Gardening in the Great Basin can be quite a challenge. Our weather is unpredictable and soils and water are salty but plants will grow here if they are salt tolerant, drought tolerant, and tolerant to both extremes of heat and cold.
This morning, October 10, 2008 was an example of how quickly and extremely weather in the Great Basin can change. Only a week ago we had sunny day summer-like weather but this morning I awoke to snow coming down very heavily. The ground was to warm for the snow to stay long but because it was coming down heavily it did accumulate briefly on the plants on my yard.
I took some pictures of snow on my roses and Maximilian’s Daisy because it was such an unusual event. The down side to this unusual and sudden weather change is that most woody plants aren’t ready and the water in their vascular systems may freeze and split some of the tissue.
The best way to reduce the occurrence bark splitting resulting from such fall freezes is to start reducing the frequency of irrigation on woody plants.
Though the sudden early snow storm and freezing temperatures could potentially damage some woody plants on the Great Basin one can only hope that many more storms will continue to come this winter and give us a good snowpack in our mountains so we will have water for next year’s growing season.
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