Sea Spikebush and Overwintered Plants

I knew sea buckthorn had thorns but these are ridiculous!

As is my style lately, during the middle of last week I suddenly remembered that I had just over a dozen potted plants sitting in the ground out at my parents place that needed me to tend to them. The weather finally warmed up here in Alberta and the snow has been gone for about two weeks now. When these plants came to mind, I became worried that they may be too wet or too dry and I was eager to pull them out and make sure everything was ok.

Overwintering trees and shrubs by burying their pots in the ground is something I have been experimenting with for a couple of years now. So far, the results have been good. I had heard of people using this method before but with our extremely harsh winters I was skeptical with how well it would work. Sure, it works some places but would it work here?

This last winter was one of the longest coldest winters ever in Edmonton with 167 consecutive nights with temperatures falling below freezing. When people "joke" about 6 months of winter in Alberta they aren't really joking! So with that in mind, I was definitely eager to see how well these plants faired.

Anyway, I decided to head out to my parents place on the weekend for a brief stop to check on my potted plants and to see how the test plot was doing as well; I was curious if it had sustained anymore animal damage. The test plot has been plagued with animal related damage since it's inception. Whether it was the constant browsing by curious deer looking for a midnight snack or rampaging young steers completely leveling it, there always seems to be something setting back it's progress.

These young steers trampled the crap out of the test plot a couple of summers ago.

At first glance, the plot looked pretty normal with nothing major amiss. The comfrey, which is usually one of the first herbaceous plants to emerge in the spring, was starting to come up . The Saskatoon's and sea buckthorn were just starting to leaf out.

Left: comfrey / Right: Saskatoon just starting to bud out.

That is when this extremely spikey sea buckthorn plant caught my eye. They are supposed to have thorns but this plant is down right ridiculous! It is covered top to bottom with massive thorns anywhere from one to four inches long! The crazy thing is that this plant wasn't always like this.

Typical browsing damage on my sea buckthorn plants.

This particular sea buckthorn is on the corner of the test plot and has been browsed more than the others. It appears as though, after getting eaten over and over and over again that it finally had enough and decided to ramp up it's defense mechanism by growing massive thorns. You know what, it worked! I did not observe any fresh browsing damage on this plant. I am now toying with the idea of cloning this freak plant to make a wall of thorns to keep animals and people out of parts of our new property! Haha...

Another look at the spikey sea buckthorn.

With the gawking out of the way, now was the time to check out the potted plants. I had three elms that I started from seed, five buffalo berry, five hardy grapes, and a willow that had rooted in a gutter that I decided to throw in a pot. From my observations, they had done well and the ground was neither saturated or dried out so they were likely at a good moisture content.

Left: Potted plants tucked in for the winter. / Right: How they looked in the spring.

Upon further examination everything except the willow seems to have survived through the winter! This was a little surprising because I would have thought that the willow would be the most hardy, but maybe it didn't get a chance to put down an adequate root system before it got cold?

These three elm trees were started from seed two years ago.

Not the best picture but you can see the buffalo berries in the top row and hardy grape vines on the bottom.

I am no expert at grapes, last year was the first year I tried growing them and I ended up leaving them in pots but it appears that they all survived and were just getting ready to leaf out. Time will tell how well they did. Hopefully I will be able to find a suitable location for them this year but if not they can always go back in the ground for one more winter. I suspect there will be a progress report on them sometime later this year. Last year, I even got three whole grapes off of one of the vines even though they were only a year old!

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