Garden Talk: How can I stop deer eating my cedars?

Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Here are a selection of questions and answers from the Nov. 10 edition.

Q: How can I stop deer eating my cedars?

A: You need to put mesh around those plants, or get an outside dog! Burlap can also work, but the reach of the deer is a problem.

I’ve seen cedars that only have green tufts at the at the top because deer have trimmed everything they could reach by stretching their necks out. They will trim a perfect line across a whole row of cedars and everything below that is gone. The problem is when you’ve got a brown cedar, and there’s no green left it is years before it comes back.

If there is nothing on the bottom half of a cedar, you might just want to start again. You can also put
posts in the ground with chicken wire around them and let the cedar grow through the chicken wire. Every year the deer will trim it back to the chicken wire and you don’t have to do any pruning then.

Q: How can I prepare my rose bush for winter in Saskatchewan?

A: It depends what type of rose it is. If it’s a hardy rose, just mulch a little bit around the base. You can take the rosehips off if you want, but don’t do a lot of pruning in the fall. Prune it about one third in the spring.

You can prune hybrid tea roses, or mini roses and mulch them in fall. Hybrid roses are tender and
you have to mulch them quite a bit. Put a box or rose hutch around them and fill that up with dry leaves. Burlap won’t work, they have to be mulched. The crowns of hybrid tea roses need to have about 12 inches of mulch around them.

Ohio Buckeye chestnuts. (Submitted)

Q: Can I propagate chestnuts? Can you grow chestnuts from the actual nuts?

A: Varieties like Ohio Buckeye (pictured) can be planted straight in the ground, or put them in a bag and store in the fridge until March. If you use a plastic bag make sure to make holes in it. The coolness will help the outer shell break down, and they will grow.

Ohio Buckeye chestnuts aren’t really that great to eat, so you would mainly grow them for the tree. The trees like a drier location and don’t like to be a spot where the water will sit. They’ll grow in a sandier type of soil and won’t do as well in heavy clay.

Q: Can I overwinter trailing bamboo?

A: Trailing bamboo is an annual, so you need to cut it right back and even divide it, because it’s quite a vigorous plant. It’s not going to be the easiest plant to keep over the winter because it’s a grass. Sufficient light and moisture is important.

Don’t take take cuttings, pull sections of the plants and put them into 2-4 inch plant pots and then put them in a bright window with a grow light, and keep a pebble tray underneath. Don’t let them dry out completely, keep them evenly moist all winter.

Read more:

• Garden Talk: Don’t let Saskatchewan winter kill your water garden
• Garden Talk: Do mushrooms at a tree base need to be removed?
• Garden Talk: Protect your trees from pests over winter
• Garden Talk: What maples in Saskatchewan get red leaves in fall?

Q: Is it too late to seed the new grass and/or overseed an existing lawn?

A: You can do both. When you overseed an existing lawn make sure to rake it so that the seed is contact
with the soil, and doesn’t sit on top of the thatch. It’s not going to germinate right now.

Even when you put seed on new soil, you want to give it a light raking, or if you got a big area, pull a piece of chain link fence along it so it puts a little bit of soil cover over the seed. It will just start germinating next spring. You might have to fix some spots that had some runoff. If you are seeding in a backyard where it’s protected, just rough it up but if it’s in an open area, just wait until early spring so the seed doesn’t blow away.

Q: Do yew trees do well in southern Saskatchewan?

A: No. Chinooks in southern Saskatchewan that, you know, you get, you know, dry them out. If you want an evergreen look, you’re going to have to go with an evergreen. Try something like a wareana, or Siberian cedar. They grow wider and taller, and you have to keep them trimmed right from day one.

Q: I had lily beetles this year and cut my lilies off early, but they moved into my hostas and even my morden rose. What can I do in the spring to get rid of them?

A: You can use Bug-X Out or End-All in the spring. Search for the eggs in spring. When they’re young, the eggs will stick to the underside of the leaves and look like little red jelly. You can use a lint roller to collect them. You can even sprinkle diatomaceous earth around where you know the lilies are going to come up, because as soon as lilies come up the beetles come out of the soil. If the beetles get the diatomaceous earth on them, they’ll dehydrate.

As soon as you get buds and blooms you don’t want to be spraying as if you do you are not going to get great flowers. If you do spray when the plants are in bloom, take a piece of cardboard and protect the blooms and spray underneath that.

Q: Do I need to wrap burlap around Brandon cedars protected on the south side by a six-foot fence that’s two feet away?

A: What you have to look at is weather in March and April. It’s not the cold winter that hurts them, it’s
when the sun is higher, or if you get a Chinook in the middle of the winter, especially when the ground is still frozen and you’ve got a white fence. The reflection off of the snow and the fence desiccates the needles before the roots have moisture.

The biggest thing is to think about the way the sun’s going to be hitting them in March and the first week of April, and shade that side of the trees when the sun is stongest. As long as the fence is going directly east to west you won’t need to cover them.

The biggest misconception about wrapping cedars is, is that you are wrapping them to put a coat on
them for warmth, but you are trying to shade them. You can use a few stakes and put burlap around them like a tent or enclosure. Keep that six inches away from the plant.

If you do wrap the plant, leaving the burlap six inches off the ground, because if you go right to the ground, no snow will cover the roots. The snow is the insulation, not the burlap. You can also use burlap if they are planted in a wind tunnel, to protect the trees from drying out as well, especially with young trees.

Q: What is causing tips of my snake plant to turn brown?

A: Examine the root system and feel the soil. Snake plants likes to go dry between waterings, so you should feel no moisture. However, if you let the plant get too dry the leaves will feel soft and can get browning on the tips.

If you were watering it too much you might see call root rot in the bottom of your pot. Lay out an old sheet on the floor and pull the plant right out of the pot and look at the roots. Healthy roots on a snake plant white and sometimes a yellow colour and firm. If you see any roots that are brown or black color, trim those off with scissors, replant it back into some fresh soil and start over. Go only one pot larger — one to two inches bigger not 12 inches bigger.

Q: Is it too late to plant garlic this fall as long as I use mulch?

A: You definitely can — if you can dig into the ground, you’re good to go. Just make sure you put the pointed side facing up and give them a little bit of water. When it’s this cold, make sure the area is well drained. Also add a little bone meal, and mulch them.

These questions and answers have been edited and condensed.

Read more:

• Garden Talk: Don’t let Saskatchewan winter kill your water garden
• Garden Talk: Do mushrooms at a tree base need to be removed?
• Garden Talk: Protect your trees from pests over winter
• Garden Talk: What maples in Saskatchewan get red leaves in fall?