About three weeks ago two 80 plus feet high cottonwoods began shedding their leaves cluttering up many of my garden paths and favorite plants. There is no apparent need for this shedding because these water hoggers have grown up over the past 50 years immediately beside an acre sized pond including a large part for which I pay property taxes.
Too, I have noticed the shedding of white pine needles which started about two weeks ago. Nothing major, just a continuous dropping quantity dependent upon the amount of wind stirring.
Also about a month ago I noticed that a very expensive dwarf yellow tipped white pine cultivar looked a bit more yellow all over than it should. It had always been happy during its ten years in my grounds. Was I imagining the color?
Yesterday I pulled out its totally dead form. The roots had dried up. In the meantime I have been dragging hoses around hither and thither to tend to countless other growings which looked suddenly stressed…….some, such as the barberries, significantly stressed.
They had already been shedding their leaves inside the plants……the older generations of them.
And my Angelica gigas, those growing in full sun and even those in part shade have dried up most of their once beautiful foliage……a fist since I introduced them to my grounds about ten years ago.
I hate garden hoses. They kill perennials, break branches of beautifully pruned conifers, and cause me to live a shorter life in general.
I haven’t used garden hoses in such a manner since most of my grounds went irrigation watered. What was going wrong.
Although this 2012 spring and summer have been a favorite of my lifetime, there has been almost no rain, but a lot…..a real lot of hot weather…….just about the temperatures I like to enjoy when working my grounds…..cleaning, pruning and planting, some digging and a lot of laying out mulch.
The length of the growing season…..starting March 15th in my grounds this year….unheard of, but welcomed, has been joined by exceptional drought and high temperatures all seasons long.
For the first time in the 20 years of my irrigation system soothing my plantings, the heat and dryness was too punishing for many of my smaller deciduous shrubs to endure…..especially those which might have been planted in the past three or four years.
The available ground moisture simply became shallower and shallower. My watering was not frequent enough and/or deep enough to please the suffering plants.
A few defoliated. Hydrangeas sulk day after day often even if you water well.
We had a ‘dusting’ of rain yesterday…..in amount likely no more than I delivery of water from my irrigation lines…..It is the down under that is exceedingly dry. If you doubt this, take out your strongest spade shovel and test you own gardened soil enviroment. Where will you discover available moisture…..even after yesterday’s off and on all day shower?
I am guessing that this coming winter we will be dumped on by tons of heavy wet snow…. Let us hope we get a dry delivery deep and early to protect our valued vegetations as much as possible.
In the meantime…..although I do not have a laboratory filled with researchers, nor computers connect with weather experts throughout the world, nor an annual record for the past 39 garden season I have lived at this site, it is only a guess based on my outdoors life here in my part of Minnesota.
Yesterday’s drizzle was relieving to our major sized deciduous trees…..the ones like the cottonwood, elm, maple and river birch which will grab every droplet around usually on a first come, first served basis. Their roots are wide and deep.
Except for most of our junipers our conifer trees and shrubs in general have very shallow roots and the largest of this clan will be stressed to the extreme. Regular watering has been very very beneficial. If you have maintained your watering at least twice a week for twenty minutes a zone, you shouldn’t have to worry about the older plantings.
It is the smaller shrubs, both conifer and broadleaf, that might be in trouble. Some broadleafs such as some hydrangeas, will drop their leaves, preferring dormancy and the prospect of a more moist spring next year.
To be safe take time to water all areas for about an hour at each location three or four times before snowfall as a precautionary measure to supply water to a greater depth that the first inch of the usual available water supply.