Winterizing

Pretty soon it is going to get freaky-deaky cold here on the Canadian Prairies. In Brandon, we can expect night time temperatures to regularly hit -30 C (about -28 F, really cold!). Hopefully, this won't happen until January or February, but you never know! Plus, it's hard to winterize if there's already two feet of snow on the ground, also expected. So the chores are on the To D0 list now. Farmer Boy has already hauled straw which we put around our sun room for extra insulation, he's boxed up and insulated the air conditioner that's built into the wall of the office. And I've protected the newly planted fruit trees. Young trees, and for some reason especially fruit trees, can be prone to winter cracking. The theory is that the sun artificially warms the bark and raises the temperature. The sun goes down, it's freaky-deaky cold and the bark cools rapidly. Expansion and contraction occur and the bark can split. Sometimes it's fatal, sometimes not. Certainly always rather unsightly. So something to keep the sun off is applied - hence the white tree guards I installed. In 'olden' days, people frequently painted the bark, but research shows that is not the best plan because bark actually has breathing holes called lenticels which can get all gummed up by paint. The tree guards are also very helpful against young trees' other winter enemy: rodents and small critters. Mice, raccoons, skunks, beavers will all look for a tasty winter meal on the trunks of young trees. They can strip the bark and go deeper, killing the tree. Part of the trick I learned early in Manitoba is to go higher than one guard - my first summer here I heard of a fellow who lost all his young trees when critters got on top of the snow and ate above his lone tree guard!