If you have read my post about sowing seeds in winter, you might be interested to know, what was the result. Aren't you? ;-)

Well, it has turned out great! Everything sprouted, so I can recommend this method for those seeds that need to rest for a winter or two before sprouting. I had rose seeds, apple and crabapple seeds, various species of magnolias and some more I can't even recall any more, hidden in snow last winter.

Roses and crabapples have sprouted vigorously and have been growing fast too! Here are some of the rose species and cultivars, but unfortunately I have lost the name tags. I later recognised one of them to be a red-leaf rose, and most of them probably are seedlings of Rosa 'Juhannusmorsian' , but I remember sowing various kinds of rose seeds. Since I had no idea what I was growing, I just planted them randomly on the side of the yard. :-P It may be that I will have to dig them up some year if they happen to be some spreading cultivar though. Below you can see Malus purpurea 'Kadetti' seedlings.

I should be ashamed of myself. And I am. I haven't been writing a thing for such a long time. Well, there are changes in life and adjusting to them apparently takes some time. Nothing bad has happened though, it has all been positive.

One of the new things is that I actually went back to school. No, I'm not a drop out, but I have been unemployed and a stay at home mother for quite a long time now, and where I live doesn't really offer too many job opportunities on my own field. So I started studying something else instead. I'm quite busy nowadays.

But WINTER. First it looked like there's not going to be any of that. It kept raining through Christmas and the temperatures were above zero°. And then came January. First it got only mildly colder, threw  some snow (very little though) and then suddenly the temperature dropped to -20 C°.

Today it's -25 C° (apparently that's -13 F°) and there's barely any snow at all! What this mess is that there's no snow to protect all the sensitive plants. :-(

This is a very depressing image of the Rhododendrons I

planted in summer. If this was a "normal" winter, they would be

totally covered in snow and not a leaf would be visible. But as

you can see, there's barely enough snow to cover the ground.

Many of my more "exotic" (anything that grows well in Southern Sweden is considered exotic to me) survived surprisingly well last winter - thanks to the thick snow cover! I was happy to find out in spring that my magnolias were actually alive! And even the one that had dead branches, started to grow new shoots from the ground as the summer went on.

This winter gives me headache! I'm so afraid to see what will be left after winter. Anyone else having the same experience?

They are so soft, furry and cute, especially at Easter time when they hop around hiding coloured eggs everywhere. And they are delicious too. We don't have any wild rabbits in northern Finland (although there are some around Helsinki area), so the bunnies I'm talking about are either mountain hare Lepus timidus (we call it "forest hare" probably because it lives in the forest and there aren't any mountains around here) or brown hare Lepus europaeus. The latter is much bigger and it doesn't usually chance its colour for winter like the mountain hare. It's also more an invasive species here up north.

The reason why I don't know which I'm actually talking about is, that I haven't really seen the animal itself, but the tracks it has been leaving all around my yard. And as I'm neither a hunter nor a good tracker, I can't really tell the species by its tracks. I just know it's a hare and that's all.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like the hare. Last winter when no-one had introduced the idea of NOT feeding birds around this building, I had a bird feeder on my yard. The hare came to eat some nuts at night as well, when there was nobody watching. Now that it's prohibited to feed animals here, the hare came to eat my trees and shrubs instead.

I did realise this would happen, and I bought some wire netting that I successfully installed around two of the trees in autumn. Yes, only two. Because the wire netting was really heavy, wanting to roll back to its original rolled position and because I was doing the job all by myself. I was exhausted after the two trees and only covered the trunks of the rest with a plastic roll. "Trunk" doesn't really describe that feature well though, as my trees are still really small, and their trunks are more like twigs.

I have crabapples, an apple tree, some cherry trees and cherry shrubs and two plum trees. Only two of the trees now have a wire netting around them. As it has been snowing, the plastic roll doesn't really protect any part of the rest of the trees, as the surface of the snow is already above that level. So when the hare come to feast on my trees, there's not much if any protection for the tree. They have been eating some branches and the main trunk itself above the plastic roll.

Some branches have disappeared completely, but the trunks have been peeled. Last year I read in a garden magazine, that this could possibly be fixed by wrapping some plastic wrap around the area where the bite marks are. This way the tree could mend itself and grow new bark. Of course the protective plastic foil should be placed as soon as the damage has been done, in order to prevent the area from drying out. When spring arrives and the sunshine starts warming the trunk, it will start re-growing the bark. This is why it has to be clear plastic wrapping, as the sun light has to be able to penetrate it. This is exactly what I did, and now it remains to be seen if it works or not. If you try the same trick, please tell me how did it go.

'Hopa' with plastic wrap taped around its main branch.

I also acquired some birch tar oil from my mother and daubed it around the trunks, branches and the poles supporting the trees. There are different types of this product, used as a "pesticide" or rather as a medium to keep the pests away. There's one for snails and one for mammals. I hope this works against rodents as well.

I'm not sure if there's any fail proof way to protect the trees against rodents. The animals I would be talking about are european water vole Arvicola amphibius as the worst of them and some smaller species of the same kind. They don't just chew some branches, but peel the trunk around the base or chew up the roots. In spring you can lift up the whole tree and see that the roots are gone. Some say that the snow around the base should be treaded so that it becomes compressed and the rodents can't make their paths through it any more. I haven't done that, so I hope there aren't any hungry voles around. And if there are, I hope that the birch tar oil works on them.

People who have been sowing perennial or tree or shrub seeds are probably familiar with the term "stratification" which means simulating winter conditions in order to make seeds sprout. Many plants originating from colder climate produce seeds that don't sprout before they have experienced a winter period.

Last winter I had my fridge full of seed pots. As the stratification process is not the same for all the seeds, I had pots with labels explaining how long they were supposed to be kept in cool. I suppose most people just have small plastic bags with moist sand and seeds in the fridge if they intend to have anything stratified, but I had both bags and pots and I have to admit I had better success with pots.

Last winter I acquired lots of perennial and tree seeds that needed stratification, and since I ran out of space, I decided to simply sow some seeds in pots and place them outdoors. There was winter there behind the front door, you see, to be taken advantage of. I didn't just place the pots outside without any protection, but dug a hole in the snow and put each pot in their own hole, then covering them with a good amount of snow again.

This winter I'm having my fridge full of bulbs and rhizomes, so I don't have any space there. I have some Dahlias overwintering there and I just bought some new bulbs from the local hardware store. Since it's not spring yet, I have to keep them in cool before planting them out in May.

I'm not planning to sow lots of seeds indoors this year, actually I'm trying to avoid it completely. But since I collected some rose seeds and crabapple seeds last autumn, I had to sow some of them. I'm not sure if they are viable though, because these seeds I didn't store exactly the way the should be stored... I  have to confess that I forgot those little apples and rose hips on a plate in a drawer and they completely dried out before harvesting the seeds! So I may have been sowing something that's never going to sprout no matter what I do.

Here the ever optimistic me has been sowing some seeds of Rosa 'Juhannusmorsian' and Malus purpurea 'Kadetti'. The pot is waiting to be placed in the snow.

Here is a hole I dug for the pot. 

As you can see, I have been doing a good job: the pot fits perfectly.

And here it is. You would never guess there's a pot with seeds beneath the snow, would you? 

The weather has been very mild now, it was about -1 °C when I did this. But last year I did the same at -25 °C and it didn't seem to make much difference, as those seeds sprouted. I guess the thick layer of snow (last winter was very snowy) protected the seeds well enough.

I'm not saying this is a proved way to make the seeds sprout, but I did this with several different seeds last winter, and it worked for some. Then again, I never saw some sprouting at all, but that was the result with some of the seeds I tried stratifying in the fridge as well. I probably did something wrong with them, or they were some very old seed stock with no viability at all. (I would like to think the latter, but the first is more likely to be true.) Those that didn't sprout last spring, I left outdoors for the whole summer. Some rose and magnolia seeds sprouted late in the summer. As some pots had nothing sprouting by the time autumn arrived, I just left them outside for their second winter. Let's see if that'll do the trick or if I will give up on them when summer comes. 

Living up north means there's not much time for gardening. Not because one is too busy but because the summer is too short. The growing season 2012 here started on the 8th of May and ended on the 15th of October. Growing seasons are expected to become longer during this century due to climatic change, but I'm not sure if that's something worth celebrating. I'm actually surprised to know that the growing season has been a good 5 months, because it really feels more like 3 months to me.

The place where I live is just as north as southern Greenland or Alaska. Let's face it, this is far too north for gardening in most parts of the World. But thanks to the North Atlantic Golf current, the weather here is not as cold as in Siberia. I actually live in the European hardiness zone 4 or the Finnish growing zone 5.

You can find this map and learn more about hardiness zones at the Free Independent Sun.

Apparently this means that the average annual minimum temperatures here are between -28,9 / -34,4 °C or -20 / -30 °F degrees. February usually is the coldest month of the year, and even though this year has been mild, last winter was not. I can grow various plants up here, that manage to survive the winter, but don't bloom. I can also grow plants, that don't only survive the winter, but bloom as well. However the growing season is too short for them to form seeds. 

But the survival of the plant does not depend only on the length of the growing season or the average minimum temperatures alone. You can look for a spot where the microclimate is suitable for a certain plant, like a warm spot close to the southern wall of your house with plenty of sunshine and with protection of winds. But the protected spot can be hazardous in winter, when snow falls from the roof and breaks the branches of the tree. This place might be perfect for some perennials though. But there's not much snow close to the wall either, so there no snow cover to protect the ground and the roots.

Some plants that usually are afraid of cold, may do well under the protective cover of snow. The parts on top of the snow may get frozen each winter, but the parts below the snow stay alive and continue growing the following summer. Of course this means that the plant will never grow too large or maybe not even to the height you were hoping for. There's no point planting a tree and expecting it to do well under these conditions though. It may stay alive for a few years, then get tired and eventually die. Usually they don't survive the first winter. Another problem occurs every now and then; this winter the freezing temperatures of -20 °C degrees arrived before the snow. So there was no protection for the plants before the cold cast its spell over them.

Frost heaving is one problem more. Plants can't start growing before their roots are free of frost, not even if the temperature of the air is nice and warm. This is why evergreens may die during their first winters especially if they have a shallow root system. When the sun starts heating the air early in the spring and their leaves start evaporating, the plant dries out because the roots can't get any water from the frozen ground. That is why it's advised to protect these plants from the spring sun or maybe moderately water the ground with warm water to make it melt faster. I have some Rhododendrons growing beside my front door, so I have been shovelling snow on top of them to keep them protected as long as possible.

I have planted some less hardy plants in my garden, and I'm not sure if I can expect to find any of them alive when the spring arrives. But I thought I'd never find out if I didn't plant any of them. Who knows what kind of a surprise they will offer! I have been told that magnolias can't be grown this north, but I have read that there's a specimen of Magnolia x soulangeana growing in the botanic garden of the Oulu University, and that it has survived. I have been informed, that Malus purpurea 'Kadetti' can not be grown here, but I have seen one growing in front of an apartment building, and surviving several winters already. I have also been told that Taxus can not been grown here unlike the one I just saw the other day.

Of foreign plants we tend to favour Canadian cultivars here because they are usually good and proven and survive the winters well. We grow Canadian crabapples, blueberries, roses and what not. Also Russian cultivars do well over here; plums (Prunus domestica) and honeyberries (Lonicera caerulea var. edulis) for example. Of course we have our own local cultivars as well. I have a damson plum (Prunus domestica subsp. insititia) 'Silvast' in my garden, several Finnish roses like Rosa pimpinellifolia 'Ruskela', Rosa majalis 'Tornedal' and Rosa pimpinellifolia 'Juhannusmorsian' and a sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) 'Arttula' as well as Finnish Rhododendron cultivars. But surprisingly many garden plants originating from milder climatic conditions can be grown over here as well. Peonies are a good and bold example among them.

Rhododendron 'Helsinki University'

I'm a hardiness zone stretcher myself, so I plant anything that could be even remotely hardy in the local conditions and just see if it survives or not. Oh, don't tell me they're all going to be dead when the spring arrives! I won't even listen to you. If they show no sign of life before the autumn arrives, then maybe I will consider them dead. Or just well dormant.