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Gardening Tips: Plant and Protect Trees in November

Trees can still be planted this month as weather permits. I'm Lisa Hilgenberg from Chicago Botanic Garden with your gardening tips for the week.

50 degree weather is a fine time to plant trees but if you don't get them in the ground soon, it's best to wait until March.

It's important to continue irrigating established trees until the ground has frozen completely. A good supply of moisture around the roots of junipers, yews and arborvitae will help plants withstand the dissection caused by the drying winds on sunny winter days.

Broad-leafed evergreens like rhododendrons, hollies, boxwood are especially susceptible to winter burn because they may lose more moisture through their leaves than can be taken up by their roots. Send them into winter thoroughly hydrated. Protect them by installing temporary burlap screens as windbreaks, hammering stakes in the ground before it freezes.

Animal damage is also a threat and new saplings should be wrapped with hardware cloth now. Gnawing rodents chew the bark around the base of tree trunks, girdling trees. Fruit trees are at risk for vole damage which can be prevented by using plastic tree guards that corkscrew around the trunk.

Lisa Hilgenberg is the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden Horticulturist. She teaches classes for the Joseph Regenstein, Jr. School of the Chicago Botanic Garden and mentors interns from the Garden's urban agriculture programs in the summer. Lisa draws on a rich family farming tradition, having spent many summers on her grandparents' farms in Iowa and Minnesota. You can follow Lisa on Twitter @hilgenberg8.

Want more gardening tips?  You can read other online articles or listen to previous podcast episodes from WBBM Newsradio's Gardening Tips segment.
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