Signs of Spring in Neenah, WI Part II

 

Vinca minor, also know as Periwinkle is a shade loving ground cover.  It grows as a vine that never reaches more than 3″ to 6″ off the ground, It grows in USDA zones 4 to 8.  I have multiple patches of periwinkle growing in my yard as of 3/20/2010, it goes on records as one of the earliest growing on my plants.   According to about.com “The stems root at the nodes as they creep along the ground and spread rapidly to form an attractive ground cover.”  Well last year was the first time I planed Vinca minor, so I have not had a chance to see how fast it really grows, but about.com warns us: “Vinca minor is an invasive plant. If the invasiveness of Vinca minor bothers you, use hosta plants, instead.”  It doesn’t really bother me, in fact, I would be quite happy if it would rapidly grow over much of my rock garden area, as I didn’t get around to putting down much mulch in that area last year, and Vinca would look much nicer than it does currently.   I don’t know if Vinca will cause any problems for hostas or not if they are grown in the same bed.  I suspect that Vinca will crowd out much of the native grass if it is allowed to.  This might work to my benefit in some areas, if it gets along okay with the Hostas.  Several of the beds I created were not properly cleared of lawn / sod prior to being made into beds.  I dug up and broke up the old grass, burring it face down under new soil (many of our beds are raised).  I thought this would have killed off the grass, yet by fall, much of it was peeking back up through the mulch.  I’ve wanted to avoid using herbicides due to the number of plants in trees in close proximity to the beds we planted in.

 

This is a variety of Sedum.  it is a Succulent that is commonly cultivated as a garden plant in North America.  it is often used as a substitute for grass in roof gardening.  I have a number of varieties of Sedum around the yard, and this is the first I have seen coming up.  This photo was taken on 3/20/2010, Neenah, WI.

The seed from a Norway Maple tree sprouting in mulch on the west side of our house.  The Norway Maple (Acer platanoides).  The Norway maple is a beautiful tree that grows 20-30m tall.  It has large dense leaves that produce very dense shade.  The tree does spread fairly rapidly and has unfortunately been labeled as a invasive species in several states.  In my area, the Silver maple is a very common planting.  I consider the Normal Maple much more attractive than the Silver maple.  However the Silver maple was likely chosen for many location due to it speed of growth.  The Norway maple is not as fast in it’s growth as the Silver maple, the Norway maple also has stronger wood, and is less prone to storm damage.

The Norway maple has a common problem with developing girdled roots.  It is often not possible to know if a tree has a girdled root until a decade or more after it is planted.  A Norway Maple with a girdled root will die over time.  Once the tree has a deeply embedded girdled root, it is too late to correct.  Our Norway Maple unfortunately has a deeply embedded girdled root.  The tree is in excellent condition / health currently, and we expect it to be a number of years before we see it’s decline.  This tree is a major asset to our backyard and will be a huge loss when it dies.  We have planted some other tress in the vicinity, but they are all 20+ years behind this tree in terms of size.

We have a Norway maple tree growing that sprouted off this tree perhaps as much as 5-7

years ago.  It choose to grow among a dense roe of Arborvitae, which I believe to be nigra arborvitae.  The arborvitae are getting close to 50 years old and are showing their age.  There is much thinning towards the bottom of the arborvitae and at least one of the appears to be dieing off.  I’ve read that the nigra arborvitae have a life span of around 50 years, so it isn’t too much of a surprise that these are declining at this age.  None the less, sooner or later, there will be a huge open space between yards that have been separated for decades.  I am going to let the Norway Maple seedling (which is now around 15 feet tall, but very skinny) grow, at least it will provide some cover in the area where the arborvitae are, once they are gone.  The area had been much more shaded until about a year ago when I cut back much of our main Norway Maple.  The primary reason for pruning the Norway Maple was because the dense shade it produced had allowed parts of the south side of the house to rot.  It ended up opened up quite a bit of light in a part of the yard where nothing had grown well for decades.  Now we have planted a number of items in this area, and I believe that they all get enough light that they well do well. 

To the left you can see a photo I just took of one of the thinning arborvitae, if you look closely, you can see how much of the center and the bottom of the arborvitae has died off.  There is also the spruce tree to the right, it has lost many branches, including quite a few on its front side just about a month ago.  Many of the Spruce trees in this area suffer from numerous problems and are slowly dieing.  Spruce trees do much better in sandy soil, and we have a lot of clay in the soil around here and not much sand, so it is hard for them to do well.  Despite that challenge, many of them have made it to around 50 years old at heights of 60+ feet.  Their age is showing where on many of the trees the bottom 10 to 20 feet of branches have died and had to be cut off.

The image below is of a spruce tree in my back yard.  Not that many years ago, it was still quite a nice looking tree.  Now many of it’s lower branches has died off, which is quite unfortunate.  It is in a nice position in the corner of the yard.  It still has many years of life left, but I suspect the lower branches will continue to thin out.  Hopefully it can live another decade or so. It doesn’t help much that the telephone guys have broken multiple branches off of the tree, including one this past winter. 

Tagged as: Garden, plants, spring, vinca