From Mélie’s Garden
March has finally arrived, so hopefully the end is in sight from this endless winter! I was somewhat cheered when I received my annual membership form from the Arbor Day Foundation. I am sure many you have received it as well. Arbor Day in our zone is the last Friday in April and if you become a member or renew your membership you can choose a gift – ten trees to be sent to you. I did this for the first time last year and received in April a package at the Ferry Dock with ten twigs in an envelope wrapped in plastic. The sticks were color coded with a directions booklet attached, so you could identify what type of tree the stick was by the color painted on it. I took the seedlings home and planted each one in its own nursery pot and gave them a good watering. The group consisted of 2 Dogwoods, 2 Redbuds, 2 Crape Myrtles, 2 Crabapples and 2 Hawthorns, all native trees in our area. After a week or two of watering, the sapling’s leaves started to appear. I fed them once or twice during the summer and they all grew very well in their pots, except for one of the Dogwoods, which got a bit of powdery mildew.
This fall, I took the little trees in their pots and healed them into our vegetable garden. After Christmas, I put some salt hay on top of them for protection. They are now buried in snow. It will be interesting to see this spring if they survived this harsh winter, but I think they had established a pretty good root system during the summer months, so I am hopeful they are still alive. This month, when I received my membership form from the Arbor Day Foundation I selected the group that attracts birds, instead of flowering trees. It will be interesting to see how they will do. If you have not received the Arbor Day mailing or discarded it, you can go on line to the Arbor Day Foundation website and join there. It was fun to grow the saplings and my grandchildren were fascinated with their progress.
