North Florida Month-to-Month Gardening Guide January 2007  by Nancy George

I love walking through the garden knowing what perennials lie dormant waiting for spring, but it’s these times when I truly appreciate evergreen plants which stand tall through the coldest of days, giving the garden shape and substance.  Evergreens can enhance a landscape in a variety of ways providing privacy, consistent ground covering and winter color.  Solitary trees become stately focal points.  Grouped evergreens create hedges that protect from wind and noise.  Used as a wall, they define space, like at the edge of a patio.  Animal lovers should also think about the cover evergreens provide for birds and countless other species.

There are two types of evergreens, conifer and broadleaf.  Conifers have needle-like leaves like pines and often grow in a pyramidal shape, but there are shrubby or horizontal types as well.  They come in many shapes, sizes, and colors such as variegated gold, gray-green or blue.  Broadleaf evergreens are related to deciduous species, but hold their leaves all year.  When choosing evergreens, always consider the mature height and width.  If you need a hedge, use something that will fill the space quickly and select smaller evergreens for confined spaces to minimize pruning.
My favorite evergreens include japanese black pine with its sweeping, windblown look, cryptomeria with its thick textured scale-like needles and Texas sage’s gray-green leaves.

What to Buy / Plant

Trees and shrubs planted now will preserve energy over the winter and flush out new growth in spring.  For a traditional look consider the interesting contorted leaves of curly ligustrum, yews, cherry laurel, viburnum, carolina blue sapphire, itialian cypress, thuja, indian hawthorn, abelia, hollies, magnolia grandiflora, oaks, pines, camellia, azalea, and podocarpus.  For a south Florida look try fatsia, acuba, tasmanian tree fern, silver dollar eucalyptus, pineapple guava, all palms and yucca.  There are many evergreen groundcovers such as moss phlox, creeping raspberry, juniper, holly fern, korean rock fern, and many other evergreen ferns and grasses.  Add a splash of color with hardy annuals and perennials found at your local nurseries.

Prune/ Propagate

Prune roses.  Start by cutting out any dead, thin, or crossing branches. Select four to six thick, sturdy, dark-green upright branches to be the branches that remain on the bush. You want to create a nice vase-shaped that is open in the center. Shorten these healthy canes to 1 to 4 feet, depending on mature height and preference. (Another way to look at it is to reduce the plant height by 1/3 to 1/2.) Make proper cuts at a 45-degree angle sloping in, cutting right above an outward-facing bud, which encourages new growth outward.

Edibles

Continue to plant cool-season vegetables between harvests such as broccoli, bussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, lettuce and other greens. Also root crops like beets, carrots, radishes, and turnips. Lots of herbs are evergreen rosemary, lavender, thyme, oregano sage, parsley and chives to name a few.

Pests

Spray deciduous fruit trees. Dormant sprays such as horticultural oils or lime-sulfur are applied after
a deciduous plant has gone dormant and dropped its leaves. Dormant sprays are used to control over-wintering mites and insects such as scale. Lime-sulfur spray is used to control certain fungal diseases.

For Fun

Surprise friends and family with a winter wonderland. Attach a garden hose with a mister or sprinkler through the top of a tree or on a pole. When the weather predicts a hard freeze, turn it on before you go to sleep and wake up to foot long icicles sparkling in the sun.

Photo Gallery

Japanese Black Pine		Cryptomeria		Texas Sage
Curly Ligustrum		Yew		Cherry Laurel
Viburnum		Italian Cypress		Magnolia Grandiflora
Carolina Blue Sapphire		Thuja		Indian Hawthorn
Abelia		Holly		Oak Tree
Pine Tree		Camellia		Salmon Native Azalea
Podocarpus		Fatsia		Acuba
Tasmanian Tree Fern		Silver Dollar Eucalyptus		Pineapple Guava
Sago Palm		Washington Fan Palm		Pindo Palm
Yucca		Moss Phlox		Korean Rock Fern
Creeping Raspberry		Juniper		Holly Fern

This article originally published on January 2, 2007.

Written by :

mkwestmark

 

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