Hort Shorts
April!
by Ken-Caryl Ranch Metropolitan District Staff Horticulturist Sherry Farrell
Reprinted from Life at Ken-Caryl Newspaper
The grass is greening, the birds are singing, the sun is shining and all is right with the world.
We're so happy to be "out there" again. We're in the process of SPRING CLEANUP; working our way across the Plains and slowly drifting toward the Valley. The road grime is especially unpleasant this year. There's so much more than usual. The guys have been out sweeping the concrete walks. If you see a large dust cloud billowing down a sidewalk, that's probably one of them. Don't be alarmed by the white chemical suit, goggles and dust mask. They aren't spreading hazardous chemicals, just trying not to absorb greasy dust and magnesium chloride.
I'm really kind of surprised at how little damage the snow cover caused. I was expecting flattened shrubs and soggy, rotted perennials. There are a few broken branches here and there but nothing serious yet. There have been a few questions about what to do with broken branches in roses and shrubs. We're just pruning below the break unless it's low, then we prune that stem all the way to the ground.
I am a little dismayed at some interior breakage on a couple of perfectly formed Cytisus at the Parks Maintenance Shop Demo Garden. They'll look a little ragged for a while but in a couple of years we'll never know it happened.
We're taking advantage of our pruning mode to clean and trim some of our more mature shrub roses. We're removing dead wood, older canes and previous blooms and hips. Though shrub roses don't require an every spring pruning to three main canes eight to 10 inches tall as do hybrid teas, they will benefit from a good cleaning out every few years.
As for the perennials, we're cutting old growth to the ground and raking up the soggy, moldy leaves in the beds. We do this every spring so it's not unusual. We also trim our ornamental grasses back every spring. The only thing different this spring is they're a bit more broken down. There is snow mold on turf areas where the snow has lain for a long time. This looks like flattened grass with a thin grayish scum over it. It sounds more serious than it is so don't rush out to buy and apply fungicides. Just use a leaf rake to rake and fluff. Sunlight and fresh air are all it needs.
Our wildlife (poor little things) seem to have suffered little harm from extended snow cover. There are some sumac stems with chewed ends at four feet tall. I guess the rabbits got pretty hungry to eat that. We just cut below the damage. The voles, of course, had a heyday. Extended snow coverage is their favorite winter condition. They've been very busy digging and tunneling and lining their little vole cities with our lawns.
We're seeing vole trails everywhere. We have vole trails all over our turfgrass here at the shop, including one sizable patch. We've raked up all the loose, dead grass and, although it does look pretty devastating, new grass shoots are already coming up to fill in the damage. Where they've tunneled under plants, we fill in with soil and water it in.
So far it looks like we've lost only one Blue Avena Grass. The voles and rabbits worked together on this one. Rabbits ate it to the nub and beyond while voles tunneled under and through it. There are some little vole chew marks at the bottom of some of the shrub stems. If they don't girdle it it'll be okay. If they do, cut that stem to the ground. It seems they rarely will girdle every stem on a shrub. So recovery is likely. Junipers, though, are their favorite food so that's a whole different story.
HAPPY SPRING!!