Friday, October 25, 2013

Dayton "Dirt" - October 25, 2013

With snow flurries and the cold of this past week, we have placed most of the container nursery stock away in the winter storage huts and next week we’ll cover the huts with opaque white polyethylene. Any of the stock can still be sold and successfully planted through November as it is a good month for gardening if not in some ways the best gardening month (except for annual flowers of course). The Red Sunset Maples and Autumn Blaze Maples at the nursery just keep blazing away in shades of red that support the tree’s cultivar names. While the Princeton American Elms are lacking in brilliant fall color, the trees more than make up for this deficit with their fast growth and vase-shape silhouette that is unlike any other native tree. This year will most likely be the last one to view the royal purple color of the White Ash and the clear yellows of the Green Ash trees thanks to the introduction of the Emerald Ash Borer from China that came aboard wood pallets loaded with sewer pipe. Obviously, there seems to be a lack of money and will in the Government and the general public to stamp out these foreign infestations of pests; however, some are beginning to take a toll on food crops such as the marmorated stink bug. A future crisis threatening a wide variety of food crops and/or trees may have to occur before our society “gets it” in the need to allocate resources and the man power to keep out foreign invaders. So much for doom and gloom as it’s sad enough that the days are growing so short. Consider planting a tree this fall that generations in the future might enjoy the shade of its branches, the oxygen it will emit, the carbon dioxide it will store and the runoff water from heavy rain it will absorb. Trees do matter in terms of dollars and in terms of better living. Tom

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