Shelter of coniferous plants from winter sunburn. How to cover conifers for the winter How to cover a Christmas tree for the winter

Coniferous crops are in great demand in landscape design. However, not all decorative conifers are able to endure the winter cold. Some species, especially those imported from mild climates, middle lane freeze and need shelter. In today's article, we will tell you how to cover conifers for the winter.

Conifers do not have a pronounced dormant period. Even in winter, their life processes do not stop, but only slow down a little, which makes them even more sensitive to weather changes. Preparation of plants for winter should be carried out taking into account this circumstance and begin long before the onset of the winter season.

Already in August, it is recommended to stop nitrogen fertilizing so that the shoots stop growing actively and have time to ripen before wintering. In September, it is useful to add a phosphorus-potassium mixture. This top dressing will accelerate the maturation of wood and strengthen the root system. But there are nuances here: some conifers, for example cypress trees, need high humidity, and if autumn turned out to be dry, then the plant needs to be moistened artificially.

Most conifers by autumn have broken, yellowed or disease-damaged branches. They need to be cut with a pruner, and the cuts should be sealed with garden pitch. it important point before wintering, since the movement of juices, although less intense, continues, and infection can easily enter through the sections.

The next step in the preparation of decorative coniferous plants by winter - this is watering, which is carried out approximately in the middle or end of November. With abundant watering, the earth freezes less, and it provides the roots with nutrition in the spring, when the crown begins to come to life. Old and large trees, such as pine or spruce, do not need watering. You need to water only small and young specimens at the rate of 2-3 buckets per plant below 1 m and 3-5 buckets - if above 1 m.

Young seedlings require special care. It is recommended to water them with Kornevin's solution so that the roots develop faster before wintering. Since the root system is still shallow, tall trees are additionally strengthened by installing stakes, to which the conifer is then tied. Caring for coniferous crops in the fall also involves warming the near-trunk zone with mulch: foliage, spruce branches, sawdust or other organic materials.

Video: "How to properly cover plants for the winter"

In this video, a specialist will talk about sheltering plants on winter period.

Shelter time selection

For conifers, cold is preferable to overheating, so you should not rush to cover. If the trunk circle is well insulated, the plants will withstand even severe frosts for several days. It is recommended to thoroughly cover trees and shrubs only after the onset of stable cold weather, when the night temperature drops to -5 ... -7 ° C. In this case, the daily temperature should be taken into account. If sunny weather persists, condensation will accumulate under the insulation, so it is better to wait a while or cover the plants only at night.

When constructing a shelter, the climate of the territory must also be taken into account. So, in the northern regions, where the winter is frosty and protracted, in addition to surface protection, it is necessary to increase the layer of mulch, and fill the internal space of the frame with hay or foliage.

For southern and temperate latitudes, another problem is relevant: already in February, the number of sunny days increases, the crown begins to heat up and burns appear on it. To prevent this from happening, the crown must be shaded by installing a protective mesh or burlap screen on the side where the sun falls.

What dangers await plants in winter

Among conifers, there are many species that cannot be covered mainly because of their high height and wide crown. Such trees in winter lie in wait for various dangers:

1. Broken branches. Occurs due to the accumulation and layering of snow on the branches. Most often, spreading trees suffer from this phenomenon, the crown of which consists of many thin branches (pines, some types of cypresses, cedar). Periodically shaking the snow off the branches can prevent the problem.
2. Snow mold. The putrefactive process usually begins in the spring, when the sun melts the snow, but it has not yet fallen from the branches. The solution to the problem is similar - you need to shake off the snow manually.
3. Icing of branches. It happens during periods of thaw or after rain, if it immediately becomes colder. The only way out is to make supports for the branches. It is impossible to warm and melt the snow, as it is possible to wake up the kidneys prematurely.
4. Yellowing or discoloration of needles. This is a sign of a burn or lack of moisture. First aid for this problem is shading the plant and abundant watering. If the ground is still frozen, water should be poured in small portions. When setting the daily temperature to +8 ... +10 ° C, treat the crown with biostimulants ("Epin" or "Zircon").

All these difficulties can be avoided if coniferous plants are properly covered for the winter. Having spent a little time and money, you will not have to deal with saving or restoring valuable specimens in the spring, and they, in turn, will delight you with their beauty and decorativeness.

Each plant is unique in its own way and needs an individual approach to care. Some of them are not whimsical, while others, on the contrary, require the knowledge and skills to implement good care. Most plants need to be carefully prepared for wintering. Many mistakenly believe that conifers do not require special care in winter. This is partly true, they are frost-resistant and perfectly withstand temperatures up to -30º. Why, in this case, cover coniferous plants? The greatest danger to conifers is not air temperature, but bright sunlight and wind, especially in late winter and early spring. Burns may appear on the trees during this period of time, which can cause irreparable harm to the plant. The most demanding, among conifers, in preparation for winter is thuja. How to cover a thuja for the winter is an important question, let's try to figure it out.

How to cover thuja for the winter

All activities aimed at protecting the thuja in winter are recommended to begin at the end of autumn before the first snow and frost appear. If the thuja is located near the structure in the shade and is a frost-resistant variety, then it can be covered for the winter in mid-February. Young plants in the first couple of years after planting, regardless of variety and frost resistance, need mandatory shelter.

Video "Saving conifers from yellowing"

Ways to hide thuja

There are many different methods that allow you to protect thuja from exposure to ultraviolet rays and wind. Next, we will talk in more detail about how to cover conifers for the winter. The following types of shelters are very popular among gardeners:

fabric

Fabric shelters can be made on your own or purchased at a farm store. Homemade shelter for conifers can be made from gauze or burlap. To warm the thuja with gauze, take material with a width of at least 50 cm and cut into strips. Their length should be slightly more than the height of the tree itself. When determining the length of the strip, the splendor of the crown is taken into account. Then all the strips are fastened together and tied into a bundle on one side to make a kind of bag. Instead of gauze, you can use any "breathable" material white color. Fabric shelters need to be made a little loose, because over time, a slight shrinkage of the fabric is possible.

Garden shops offer more modern solution for wood insulation. Non-woven materials are very popular among gardeners: agrotherm, lutrasil and spandbond. They are easy to use, easy to clean, dry quickly and are reusable.

Paper

To create such shelters, wrapping paper is used. They take a piece of material and wrap the crown of the tree in a spiral from top to bottom. When doing work, lightly press the branches to the trunk. The strips of paper must overlap. The resulting structure is fixed on the plant with a stapler or a tight rope.

Frame

Frame structures are suitable for warming young plants. Frames can be made independently or bought at a garden store. To build a protective frame, you will need to take thick slats and wire, as well as bars, thin plastic pipes and metal corner. If the thuja is small, then the structure can be made on 3 supports, and if there are more, then on 4. The frame legs are driven into the ground by 20 cm. Their length should be at least 2/3 of the height of the tree itself. If there is a large number of improvised means, then it is possible to build a structure taking into account the capture of the top of the crown. The fixation of the material on the frame is carried out using transverse and connecting racks. After the frame is built, a bag is put on it. The main disadvantage of this design is that it is constantly necessary to remove the accumulated snow.

Shield

This option is the simplest and is able to protect the thuja only from direct sunlight. Installation wooden shields carried out on the sunny side of the tree.

Photo "Ways to shelter thuja for the winter"

Winter care for conifers

After talking about how to cover the thuja for the winter, move on to the features of caring for the plant in the winter. In caring for evergreen trees, you should not lose vigilance even in winter. After a heavy snowfall, trees must be cleared of accumulated snow mass. If a large amount of snow accumulates around the trunk, it must be cleared.

In early spring, do not rush to remove shelters from trees, as they can get sunburned. You can remove the shelter from the thuja after the weather normalizes. Ephedra are recommended to be planted near the fence and buildings. This arrangement favorably affects the plant in the spring.

Tui sheltered for the winter also decorate the yard

In winter, wrapped thujas can look very unattractive. In order for the site to look attractive, you can show a little imagination. Shelter structures can be built similar to a wigwam. On paper shelters you can draw different pictures or funny faces.

Coniferous trees are distinguished by their extraordinary decorative effect - blue Christmas trees, lush firs, arborvitae, junipers often decorate personal plots. As a rule, they are quite winter-hardy and calmly endure cold weather under snow cover. However, some "southern guests" and any young animals require additional winter shelter: they are threatened by both freezing and the usual "spring burns" for conifers.

The first thing to do in order for young trees and exotics to survive the winter without loss is to provide them with moisture-charging watering. In late autumn, before the first frosts, pour an average of 5 buckets of water under the root of each planting: the soil will freeze less and in early spring trees will be protected from traditional coniferous damage.

When considering how to cover conifers for the winter, remember that most of them have a superficial root system and need additional insulation trunk circle. Use fallen needles, sawdust, spruce branches for this: cover the ground around the trunk well - in harsh winter this will protect the roots from freezing.

Next, you will need to cover the trees themselves. For this, they are used various materials: most often it is pine, spruce spruce branches, burlap, spandbond, roofing material, lutrasil. It is categorically not recommended to take polyethylene and other "non-breathing" materials - this leads to a debate of plants, fungal diseases, and burns.

It is not easy to choose a covering material for coniferous plants: on the one hand, it must provide them with protection from frost, on the other hand, from winter burns that trees usually receive from January to March. If you use artificial non-woven materials (spunbond, agrotex, etc.), remember that trees should not be allowed to overheat, do not wrap them tightly, leave ventilation holes in the hut.

Experts, explaining how to insulate conifers for the winter, do not recommend starting this before mid-November. Plants should harden slightly and get used to sub-zero temperatures. When frost reaches an average of -7 degrees, tie the plants with twine, then wrap each with burlap and cover in several layers with the selected material.

If the plant is brittle, fragile, you cannot tie it - you will need a special frame that can be bought at any garden center. You can make a frame in the form of a pyramid or a cube yourself - from wood, thick wire. Install a frame over brittle trees, then cover it with burlap. On top of it, cover the tree with a covering material, for example, spruce branches in 2-3 layers.

The spruce branches can be fastened with a garden stapler, wrapped with twine - the constructed hut should be as resistant to winds as possible. In such a shelter, a coniferous tree can calmly overwinter until stable heat sets in. The hut should be dismantled gradually, at the end of March at temperatures from 0 to +5 degrees. First, the spruce branches are removed in layers, after a week - burlap.

When preparing coniferous plants for winter, be sure to carry out moisture-charging watering, protect new plantings from direct sunlight, and protect plants with a spherical and conical crown from breaking with snow. So, what exactly needs to be done in the garden when preparing conifers for winter.

Moisture-charging irrigation

At the end of leaf fall, pour conifers well under the root (5-8 buckets per plant). Do not waste time on forest trees and old, time-tested plantings of thuja, pine, spruce: they have developed roots, and they will take care of themselves. Watering before winter is desirable for all plantings made in the past and current seasons; for varietal specimens and exotics, regardless of the time of planting (there are also very stable ones among them, but if you are a beginner gardener, it is easier to water everything than to figure it out - there will be no harm from this).

The crown of conifers wakes up early, often when the roots cannot yet provide it with moisture due to frozen soil. Hence, burning of needles is a common problem in the middle lane. Well-moistened soil freezes to a shallower depth, which reduces the risk of spring damage.

Fixing new landings

The crown of a coniferous plant collects a lot of snow. If there is heavy snowfall at above zero temperatures, such a mass of snow can stick on the branches that the seedlings that have not had time to take root will turn up with roots. After a freezing rain, even small plants, up to a meter high, fall and heel. In anticipation of snowfalls, thoroughly fix all the plantings of the current year with stretch marks to exclude even small movements: because of them, small roots break off and the plant survival time is delayed.

Protection of coniferous plants from burns

Columnar junipers, cypresses, thuja varieties, the crowns of which have burnt you in past years, and all varieties of Canadian spruce need to be additionally protected from sunburn with shelter. Lutrasil and other covering materials are not suitable: solar heat accumulates under them, and we just don’t need this. The purpose of the shelter is to shade the crown, not to allow it to heat up. Burlap, a special mesh or even woven polypropylene panels perform this function well. They are applied to the plant and tied with twine (do not tighten the branches too much!). Do not try to wall up the crown tightly - let the "air" remain. It is enough to shade large specimens only from the south side.

In the photo: Protecting thuja from sunburn

In the photo: Tui affected by sunburn

Crown tying

In varieties of arborvitae and young pines that are resistant to the spring sun, which you are not going to shade from burns, do not tie the branches tightly so that they do not bend or break under the pressure of snow or (God forbid) freezing rain. In some years, even local forest pines suffer from snowfall.

What to do, if...

No precaution provides complete protection from the weather. Therefore, it is useful to know what to do if:

... a lot of sticky snow fell

Knock snow off the branches with a pole or a board wrapped in a soft cloth. Do not shake the trees, do not hit them with all your might: tap often with small jerks so as not to damage the bark and the branches themselves (in winter they lose their elasticity and break easily).

… it was freezing rain

With the help of supports and screeds, try to give the branches their original position. Do not try to melt the ice on the branches with a hair dryer or warm water - the kidneys may wake up prematurely from the heat, and a new one will be added to the already happened trouble. The ice will melt by itself with the onset of sunny weather, even if the air temperature is still negative.

In the photo: Freezing rain on coniferous plants

... in spring, the needles on the plants turned yellow or discolored

Noticing this, immediately shade the crown by sprinkling water first if the weather is sunny. Water the affected plant with warm water. If the water spreads without being absorbed, then the soil is still frozen. Then water several times a day in small portions. When the daytime temperature steadily rises to + 10 ° C, treat the crown with Epin, Zircon or HB 101.

Lovers of coniferous plantations living in central Russia dream of an evergreen decoration of the adjacent plot. Despite the frost resistance of conifers, young seedlings need protection for the winter. How we cover the conifers for the winter, and other ways to protect against ice and snow, we will consider in this article.

Why cover winter-hardy crops?

Almost all coniferous plantations from trees to low-growing shrubs are characterized by unpretentiousness and resistance to frost. Both thuja and spruce attract the attention of gardeners not only with their beautiful appearance, but also resistant to diseases, pests, and also exude a wonderful coniferous aroma. In addition, they are excellent antiseptics.

Out of love for decorative look plants, it is planted along the alleys, near administrative buildings as well as in parks and gardens. But, despite such positive characteristics, coniferous plants need shelter for the winter. Namely, young seedlings that are not yet 3-4 years old are considered weak and need protection. Here are two aspects that adversely affect evergreen crops:

1. strong frosty wind;
2. spring sun rays reflecting off the snow.

Why wind and sunlight? The fact is that the winter wind causes severe dryness of the branches, and from a lack of moisture they freeze, break off and die. If you watched a beautiful spruce with a withered shoot and yellowed needles, then you should know that this happened due to a cold and strong wind. If the needles of trees are able to withstand severe frost, then she does not like the wind.

Everyone knows that the thaw at the end of February and March is characterized by a bright sun, the rays of which are reflected on the white snow. At this time, sap flow has not yet begun, and shrubs are still weak and vulnerable. Then pine needles and green thuja legs under bright light can get sunburned. Therefore, there is a need to shelter the culture for the winter, not to mention the break of branches under the weight of adhering snow.

Protection for medium height shrubs

To cover for the winter coniferous bushes that have not yet reached the age of 3, we first bend the branches to the trunk of the tree. To do this, we take a twine, preferably green or the same color as the trunk, and, without pressing hard, lightly wrap the cord so that the paws of the stems do not stick out. After that we take nonwoven fabric or spunbond, and determine the size of the future bag. Then we fix the seam with a stapler.

To date, manufacturers offer ready-made bags of agrotex in various sizes. Spruce and pine need autumn shelter only in the first year of life.

How to cover shrubs and young trees of medium height so as not to damage the crown and preserve the integrity of the culture as much as possible? For this, a wooden frame is constructed from bars of medium thickness.

Advice! “You can make a frame out of a flexible plastic mesh, which is very convenient because of its flexibility.”

It is better not to install an iron or wire frame, as the metal conducts cold and can cause frostbite of branches.

After preparing the walls of the frame, we wrap it with a covering material. It is better not to use polyethylene for these purposes, as it collects moisture. The moisture accumulated under the film in the winter cold freezes and does not contribute to thermal insulation or leads to decay and mold. In addition, polyethylene may not withstand low temperatures and burst, allowing the penetration of snow and cold wind. To protect coniferous plantations for the winter, it is better to use:

• burlap;
• spunbond;
• kraft paper;
• agrofibre;
• lutrasin;
• agrospan.

Any of the listed materials, except kraft paper, can be stapled to wooden frame. You can wind the insulation around the mesh, connecting the ends into a single seam.

Any agrofibre should be of medium thickness for air to enter (sometimes they leave a small gap or do not fix the top), but not tear from strong gusts of wind. After winter, shelters should be removed in early April or late March, when it gets warmer and sap flow begins. When to open the insulation you will be prompted by moderate melting of snow and air temperature close to 0 ° C.

If your pets have reached the age of 4, and you did not cover them, but only pulled them with twine, then we do the following frauds. At the end of February, on the south side of the garden, we install an awning from any available covering material. Our goal is to create a shadow curtain so that the conifers do not get sunburn from the blinding sun.

Protection for undersized shrubs

If your juniper or cedar is too young, or you are a fan of undersized crops, then the amount of insulation work is significantly reduced. It is enough to stock up on spruce branches in the forest and cover them with seedlings in the form of cone-shaped houses. Zealous owners prefer to install plastic containers on top of the spruce branches for reliable fixation and maintaining the temperature regime.

The industrial business satisfies any demand, and therefore the Moscow region is provided with covering material for planting in in full. It is sold in the form of cone-shaped bags with a pulling rope at the bottom. So that the ends of the coniferous paws do not turn yellow, it is enough to use special bags.

Agronomist advice! “For young conifers with a weak root system, it is necessary to sprinkle the place at the roots with sawdust or mulch before sheltering for the winter.”

Extra care

Despite the winter hardiness and unpretentiousness of the culture, mineral dressing will not hurt. Especially for freshly planted crops in the fall, so that they can take root until spring. The plant must be strong and disease resistant. How to feed pets in anticipation of cold weather?

We will describe several steps leading to successful acclimatization and overwintering:

1. we water in autumn 50-60 cm deep, not only near the root, but also in the radius of the root system. With heavy autumn rains, the procedure is canceled;
2. near-stem mulching with organic matter (needles, pine bark, sawdust, spruce branches, hay, etc.) is poured in 1–2 layers, not thicker, so that rodents do not make a nest;
3. feeding with biohumus and compost will support the vitality of conifers, as well as the introduction of magnesium with dolomite flour;
4. nitrogen in in large numbers and manure can harm plantings;
5. in the spring at a temperature of +10 ° C, it is recommended to carry out treatment with biostimulants: epin, HB 101, Zircon. Sometimes it is enough to spray the crown warm water and hide from the sun.

It is much more expedient to take care of the conifers than to restore them as a result of a careless attitude.