Come fall, put mulch around your plants. It may help keep them in dormancy when winter temps are warmer than usual.

Good morning! I was going to say “welcome to winter,” but then realized there really hasn’t been one. Not a “real” Maine winter anyway, when temperatures drop low enough to freeze any living thing within minutes and my dogs look at me as though I am a crazy person to be opening the door – let alone asking them to go outside. And that, pretty much, is the point of this unusual February gardening column.

Questions have been flying from folks about their gardens.

It seems some of those wonderfully resilient plants out there seem to think it is spring and are acting accordingly. Well, to be really honest with you, this is not a good thing. Because, if you have lived in Maine for more than five minutes, you know this isn’t going to last. At some point, probably March or April with our luck, the snow and cold will come.

Sorry to have to tell you that anything that has “greened up” and tried to make an early appearance probably isn’t going to survive if it has gotten very far. What folks are seeing are the beginnings of snowdrops, crocus and a few early daffodils. Mostly it has just been a few leaves starting to sprout, and it usually happens near the foundation or in a sheltered spot on the southern side of the house, where it is warmer. But there are also plants that have started putting up their “sap,” so to speak. You would not have noticed a difference from the outside, but inside, they have come out of dormancy.

Here’s the deal. If you see just a few green leaves that aren’t very big, all should be well. If they have gotten further than that, or if the warmth continues and they get bigger, any deep cold that comes will kill that growth. That doesn’t mean the plant is gone, but it may look awfully funny when it finally emerges in spring. Those leaves that were damaged may continue to come up (minus what was killed – think deformed) with the warmth, or they may be gone entirely – but the plant should survive.

This is especially true of the cold-hardy bulbs like snowdrops and crocus. The return of cold and the resulting damage may mean they won’t bloom this year, but just let the leaves brown as usual and give them a chance. They almost always come back. The survival of those perennials that have started to come out of dormancy will depend on each individual plant, how much more warmth we have and how cold it might get. I can’t answer any of those questions. But the more warmth we have, the further they will come out of dormancy – and if, or when, the deep cold comes, many may not survive.

Take action next fall

I am sorry to say it, but the standard warning each fall is this: If you love a plant, take the time to mulch it. This winter is the perfect example of why. If you can keep the ground frozen, which is what mulch does, then thaws or even many days of warm temperatures will not bring the plant out of dormancy because its roots remain frozen. But that is only something to keep in mind for next fall at this point.

Certain very early plants like hellebores and forsythia probably won’t be badly hurt because they are bred to survive temperature changes. Other perennials, like borderline zone 5 plants, may be in trouble. If we get a couple cold nights that harden up the ground around a few plants that are precious to you, you could put about two inches of mulch on them and hope for the best. It might help especially if we get a few weeks of really deep cold. What you are doing is keeping them from another early thaw and refreeze.

When ground thaws, obviously it is wet. When it refreezes, ice crystals can form from that water around roots. If a refreeze occurs and then a short thaw, those ice crystals which are sometimes in layers, can shift, literally cutting the roots from the root base. When thawing and refreezing occur, it will also lift the soil. If it lifts the soil around a plant, it lifts the plant. This is normally what has happened when you find part or all of a plant’s rootball on the surface in the spring.

I try to be optimistic about gardening but, unfortunately, that is not always possible. That is the case right now. So hope for the best, expect maybe not the worst but some amount of disappointment come spring.

I try to always hang onto this very reasonable but yet hopeful thought my husband told me several years ago in just this situation: It gives you a chance to do some garden redesigning and it provides the perfect opportunity to take some spring journeys to nurseries to buy some of those new plants that look so wonderful.

So let’s all hang onto that thought for a few more months until we really know what Mother Nature will bring!

Happy gardening!

Jody Goodwin has been gardening for more than 20 years. She lives in Turner with her husband, Ike, her two dogs and two cats. She can be reached by writing to her in care of the Sun Journal, 104 Park St., Lewiston, Maine, 04243-4400 or by e-mail at [email protected]