted that for every ten inches of snow it produces one inch of water. That is a lot of water, especially with a major snow event, but is it necessarily true? No, it isn’t.
There are a number of variables – air temperature, wind speeds and crystal structure – that ultimately determine how much water comes out of a snow event. For an ‘ordinary’ snow event this ratio holds true but as we all know, a wet snow can produce as much as four inches of water for every ten inches of snow and a very light 10” snow accumulation can produce as little as only a quarter of an inch of water. Typically, colder temperatures produce less water, while higher temperatures (closer to the freezing point) produce much more water. Here’s a link to a user-friendly calculation chart to give you an idea of just how much water was produced by the snow on your garden.