Fort Collins Nursery

After the unusually hard freeze we experienced in early November of this year, a lot of evergreen trees around town are looking a little yellow and sad. There are a number of different reasons an evergreen tree might be turning yellow/brown and/or dropping needles this time of year. Sometimes it’s perfectly healthy, other times it’s not. How do you tell the difference, and what should you do? Here’s a few tips:

This pine is showing needle cast. Notice the brown needles are lower on the branch while the healthy green needles are closer to the tip.

Needle Cast: If your conifer (pine, spruce, fir, or juniper) is dropping needles, it may be a perfectly normal and healthy occurrence. If the needles that are dropping are only on the interior part of the tree while the needles toward the ends of the branches are still flexible, green, and firmly attached, then your tree is going through a process called “needle cast.” This process is kind of like deciduous trees casting off their leaves every fall – the needles deepest inside the tree no longer receive much in the way of sunlight as they are shaded by the newer exterior needles, so the tree drops them. This is totally normal and you should not be alarmed.

Sun Scald: If the needles on one side of the tree are showing yellow or brown coloration, but the other side of the tree still looks healthy, it could be suffering from sun scald. The exceptionally dry winter air combined with low soil moisture and intense sun causes the needles to dry out. The damage is often only present on the most exposed parts of the tree where prevailing winds or southern sun can have the greatest impact. Often, only the tip of the needle will be discolored while the base of the needle remains green.

Some of this damage may be inevitable, depending on the location of the tree, but it can be mitigated by good winter watering (click here for more on winter watering). For particularly sensitive evergreens like boxwoods, arborvitae, and oriental spruce, to name a few, a permeable fabric like burlap can be used to wrap the plants, providing a little extra protection. Trees can also be treated with Wilt-Pruf, a product designed to give evergreen plants an added layer of protection on their needles and leaves. Generally, this type of damage is only short-term. Only in extreme cases do we start to worry about the overall health of the tree.

Freeze Damage: If your tree is dropping needles or yellowing/browning uniformly around the entire plant, there’s a chance the recent deep freeze caused such a shock to your tree that the needles were damaged.

The week leading up to the November freeze was exceptionally warm, followed by a very fast drop in temperatures.

Freeze damage on a Southwestern White Pine. Note the damage is present on the tips of branches while the interior needles remain green.

When plants go through such a rapid change in temperature, they don’t have time to undergo the physiological changes that help them tolerate the cold. Cell walls can rupture when they freeze and the dry air can cause damage more easily than would otherwise be the case. In instances like this, the damage will be most prominent on the outer parts of the branches, causing the tips to discolor and lose needles while inner needles that weren’t as exposed during the freeze remain green.

Freeze damage on a Southwestern White Pine. Note the damage is not limited to just one side of the tree.

In these cases, the only thing to do is wait and see. It is possible that in the spring, the buds that have already formed on the tips of those branches will still produce a new candle (the  growth from which new needles emerge). We encourage you to wait to prune until you are certain a branch has died, as cutting a branch that has a healthy bud on it will result in no growth next season. You can gently pinch the buds on damaged branches to find out if they’re still healthy – a firm bud is a healthy one, while a dried out dead bud will crumble between your finger tips. In this case, as with sun scald, the best treatment is a good deep watering 2 times a month through the winter when possible.

Come spring, even if no new growth emerges, if the remaining needles are still green, you’ve still got a healthy tree. Prune away the dead branches to expose the inner needles to light, give your tree a feeding with Jirdon Tree & Shrub fertilizer, and be sure to tell your tree how much it means to you and how happy you are that it’s still alive!

by Jesse Eastman

As days grow short and Mother Nature slips into her frosty slumber, we get a lot of questions about just what it is that we, nursery employees, do during the winter. In spring we are caught up in the crush of customers seeking the perfect plant for their yard and the vegetable that will grace their table in summer. Through the summer it is all we can do to keep all our plants watered and looking good. Autumn is consumed with end-of-season sales and putting away plants for a long winter rest. But what happens when the plants are in bed and the snow comes?

Lots of desk work
Between analyzing this year’s sales numbers, budgeting, and placing orders for next year, we spend a lot of time sitting at our desks. For a group of hardcore plant nerds like ourselves, this is a challenge. Greenhouse manager/gift buyer Troy says “since I have to spend more time at my desk it means I spend a lot less time with the plants.” On top of that, we are generally a pretty active group of people, and the slowdown during winter can be a blessing and a curse. “It’s a time to let my mind and body heal so they are ready for spring” says Brendan, the production manager. On the other hand, as Ashley, the assistant production manager points out, she really misses the exercise she gets throughout the rest of the year.

Holiday sales
It’s no mystery we sell a variety of holiday merchandise, but do you know what it takes to pull off a good Christmas season at the Nursery? We have to reorganize our store and greenhouse, set up a work area where we can decorate wreaths, build and stock our Christmas tree lot, and decorate everything. Scott, who does buying for nursery stock and garden supplies, says his favorite part of winter at the Nursery is the transformation from nursery into holiday wonderland.

Decorating wreaths is a major process every year. Did you know we sold nearly 400 wreaths last year, each and every one decorated by hand? That takes a lot of skill, patience, and hot-glue burns.

We also sell lots of poinsettias during the holidays, and they are a time-consuming plant. They break easily and must be handled with great care. They balk at cold air (why are they such a popular plant in the dead of winter?), so we have to wrap each plant before it goes outdoors, even if only for a moment. Kristen, our garden shop manager, will tell you that the most time-consuming thing she has to do during the winter is carefully wrap tropical plants. “A lot of people will say ‘It’s OK, I am going straight home.’ These people are usually wearing a jacket and forget the plants are not!”

Business as usual
Perhaps the biggest misconception about how our nursery works is that we get to just kick our feet up and sit at our desks. In fact, we have to do all the things mentioned above while maintaining a warm and welcoming retail experience for our hardy customers who still visit us throughout winter.  According to Bobby, a sales associate, in spite of everything else going on this time of year, sales and customer service still takes up a lion’s share of his time. In spite of the obvious lack of plant activity outdoors, we still keep ourselves very busy through the winter with indoor plants, gifts, décor, books, and more. We are always receiving new plants and merchandise, and it is constant effort to keep our store looking fresh and exciting.

Winter often feels like the longest season, dragging on as we slowly freeze to death. Here at the nursery, though, winter is often too short. With all the activity going on behind the scenes, spring has a way of creeping up on us. Scott has some good advice for those of you who, like me, fear spring may never return. “Spring seems so far away one day, and then suddenly it’s right around the corner.” So enjoy the winter, do your planning, decorate for the holidays, and start fantasizing about spring. It’s what we do, and it keeps us happy!