The extremely cold weather lately has caused more of everything. More wood for the wood stove. More oil for the oil burner. More electric for everything. More lotion for how dry my skin has gotten. More gas for my vehicle because the cold has cut my mileage down by almost twenty percent. More, more, more... Remember that this spring, because this spring your plants will need more too. This prolonged cold winter does damage to trees and shrubs by desiccating the living tissues just under the bark. Just like my skin dries out during these cold spells with low humidity, so too does the layers of stem tissue under the bark called Xylem and Phloem. Now before I go all botanical on you the Xylem transports and stores water and water-soluble nutrients in vascular plants, ie, trees and shrubs. Phloem is responsible for transporting sugars, proteins, and other organic molecules in those plants as well. Desiccation is the drying out of these tissues, which happens when the weather is extremely cold or in high wind situations. Well we had both of these this week and there will be a lot of plant damage this spring. Sure you can see all the branches that broke and are laying in the yard, but what you can’t see is the damage done to these soft tissues under the bark. The bark is there to protect them, but when the bark gets extremely dry from cold weather conditions it will get micro-fractures that you probably won’t notice but this will allow damage to occur below. There is a Foxfarm product that is specifically designed to restore these tissues back to their original form, it’s called Comeback Formula. Apply named, comeback formula is a combination of mycorrhizal fungi and micro-elements that help bring trees and shrubs back to life in the spring. I’ve written plenty about the benefits of mycorrhizal fungi in the past and how it helps the roots to absorb more nutrients and minerals from the ground and the micro-elements in comeback formula are the ones needed for the cells in these soft tissues to start to regenerate and repair the damage from the cold winter. Desiccation is common in younger trees and shrubs that don’t have thick bark yet, but it can occur in older plants as well. Using comeback formula in late March when the ground starts to thaw will help plants to start restoring their xylem and phloem layers before the real growth spurt of the season takes off. Fixing the problem early is easier and if you wait too long, it might be too late. The worst thing for already stressed plants would be a hot dry summer, which is probably what we will get after this long cold winter. 

Last thing for this week, now is the time to tap your maple trees if you plan on making maple syrup. Don’t wait for the weather to get too warm as you could miss some of the really good early runs. Next week some days will get into the forties and that is when the sap will start, although the best runs will really happen when we get this ice melted off the ground. Tapping maple trees is almost like getting free maple syrup, but when you consider cooking the sap down to syrup it is about a forty to one reduction. So you need forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. It is easier to just buy it in the store, but where is the fun in that.