We recently got hit by a big winter storm that dropped at least 15 inches of heavy, wet snow. It clung to branches, breaking some and bending others to near their breaking points. If you suffer the same sometime this winter, here are some things you might consider to help your woody plants.
First, the best thing to do is be proactive. Even before the storm had finished I went outside and started shaking branches to get snow off them. Wear a hoodie! Snow can go right down your neck if you don’t. For shrubs and small trees, you can shake the central stem, and it will clear the snow from the entire plant. For larger trees, you will need to shake individual branches.
A good tool for clearing snow is a bamboo pole, the longer and thicker the better. Some hardware stores and feed-and-grain stores will have them. I used one to knock snow off branches I couldn’t reach.
So what can you do to repair cracked and broken branches? Generally, nothing. Take a sharp saw or loppers and remove the branch back to its point of origin – the main trunk or a large branch. But don’t cut flush to the trunk if you can avoid it. And never leave a stub as it will have to rot back to the branch collar to heal.
Grafting is a well-known but difficult skill whereby a skilled person can add a branch to a living tree. This is most often done with fruit trees, allowing orchardists to add other varieties of apple on a tree. I have an apple with three different flavors of apple because it had other varieties grafted to the original tree.
But back to my little leatherwood tree. Because it was still hinged at the bottom of the break, I moved it back together and used some stretchy green plastic tape to wrap the two halves together. I wound it tightly, and low and behold, it worked! I removed the tape after two or three months. Now, two years later, the shrub shows no signs of ever being damaged- other than a little scar tissue.
What else did the storm do? It almost flattened a small grove of willow trees I had planted 20 years ago. They are a variety of Salix integra called Hakuro Nishiki. Very popular, these willows have tri-colored leaves (green, white and for part of the summer, pink) and are fast growing. There is nothing I can do for them. They are bent over and weighed down by snow, but should recover once the snow melts in a week or two. And if they don’t spring back up? I will lop off the bent stems and let them re-grow.
The storm also knocked down a large tree on our property, a wild black cherry (Prunus serotina). The black cherry doesn’t produce cherries we can eat, but birds eat them. The blossoms are not important, either, but it is a good plant for pollinators, one of the keystone species.
The tree we lost had a diameter of 14 inches at its base and stood over 67 feet tall – I measured it after it fell. It was not one I had planted, but a bird probably dropped a seed in our woods.
So what was wrong with our tree? Most trees do not have tap roots going down deep into the soil. Two feet is probably average. But they spread widely. I was told in a horticulture class to think of a tree as a wine glass sitting on a dinner plate. The plate represents the root system, the wine glass the trunk and branches.
But ours was growing right next to a rock ledge that was actually showing above ground. The roots could not grow that way, so all the roots were on just three sides. The wind came from the fourth side, and with the snow load, it blew over. So if you plant trees, be mindful of bedrock and ledge. Keep away from them. You can use a steel rod or crowbar to poke the soil to find the ledge before planting.
Although I will miss that big tree, I try to never mourn a plant that dies. After all, it provides me a chance to plant something else there. My best wishes to you all for the holidays.