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This winter has been anything but typical. My kids gleefully wore shorts in February during heat spells with temps in the 60s and 70s, and then went back for winter coats when the mercury dipped back down below 20F.

The unseasonable temperatures caused some spring plants to emerge earlier than usual. Daffodils and crocus bloomed in February. Tree buds swelled and cherry trees in D.C. fully blossomed months ahead of schedule. Some eager gardeners were hunting tomato plants before the calendar reminded me to seed them.

What does this mean for our growing season ahead? Here are some guesses.

Without a long cold period this winter, bugs like grubs, mosquitoes and even stink bugs will surely have better survival rates. Entomologists at the University of Maryland predict larger populations than usual and earlier emergence this spring. Oh, yay.

On the plant side what does this weather mean?

Trees and shrubs prepare their flower and leaf buds in late summer and the buds remain dormant on the stems through the winter. They rely on cues like light and temperature to keep to their growing schedule. When sustained warm temperatures wake them up early, buds swell and even break open prematurely. If an extreme cold period hits, open flowers may be damaged, but buds and the tree itself are unlikely to mind. So far local farmers say the temperatures haven’t pushed our fruit trees too far along.

If open flower buds, developing fruit or young leaves do freeze, the tree can abscise (drop) those and grow more. This comes at a tremendous cost to the plant, so they will often make replacement leaves, but not flower buds.

Plants do have a defense mechanism to combat cold temperatures. Unlike my kids, they can’t put on another layer, but they do have hormones that regulate their physiology. Scientists at the University of Munich in Germany discovered last year that a hormone thought to mostly control stem elongation and cell division also helps plants withstand frost damage. The researchers learned that this hormone, brassinosteroid, regulates the amount of fatty acid in plant cells in response to lowering temperatures. This “winter fat” protects cells from freezing. Just like those Christmas cookies help me stay warm over the winter, right?

There may be a commercial application for this hormone down the road, especially for citrus and other fruit growers whose crops can suffer devastating damage from a late freeze. Currently, farmers spray water on plants as protection when flowers are open and freezing temperatures are predicted. The act of the water freezing causes an exothermic reaction, and that little bit of heat protects the flowers.

You can protect your plants at home from extreme cold by covering them. Making a tent out of a sheet seems to work best. This is especially important for tender annuals and vegetable plants. Most perennials that are acclimated and have been overwintered in the ground should be fine. Last week’s cold temps didn’t hurt my bulbs or hellebores.

Spring will be here before we know it. Alhough, winter may not be quite done with us yet. It’s anybody’s guess.

Looking around my landscape, many of my shrubs and trees are coloring up and starting to lose their leaves. My viburnums and dogwoods are turning a lovely purple. The maples are aflame in shades of orange and yellow. Then my eye turns to the white pines and arborvitaes. Those are turning brown too. Should I panic? It depends.

Most evergreens retain their leaves for one to seven years. Spruce, arborvitaes, pines, and false cypress shed some small portion of their needles yearly in the fall the same as deciduous trees. Yews lose their older needles in the early summer.

In response to environmental stresses like a long, hot, dry summer and fall like the season we just had, a higher proportion of needles are shed. These are primarily the older needles on the insides of the branches. As long as the outside of the plant is still green, this is perfectly normal. Mine are. No need to panic.

Of more concern is when a whole side of a plant turns brown. This is most often due to environmental stressors like wind or salt. Evergreens are very susceptible to water stress. If the side of the tree that is exposed to the most wind browns, desiccation due to strong winds are your culprit. If they are planted close to a roadway, salt spray can cause tips to yellow and then brown.

Diseases like Juniper twig blight are another cause of needle yellowing and death in evergreens. This is a fungal disease that often affects growing tips. Symptoms are seen in the spring on new growth. Treat this fungal disease with a copper-based fungicide.

The key difference between normal needle shedding and environmental damage, or disease is where the brown needles are located. Inside branches ok- tips bad.

Young trees are more prone to water stress than older ones. While all evergreens are fairly shallow rooted, newer shrubs have had less time to put down good roots. Ensure newly planted evergreens are watered adequately going into winter.

There are anti-desiccation sprays on the market that you can spray on your conifers, as well as broad-leaf evergreens like pieris, azaleas and rhododendrons. These sprays work by coating the leaves with an oil or polymer and preventing water loss. These are best used in December when the plants are dormant. It does wear off over time, so reapply in late February /March to protect from strong late winter winds.

I enjoy fall the most of all the seasons. I love the smell of wood smoke, the colorful leaves and crisp bite in the air. And I won’t fret as some needles fall too.

Photos- Upper left Chamacyparis 'Crispii' in my yard with a few brown inner needles.

Upper right Chamacyparis 'Filicoides' close up of inner branch.  No brown near the tips.  

Over the last week I’ve spent several hours a day on my roof. We are power washing and restaining the wood trim on the house. The weather has been fantastic, and I’m not afraid of heights, so it’s been a great way to spend some time outside. However, I have been dive bombed by stink bugs almost every day.

I hadn’t seen any all summer until just a few weeks ago. The neighbors harvested their corn fields and suddenly the stink bugs appeared in full force. Sigh.

Brown marmorated stink bugs (BMSB) were first observed in Pennsylvania in 1998. As of January of last year, they had marched (flown?) across most of the state, and into 38 neighboring states. They originally are from China and most likely hitched a ride in a shipping container.

They take their name from their defense mechanism.  They have scent glands on their back ends that they use to keep away predators. Anyone that has ever picked one up can attest to their horrible smell. The “juice” can trigger skin reactions in people sensitive to it, and the scent can also inflame allergies. They can also release an “aggregation” pheromone. This is not the same “stink” but it signals to other BMSBs that they found a good hiding spot. This is why you can often see them in clusters.

In addition to their unpleasant odor, they do a tremendous amount of agricultural damage. They feed on apples, peaches, lima and soybeans, corn, tomatoes and peppers.

In this climate, they go through one generation per year. In late September-October the adults are looking for an overwintering site. Often that is the undersides of roofs, or warm exposed walls. They are looking for little areas in the siding to hide. This is why I saw so many staining my woodwork. They will emerge in the spring, mate, and lay their eggs on the undersides of leaves through mid summer. The good news is even though they may be trying to come in your house now, they are not laying eggs. The eggs hatch and go through five juvenile stages or enstars throughout the summer and early fall. The nymphs look similar to the adults in shape, but are more reddish with black spots.

The adults only live 6-8 months, so after mating they die. This is why we don’t notice so many stink bugs over the summer. The babies are out causing havoc in the fields, but not trying to actively get into our houses. Luckily, BMSBs don’t seem to damage the wood of your home, they are just a stinky nuisance. The best way to prevent them getting in, is sealing up cracks around windows and doors. Some insecticides are available to spray around the perimeter of your home, but most of them are not for use indoors.

I learned the hard way not to vacuum them.

Because of their horrible smell, not much eats them. Also because they are not native, they don't have any specialized enemies.  There are some generalized predators like assassin bugs and egg parasitoides starting to attack them,  but not enough to control the population yet. Some birds, including my chickens, eat the adults. Researchers are looking for other ways to control them, but that may be a while in coming.

Until then, I guess I’ll be dive bombed for a few more days.

Every now and then it’s good to sit back and think about what you have learned recently.

Now that I’ve written one sentence I wonder if an older man will have much to say. Let’s start with azaleas. One of the few understory plants I salvaged when we moved four years ago was a row of azaleas in front of the house. Observing them for several years I deemed them lackluster so I gave them a little acid type fertilizer this year. They responded much better than expected but I keep reminding myself that this group of shrubs often experience root related problems if pushed too hard. At this point I must remind everyone that azaleas need adequate moisture until the soil freezes in the winter. This is especially important with recent spring or fall planting.

Unfortunately mixed in the row of azaleas was an ever-blooming hydrangea I had planted three years ago. It got fertilizer too. It had bloomed all summer long the first years but with fertilizer this year it just grew and grew and grew. Flowers, maybe one or two for the season. My unfertilized hydrangeas, despite suffering through the dry late summer bloomed well.

Then there was my August planting of some petunias, begonias and hybrid impatiens. A few of the impatiens perished when my watering can got lazy and slow. The rest did not match spring plantings but that was to be expected. Next year I will again stick a lot of these in those spots that get too much sun for hosta but not enough to satisfy the requirements often listed.

I am talking about talking about shade except for about two hours of blazing hot afternoon sun.

As reported, I planted more lawn in the spring and added another little patch in August. Granted the spring planting was at one my yard’s toughest sites and the August one was much easier. Looking at the results I’m still am a big fan of seeding grass in late summer or early fall.

Of course, as I work a bit less I spend more time looking for birds. Friends insisted that if you have multiple hummingbird feeders you get more hummingbirds. We added a second feeder this year and found they were right. My birding success is mostly from persistence. I set a new personal high for species seen in Lancaster County with 183 species reported to Cornell University so far this year. That included well over 100 at the Octoraro Reservoir. If you have any interest in birds may I suggest typing the birds name into a search engine and clicking on ‘All About Birds’ part of Cornell’s ornithology website.

I’ll let you decide how I faired with learning this year.

Last week this space was devoted to a discussion of ornamental grasses. Their bloom is one of the harbingers of fall. For those that do not live in Florida or San Diego where there is little to distinguish the seasons, our environment gives us subtle or sometimes not-so-subtle clues that the calendar year is progressing.

The last week there was tremendous progress in our neighbors’ fields. Farmers have been out cutting tobacco, inverting it in the fields on a teepee of lath to dry, and then hanging it in their barns to further cure. Once fully dry, the leaves will be stripped from the stems and sorted by size for processing. The whole family is put to work cutting, stacking, and hauling.

Corn fields are also rapidly disappearing. I’ve been sharing the road with harvesters a lot more frequently as well. The green corn stalks cut now are chopped up for silage. Silage is fermented in silos (or wrapped in white plastic) and then fed to cows over the winter.

The corn that is left stand later into the fall to turn totally brown and dry is harvested for the kernels. Around here this is used primarily for animal feed, but further towards the Midwest where my husband grew up, a portion is used for a variety of products. You can probably quickly think of ethanol, the gasoline additive, and processed human food products like cereals, cornstarch, high fructose corn syrup and oil. Corn is also used in all kinds of other downstream products like industrial adhesives and cosmetics.

Not as plentiful as corn fields, but I’ve seen several pumpkin fields. Pumpkins are turning orange now and will soon be picked for Jack ‘o lanterns and fall decorating. Usually planted in June- pumpkins are a 90 day crop so when some of us are rejoicing that school is out- farmers are thinking ahead to fall.

In our local greenhouses, mums are popping up left and right. Mums planted in June are now starting to show a hint of color, ready to decorate your front porch, add some color to a flagging flower bed, or adorn fair parade floats. While many of us are thinking mums, Henry’s greenhouses posted on Instagram the other day that they are now planting their pointsettias. It is only 17 weeks to Christmas after all.

I lived in Florida for four years. The first Christmas I bought my tree in shorts and thought it was wonderful. After that I missed the seasons. I am so happy to be back in Lancaster County where I can watch the progression of time in the fields, my flower beds, and by the leaves on the trees. There is no place like home.