Mid March

It is now the 16th of March. The last two snow storms dumped over 83 cm of snow in the backyard. I used part of it to cover our planters to protect them until the weather is warm enough. Over the course of this winter we have had almost 4 metres of snow fall. Outside of the fence we have two piles. The smaller is 150 cm high, 200 cm wide and about 300 cm deep. The largest pile is 150 cm high, 300 cm wide and about 400 cm deep. The nice part is that the grass will get a complete soaking this spring when it melts down and got excellent protection from the cold so I don't expect much winter kill there (for a change).

Why should we cover up the planters with the snow? Well the Ottawa airport it is reporting a temperature of -2c, but, our backyard faces south and has a fence on the three sides. Check out the second photo for the temperature. In the yard it is over 15c. I have a second thermometer in the shade showing a temperature of not much over 10c. If the planters were not covered with snow they would start to grow and the freezes overnight will eventually kill off all of the plants. When the pile gets down too much I will probably go outside of the fence and transfer more snow to cover and protect the planters until early April. With the bags of leaves over the planters and the snow on top the plants should survive the winter. Without the protection we would probably lose every plant in all of the planters. You can go out and buy foam covers and use them, but, why pay for that when you can use what nature provides (leaves & snow) for free?