Eco Gardeners

Here it is late January and those of us living in the northeast are seeing forsythias and cherry trees in full flower. My girls and I went for a walk yesterday in t-shirts and as we strolled through our Richmond, VA neighborhood it felt like the start of spring as we encountered daffodil after daffodil with their flower buds ready to pop open. Its the neighbors with the heart wreaths on their front doors that remind us we are approaching February.

So how does this disappearing winter affect the gardens of those of us living in areas including those 21 states that have had more than 300 record high January temperatures? In a nutshell, it will mean fewer nuts on our nut trees, less blossoms on our perennials, decreased flowers on our trees/shrubs, and not as much fruit on our fruit trees. This upcoming spring and summer will show signs of the winter stressed plants but most should acclimate okay.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the extremes yet that would cause a lot of long-term damage to trees and shrubs,” says George Good, professor in Cornell University’s Department of Horticulture. “Some flower buds will be killed. So we may see fewer blooms on flowering trees and shrubs this spring. ” This has commercial growers concerned as their harvests will be affected.

David Wolfe, scientist at the Department of Horticulture, is studying climate change and states that chances are good that we will continue seeing more warm winters, caused in part by increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere which is affecting agriculture, especially in the Northeast.

For more information, visit the Cornell University at

www.gardening.cornell.edu