Can you believe January is nearly over? It’s hard to think the year is already nearly 1/12th or 8.333% over. Before too much time passes, I think we should have the first diagnostic challenge of the year. I promise to keep this one simple.

I featured several perennials of the year in the last newsletter. There’s always a lot of great plants that will be widely promoted by various associations and companies. I thought of one more I should mention. It’s the American Hosta Growers Association’s Hosta of the Year.

You don’t necessarily have to travel to catch a great presentation or two. Here’s some of the great upcoming webinars.

• The various classes and varieties of dianthus and how they can be used—as indoor holiday pot carnations, premium annuals or traditional perennials.
• Choosing varieties based on growing conditions, container sizes, region and desired timing.
• Opportunities for dianthus in the marketplace.

At the top of the newsletter, I shared the image above and asked if you could determine what was causing the dicentra to look this way. Growing plants outside can be a challenge and overwintering them even more so. There it is, the best clue so far. These dicentra were planted the previous year and overwintered outside.

I’m frequently asked if protective blankets really protect plants from cold and my simple answer is “absolutely.” They say an image is worth a thousand words, but I’m not going to use quite that many. As you can see in the image in the previous article, there were thousands of plants lost in the areas where the wind removed the coverings. I’ve seen this throughout the country, both in northern and southern locations.

• A simple thermal blanket covering dormant plants can result in temperatures beneath the cloth 8–10º F (4–6° C) warmer than the air above the thermal blanket. 
• Blankets not only protects plants during the coldest periods of the weather, but they are also very effective at protecting plants as they become deacclimated to cold with increasing or fluctuating temperatures in the late winter or early spring.
• Be sure to properly anchor the blankets to prevent the wind from blowing them off the plants. Someone should check the covered beds daily to fix any blankets that have become displaced by the wind.
• Evergreen varieties should only be covered (with any material) during the coldest periods during the winter months. Removing the covers whenever the temperatures warm up (consistently above 40° F during the day and above freezing at night) will decrease optimum conditions for disease development. The coverings can remain longer on crops such as daylilies that go completely dormant during the winter months.
• It is best to pull the coverings off in such a manner that they can be pulled back over the plants to provide frost protection when freezing temperatures return. In a typical spring, it is often necessary to recover and remove the coverings several times before the temperatures remain warm enough to remove the coverings permanently. Once a plant becomes deacclimated and begins to actively grow, it is very susceptible to freeze events. If the temperatures are expected to fall near or below freezing, frost blankets should be reapplied.
• Blankets are also beneficial when used inside structures. Using blankets inside unheated structures is a great insurance policy and provides additional protection from cold.