I shoveled what little snow there was, from the driveway next to me to around the mulched area of my new Gleditsia triacanthos enermis seedling. They say the first year in the ground is the most critical for these trees. Hoping this winter isn't as long as the last one.

That row of your pines looks like they are way far apart. Or maybe the picture makes it look that way? Nice trees and they look to be doing well. How long have you had them in? What kind are they?

Yes they will never grow together, Swiss stone pine, most had double leaders or competing branches that I have pruned out and they will take a bit to fill in. They have been in the ground here for 5 years and are about 12 years old ( best guess). I keep adding plants as my experiments with some do not turn out. These pine grow between 4 to 8 inches a year so need space and time to keep looking good I think.

I didn't realize they were so slow growing. Is there a reason you selected that species? It can't be because you don't have the room. Looks like a rather large area you have there. Beautiful trees btw.

Looks like around 7" on the ground since last night. With another 1-3" forecast before it ends tonight. Not real wet and heavy but heavy enough, has good substance and firms up readily so shouldn't blow around too badly. East wind going to the NW by tonight up to 40 mph.

Yay! :-O

We are supposed to get about 6" on Sunday, good to here that you have got the snow that you wanted. I picked the Swiss stone pine for a few reasons, edible seeds, they keep their needles 3 or 4 years so they are more dense, long soft needles and can grow in clayey soil. They are also hardier than Pinus Strobus. I am also growing Korean pine for some of the same reasons but from pics on the net I think they are going to look more coarse like jack or red pine. Growth rate should be faster. I have 5 Pinus aristata on their fourth winter, all lost their tops the second winter so not sure if they will survive. I have about 3 acres to play with (closed down school with some of the yard) so will be able to add more. It is hard to find alot of the zone hardy plants around here and the plants are root bound most of the time.

Edible seeds? Pretty cool!

I read some stats that included a tag about Swiss stone pine edibility but didn't say it was the seeds. lol made me wonder. :-) I like the dense needles charachteristic.

I'm running out of room in my yard so won't be adding too many more trees. I'm saving a couple of spots for a Northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) and Taxus canadensis, if I ever find one.

We picked up another 5-6" since I posted this morning, so a good foot total out of this one. :-)

Storm's over. Plows were out early. Probably over a foot but the wind blew all night so hard to tell. Cold air moving in for tonight. My neighbor was out blowing snow too and he walked over to ask me, why do we stay in Minnesota? Because it's fun, I said! :-)) We laughed.

Picea glauca, almost 6 ft. tall, next to the driveway, front yard.

Looks like a nice mix of trees in your part of town, -29c here this morning for a bit and the snow disappeared from the forecast.

Sorry to hear your snow cover is not as good as you would like. But it sounds like you're consigned to the fact that that's the way it is and is common conditions there.

Some years we get very little snow but then other times we don't know what to do with all the snow.

The trees in my picture are the small percentage that survived a tornado, 8 years ago, that cleared a 2 block wide strip through the whole length of town. That was before I lived here.

The picture below you can see to the right (SSW) how 'clear' it is for a half a mile, then open farm fields after that. I also have mile long farm field to the north within an eighth of a mile. So very windy conditions here.(can't see the rocks by the birch anymore :-)

I've planted some trees for future windbreaks but after the wind last night, I think I'm loosing the battle. Here's 2 rows of mostly red pine that covers about 1/2 of the south end of the yard. They were snow covered until the wind blew most of it off last night.

The other half of the south end have some spruce that have been in for between 3-4 years and a juniper v. and a white pine I put in a year or so ago. There's a balsam fir in there somewhere. The wind doesn't sweep the snow out of the yard as much as it used to but still cut some pretty deep grooves. But then piled some up in places too.

There's another spruce to the right of the little white pine below, on the right, but it got cropped off for some reason. Also, I had to shovel snow around my burlap 'surround' I made for my Tsuga c. (upper right side of pic) because the wind had the snow swept right to the ground on the entire outside perimeter. Something about the round shape of that thing keeps the snow from settling around it. Defeats the purpose in a way but does add wind/sun drying protection all the same.

Oh, here's a shot of the inside of my Tsuga surround. It held quite a bit of snow right on the tree but around the outside of the tree, it must have blown right through the burlap and disappeared.

That's all from the North land for now. :-)

Ended up -24f this AM. So good to get the snow before the cold. :-)

Looks like a dip Monday night than good temps for awhile, I have had die back on many plants the first year or so and then they can be good after that. It seems once the roots extend far enough I can leave them be. I have had outright failure on more than I wish to think about but poor plant condition when purchased probably the main factor. I have learnt that good deals are not worth it a great amount of the time. I have been tempted to try hemlock but my conditions are not good enough yet and maybe never will be. White spruce get stressed here but still get large, it really depends on the site. 2011 and 2014 we had once in 100 year flood, soil was saturated for many months, it killed many trees around low spots, prime spots normally.

I have areas on my country land that have rich fetile, clay Loam soil. But every time we get heavy rains or wet periods, it floods. Only happens once in 5-10 years, just enough to thwart attempts to establish certain trees like Hemlocks and sugar maples, trees that won't tolerate standing water.

I mainly try to grow what is zone hardy, not necessarily native. We had a few nights -34f last winter, enough to say beware zone pusher. :-)

We have about 5 inches of snow on the ground and we're in for a deep freeze on New Year's eve and New Year's day.

As low as - 44 with the wind chill in the morning.

Then supposed to warm up to above freezing by the end of the week, going to be quite the ride!

That time of year again.

I've been in Los Angeles the last few days. Everyone's apologizing bc it's so cold here. :-) It did freeze some more inland and along the coast there were lows in the 30' s f. Sunny & highs 50-60 f. It was jacket weather until afternoons.

We had a few -24 nights back home but it's supposed to warm some now for a while.

Looks like we got 3-4" more snow since we left.

Sometimes when the winters are dry, we have drought in summer also. Hope this is an Omen. :-)

NG,

We've had winters here where the temps don't get above zero for weeks, more than once during January and February. With -35f during the nights and -5 to -10f for highs, just not every year.

On a good year, we may only get a few days of sub zero with -20f the lowest temp and have that happen possibly more than once. But by end of February, we could be thawing that goes into March.

Sometimes we get a 'January Thaw' where temps go into the 50's for several days with sun and everything starts melting but we usually pay for that with an exceptionally long cold winter that lingers into the middle of April. I can remember one year we had -15f a few days the first week of April and cold on into May. So it can really vary around this neck of the woods.

Here's another reason I like spruce trees. Gets the snowfall plus all the snow blowing from the driveway. A couple of years ago, this Picea glauca would be totally covered but it's starting to out grow the snow depth. I just let it go like this all winter and in the spring, it just melts away with no branch damage or any kind of damage whatsoever.

We’ve had chinook weather for the past few day, my outdoor thermometer read plus 9C / 48F! Most snow is melting or evaporating. It’ll be interesting to see how things do in the spring.

We had 40f yesterday and 34f today and sunny so that caused the snow to settle down in depth quite a bit. It didn't melt enough for water to run down the street drains so the moisture is still with us and the ground is still protected from the cold.

We're back to single digits for highs starting Tuesday with some single digit below zero for lows several days after that. Not bad for this time of year.

I'm always glad to see January be over, even though we can still have some winter weather after that, the temps seem to moderate more, the sun gets higher and the days are longer.