Well, if you were with us last fall, you might remember this tip. We recommended covering many perennials with straw to aid them in getting through our harsh, zone 2 winter.
This preparation can sometimes be the “make or break” when it comes to perennial survival, especially with first year perennials and severe winters. It’s also helpful if you’re pushing your growing zone as hard as you can with “borderline” perennials.
But, come spring, we want to clear this straw off. We pretty much remove it as soon as our beds become clear of snow, which for us just happened very recently. The straw acts as an insulator. While it keeps plants warmer in the winter, it can also make them too cool in the spring. Plus, those plants need sunlight!
You certainly can store this straw and use it again. If you do, you really need to keep it dry and out of the rain or further snowfall, otherwise it’ll rapidly decompose. We find this a bit messy and not a valuable use of space, so we just compost the straw each year. It’s a great early ingredient for those compost piles and we basically look at it as a garden input like any other.
Sometimes you have to do this in stages, since snow rarely clears all at once. For example, we’ve still got a number of perennials with a foot of snow on them. All in due time!
We were very happy to be met by several early greenups after removing our straw this year. We had several first year perennials that survived without difficulty, which is always great to see. But, we also didn’t have a particularly brutal cold winter this year either, so we’re also left with some unknowns about future survivability. Far northern perennials are challenging, to say the least!
Things are getting real and we’re regularly starting to work outside now. That’s definitely a sign of what’s to come in the coming weeks!
Oh, and sorry for the late night post! We’re definitely at the point, as far northerners, where we’re packing in the daylight hours! Our summers are way too short and there’s much to do!
