Gardening

Living Christmas trees are not a new concept. Often this means buying a potted or balled and burlaped, normally hardy tree, from a local nursery, then bringing it into the home, right before Christmas to enjoy for a week or so before planting it out in the landscape. Of course there is usually a problem with that game plan because usually by the end of December the ground has already frozen here in the northern Great Plains.

Christmas tree lots are already beginning to spring up around the state and Thanksgiving marks the start of the Christmas tree season, with more than 30 million trees being sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Another 50 million homes use artificial trees either for convenience or environmental concerns. However, the traditional Christmas tree can be the environmental friendly way to celebrate the holidays.

Aronia melanocarpa, or simply “aronia,” is an attractive shrub that has recently been gaining more attention in the Midwest – its berries are very high in antioxidants thought to be beneficial for human health. Aronia is also known as chokeberry (berry, not cherry), descriptive of the astringent taninns present in the dark-blue fruit. When fully ripe, the berries, which look somewhat like blueberries or chokecherries, have a sugar content as high as table grapes and sweet cherries, but balanced by high acidity and complex flavors.

A dry summer is not only stressful for people, pets and livestock, but for our trees and other vegetation. Trees require a lot of water to meet their functional needs and long-term shortages can influence growth and survival. Trees signal their water deficit through a number of symptoms. The most common changes in appearance are lighter green to yellow-green foliage, leaf scorch around the margins, wilting leaves and dropping them prematurely.

Spring is the time of the year when people get around to remove trees from their yard. Removing trees and disposing of the brush is a hazardous undertaking and is best performed by professionals who have the training and equipment to safely remove them. However, whether a professional tree service or the homeowner remove the tree, there is usually the question what to do about the stump.

Woodpeckers have been seen across the region chipping away at the bark of young bur oak. They are drilling into the bark in search of these small larvae of the gall wasp Callirhytis flavipes. During the winter the small, white larvae are found within the inner bark of the branches and twigs of mature oak trees and the trunks of young trees.

The leaves have fallen off the trees and the frost has hit the garden. Before the snow falls, a few tasks can help make for a healthier yard and garden next year. If you have a mulching lawnmower, instead of raking up your leaves, you may be able to run over them with the mower, returning all that organic matter directly to your lawn. If the layer of leaves is too thick, it may be possible to spread them out and then mulch them with the mower.

We often think of trees as providing our primary source of fall color, or perhaps it might be the colorful Indian corn or pumpkins that come to mind. But there other sources of fall color too, in our perennial flowers. This goes beyond the hardier flowers that can withstand some frost and still retain their flowers with little damage but rather I am referring to the plants and their foliage itself.

While eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) is native to South Dakota, and has many positive qualities, it has become a problem species over large areas of the Great Plains. Even so, eastern redcedar remains one of the more important windbreak species, and is still widely planted. Several cultivars of this species are also popular ornamentals. The cones are eaten by a number of wildlife species (cedar waxwings, pheasants, turkeys, rabbits, and others), and it provides dense cover for a number of others.

Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) was brought to North America from Asia in the mid-18th century for ornamental uses. In South Dakota it was also used as a windbreak species until the 1980s. At that time severe damage from the Russian aphid (Hyadaphis tataricae) rendered Tatarian honeysuckle undesirable for both windbreak and ornamental plantings. The aphid feeding causes the plant to develop masses of small, thin shoots, known as witches brooms, that are unsightly and detract from the natural growth habit of the plant.