Last week I mentioned I had been away and talked about the Melipona bees in Mexico. While I was away, my son, Ryan, was checking our house one day when he noticed some tracks around the house that were a little out of place for January. 

There had been about an inch of snow the night before and there were clear bear tracks in the snow going around my house like he was looking in the windows to see if there was anything good inside. We normally do have a bear visit in October before going into hibernation but that's it. But because of the warmer weather during the first two weeks of January, I guess he figured he would go out to look for a bite to eat. Of course, my bird food barrel on the patio got knocked over even though he really doesn't like the black oil sunflower, beggars can't be choosers. He really just spreads the seeds around and the squirrels clean it up. Now that the weather has turned back to winter, I'm sure I won't be seeing tracks around the house again. It is rare for bears to be out during the winter but not unheard of. The warmer weather confuses them as well as some plants that might have started to swell buds just a little bit. Prolonged periods of warm weather in the winter can spell disaster for some trees and shrubs if they start to bud out too soon. If the buds swell too much with water, they can then freeze off when the temperatures turn cold again like we have now.

You have probably been using a lot of rock salt or other ice-melters over this past week, which can affect your lawn and landscape plants come spring. All the melted runoff will settle in the ground around your driveway and sidewalk. To counteract the effects of salts in the ground apply garden gypsum early in the spring to bind with the sodium until it has sufficient time to leach out of the soil with the spring rains. But there is another way to melt ice in sensitive areas to avoid plant damage all together. You can melt ice with fertilizer, more specifically Urea 46-0-0. Urea is forty-six percent nitrogen and will melt ice down to about fifteen degrees above zero. Urea is plant and lawn friendly as the runoff actually provides nitrogen to soil. It’s also pet safe, as urea is one of the least toxic options with low risk of paw irritation or poisoning if ingested in small amounts by pets licking their paws after walking over it. It's also concrete safe and does not chemically attack or pit concrete like chloride salts can do. 

At one point back in the 1970's Sullivan County International Airport considered using urea on the runways but there are a few flaws to this option. With our area getting seriously cold temperatures below fifteen degrees, you'll need a stronger ice-melter anyway. Urea acts slower, so it takes longer to break up ice compared to calcium chloride or even rock salt. And the big one, urea is more expensive per unit of ice melting capacity. But if you have a small walkway or path through the garden to the birdfeeder, urea can be a good option for a plant friendly ice-melter. No matter the price, it is still cheaper than a broken hip after falling on the way to the birdfeeder.