This is a month in which snow and ice can make driveways and paths treacherous. Prevent salt damage to plants and trees by using only environmentally friendly salts, kitty litter, plant fertilizer, or sand on icy walks and driveways.

Now here’s what to DO in your Northern New Mexico garden in December. (Many thanks to various County Agricultural Extension Services, to Charlie Nardozzi, Horticulturist, of the National Gardening Association, and to Dr. Leonard Perry of the University of Vermont Extension Department of Plant and Soil Science, for some of the material in the sections that follow.)

Annuals & Biennials

Annual herbs like sweet basil and cilantro thrive in a sunny windowsill! So do cool-weather annuals like nemesia. Payne's seeds are coming in this month (we have a few in already), so come on by and check out how we can satisfy your cravings for winter color and scent!

Bulbs, Corms, & Tubers

If you potted up some bulbs for winter forcing, check them every few days to make sure their soil is still slightly moist. When signs of growth appear, bring them into the light and place in a cool location with indirect sun. In 7-10 days, move them into bright light to stimulate blooming. Now’s also a good time to check stored gladiolus corms and dahlia tubers for signs of spoilage. Visible mold is harmless; check for mushiness.

Potted amaryllis (Hippeastrum sp.) bulbs need to be kept in a cool (60ºF) location until the buds open. Once they open, you may put your amaryllis wherever you like.

• What do you do with your amaryllis after their flowers are spent? Many folks just throw them on the compost heap. Alternatively:

• Let the leaves emerge and grow.

• Keep the bulb watered and fertilized lightly through the winter (feed once a month with a standard house plant food at ½ strength).

• After all danger of frost has passed outdoors, put the bulb outdoors in a shaded spot. Don’t let it dry out. If by this time the roots have filled its pot, you may need to repot it into a container 1-2 inches larger in diameter.

• Keep watering and fertilizing throughout the summer.

• In early fall of next year, bring the bulb back indoors, and gradually decrease the watering to almost nothing until the leaves all die back.

• When the leaves have died back, let the bulb “rest” unwatered for about eight weeks in a cool dry spot.

• Resume watering, and the bulb should resprout. (It may not bloom again, however, until the following year.)

• What do you do with fall bulbs that you never got around to planting? Why, plant ‘em now — in potting-soil filled pots to which has been mixed 1 tablespoon of bone meal or bulb fertilizer per bulb.

• Don’t let the bulbs touch in the pots.

• Plant them three times deeper in the container than the bulbs are tall. That is, if your bulb is one inch from pointy nose to flat little behind, plant the bulb in a hole 3 inches deep, with its butt on the bottom of the hole. Narcissi and daffodils should be planted so that their noses are just peeking above the surface of the soil.

• Water the planted pots, then move them into an unheated garage or basement; or outside in a protected area (such as a straw bale cold frame), mulching them with a thick (4 inches or more) layer of Payne’s Soil Conditioner, straw, or shredded or chipped bark.

• Check in on them again in late February, and again mid-March. When growth emerges from the pots, take off all the mulch and expose the pots to the full sunlight of early spring. Your bulbs should bloom just fine!

Composting

Keep adding vegetable scraps to that compost heap!

Containers

Don’t forget to water your outdoor hardy perennial containers as long as the soil is unfrozen.

Equipment

Have you cleaned your tools yet? They will work better and last longer if you do. One way: Get a bucket and fill it with sand. Pour some all-purpose oil into the sand, mix it with a stick, and shove the business end of your hoes, shovels, and other tools into the oily sand repeatedly. The sand and oil will rub off any dirt and other yuckos adhering to your tools. When the tool is clean, wipe off the sand and hang up the tool in a dry place till spring. The bucket of oiled sand will keep indefinitely. If you must get rid of it, don’t dump it somewhere; take it to a hazardous waste drop-off center.

Fertilizing & Mulching

Any trees, shrubs, vines, and perennials you planted this year ought to be mulched as soon as your ground freezes. Straw, coarse compost (such as Payne’s Soil Conditioner), and bark chips all make good mulches, because they don’t pack down. Use gravel or stones to mulch xeric plants like lavender, Russian sage, agastaches and penstemons. When mulching trees, leave a 2-inch gap between mulch and tree trunks so our friends the rodents can’t feed on your tree bark under cover all winter.

Greenhouse

Thinking of giving a horti-holic friend a greenhouse for the New Year? Then give them the largest greenhouse he or she has room for, and that you can afford. Why? Because greenhouses fill up quickly! Also, if your lucky friend lives in New Mexico, consider a solar-powered greenhouse. Your friend will give you undying gratitude — and a cut of the flowers, fruits, herbs, and vegetables he or she grows!

Grasses & Lawns

Don’t tread on frozen grass unless it has a couple of inches of snow over it to protect it. Otherwise, you risk damaging the grass, which may translate to dieback in your lawn next spring.

Herbs

Lots of folks grow herbs indoors for winter use. You don’t need fancy grow lights; a plain old 48” fluorescent shop light, outfitted with two 48” fluorescent bulbs, will do just fine. Dwarf basil (Ocimum basilicum), chives (Allium schoenoprasum), garlic or Chinese chives (Allium tuberosum), sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana), and French thyme (Thymus vulgaris ‘French Summer’) may all be started from seed indoors, and Payne’s sells seed-starting kits if you don’t have seed-starting supplies already. You may also purchase herb plants from us and grow them on indoors under lights. Place the lights around 3 inches from the tops of your plants, and readjust the lights as the plants grow. When you harvest the herbs for cooking, remove no more than one-fourth of their shoots, so that they retain enough leaves to continue photosynthesis.

The exception to this rule can be sweet basil. In Italy, the most common method for growing basil is to make successive sowings several weeks apart all season, and to harvest the entire tender young plant before their stems toughen up and their leaves start to lose their best scent and flavor. When you sow basil seed, be sure not to cover it with soil. Basil seed needs exposure to light for best germination.

The herbs mentioned above do not need cold treatment to sprout. However, some hardy perennial and biennial herbs, particularly dill (Anethum graveolens) and parsley (Petroselinum crispum), sprout from seed much more easily if the seed is given cold treatment (which nurseryfolk call stratification) first. One way to accomplish this is to sow seeds of hardy herbs outdoors in cold frames, and leave them there all winter for the action of the natural winter cold to stratify them. The danger of this method is that the seeds will dry out and die before the warm weather comes to sprout them. Indoors you can more easily monitor the whole process. Here’s how you do it:

• Take a small plastic bag, the plain sort lacking zipper closures, one bag for each sort of seed you wish to treat.

• With a black-ink marking pen, write the name of the seed on the bag, plus the date you are beginning the cold treatment process.

• In each bag place a tablespoon of vermiculite or sterile potting soil, followed by the seeds you wish to sprout.

• Add 1 tablespoon of water, and shake or stir the contents of the bag thoroughly (the contents should be just barely moistened, not wet).

• Loosely tie the bag at the top with a metal twist-tie or piece of yarn, and place the bags in the vegetable crisper.

• Check once a week to make sure the bag’s contents haven’t dried out, and to see if the seeds have started to sprout.

• After 30 days, whether or not the seeds have sprouted, remove the bags from the fridge, and spread their contents as evenly as possible onto individual trays of barely moistened, sterile potting mix (Payne’s sells a sort just for seedlings).

• Sprinkle ¼” of soil over the seed, water lightly, then place the trays into untied transparent plastic bags (or cover them loosely with transparent plastic film). Then set the trays in a warm spot (70ºF), such as atop your refrigerator or directly under your fluorescent light-unit.

• Keep the trays slightly moist until your seeds sprout. As soon as they begin to poke their heads above the surface of the potting mix, move the trays to your best light, and keep them moist until your seedlings have grown to about ½” tall.

• Using the point of a knife, gently lift each seedling from its tray (be careful — seedling roots tear very easily) and very gently repot into a soil-filled cell pack, plug tray, or individual peat pot (we sell them all if you don’t have any). Here at the nursery, we usually plant two or three seedlings together in the same cell or pot.

• Water gently, and place your repotted seedlings into the best light available. If you’re using fluorescents, keep the tops of the seedlings within 1 or 2 inches from the tubes, raising the light unit (or lowering the seedlings) as the baby herbs grow. Otherwise, the seedlings could stretch for the light and become leggy.

• Fertilize weekly with a balanced liquid or other water-soluble plant food (avoid high nitrogen, the first of the three numbers on the plant label) diluted to half strength. And never, never, never let the soil your herbs are planted in get soaking wet. Just moist is what you are aiming for.

Housplants & Tropicals

This is a great time of year to re-pot pot-bound houseplants. Also, azaleas, cyclamens, Christmas cacti, kalanchoes, and poinsettias are in big demand this time of year, so come in to Payne’s early if you can to be assured of the best selection. To find the poinsettia that will last the longest in your home, check the little yellow flowers in the middle of the colored bracts. In the freshest plants, the flowers will be closed. (If beads of translucent gel well up from the teeny yellow flowers, don’t panic; it’s just the plant’s nectar, which in the wild it uses to attract pollinators. Go ahead; touch your fingertip to the gel and taste it. It is sweet, like a mild honey.)

Keep poinsettias and Christmas cacti away from both heat sources and cold drafts near doors and windows, and to let their soil surface dry slightly between waterings. These plants prefer 65-70ºF temperatures during the day, and 55-60ºF temps at night. Keep them in bright natural light whenever possible, and never permit them to stand in water for more than an hour.

If you brought geraniums (Pelargonium) indoors this fall, they may be getting a bit leggy by now in the short days of early winter. Cut them back to 1 foot tall. The longer days of later winter will stimulate them to resprout and bush out again. Also, if you haven’t been doing this all along, it’s a great time right now to wash dust and grime off the leaves and stalks of your houseplants. Use a sponge dipped in warm soapy water, such as a mild dish detergent. This lets your plants’ pores breathe and removes dust films that can cut down on the plant’s photosynthesis.

When considering a houseplant as a gift for a home or office, consider the environment there. Flowering plants do best in locations with strong light; foliage plants work better elsewhere. Cyclamens and azaleas like bright light and coolish rooms. Terraria, potted cacti, and hanging plants also made great holiday gifts. Some other tips:

(1) Avoid cold injury to the potted plants by asking Payne’s to wrap them well for the trip from store to home; or have brown paper or newspaper in your car to wrap them with yourself.

(2) Once home, remove the foil (or punch a hole in it) to allow water to drain freely out of the bottom holes.

(3) Make sure you place your holiday plants away from drafts and heat sources.

(4) Water potted plants when the top of the soil is dry to the touch.

If some guest brings you a living centerpiece “planted” in floral foam, make sure to keep the foam wet at all times. Otherwise, it will draw out the fluids from the flower-stems, causing them to wilt faster. Don’t just feel the foam block. Check the water level in the container, too. If the block and the container are both dry, start off by submerging the container and foam block in a sink full of water for an hour to get the block thoroughly wet, then check the water level daily and add water as needed.

For cut flowers, use a sharp knife to re-cut the stems to allow better water absorption. Place the flowers into a container of 100ºF water for 30 minutes. This is particularly important for roses, which may not open fully without this warm water treatment. The water won’t stay that temperature, natch, but the initial boost of warm water will help the flowers open.

Spider mites are the main foes of houseplants this month. For how to deal with them, see “December Pests and Diseases.”

Perennials

You may start seeds of hardy perennials this month. Some, such as most seeds from plants in the daisy family, require no cold treatment to stimulate germination. Others do. The information on your seed packets will point you in the right direction. (If your packet tells you to sow your seeds in pots and place the pots outdoors for the winter, you are dealing with a species that needs stratification.)

Pests & Diseases

Spider mites proliferate in the dry air of Northern New Mexico winters. They suck plant juices, stippling the leaves and weaving webs between branches. To see if your plants have spider mites, mist them lightly. The droplets of water will cling to the webs, revealing them. To deal with the critters, keep the humidity in your plant area high. You can use a humidifier; group all your houseplants together, so that when you water the evaporating drops mist your plants; or you can place your pots in waterproof trays filled with gravel and water. And spray your infected plants daily for two weeks — both sides of the leaf — with a miticidal soap. (Not just any insecticidal soap will do, because spider mites — are you sitting down? — are not insects! They are teeny, weeny, meany little crustaceans, distantly related to, well, crabs. So make sure the insecticide’s label explicitly lists “mites” as one of the critters the product targets.)

Planting and Transplanting

Live Christmas trees in tubs should be kept indoors a maximum of 3 days and nights before they must be planted outdoors. Boiling water or black plastic placed over the site where you need to dig the hole for the tree can soften frozen ground, See "How To Plant A Tree" for further detailed instructions by clicking here.

Roses

Nighty-night, sleepy rose!

Shrubs and Trees

Payne’s will have a great selection of both cut and living Christmas trees and evergreen wreaths and swags available for purchase this month. How do you tell when the cut Christmas tree you’re thinking of buying is fresh? One way is to bend the needles between your fingers. If they don’t snap or break, then the tree is fresh. Another way is to check the butt of the tree for sticky plant resin. If you find some, the tree is fresh. Another way (best reserved for smaller trees, unless your back is way stronger than mine) is to bounce the tree cut-end down on the ground. If it’s too dry, you’ll be treated to a shower of falling needles.

When you buy your cut tree:

(1) Wrap it for the ride home to keep it from drying out.

(2) Once home, put the tree’s stem in a bucket of warm water in a cool, protected place like the garage.

(3) Just before you bring the tree indoors, cut an inch off the bottom of the trunk to allow better water absorption.

(4) Select a tree stand with a flat, broad base for extra stability.

(5) Add tree preservative (available at Payne's) to the water in the stand to keep the tree fresher longer.

(6) Check water levels daily, and replenish as needed; a fresh tree can consume up to a quart of water daily, more the first few days you have it.

(7) If you have cats or toddlers in the house, consider anchoring your tree to the wall or moldings with screw hooks and wire or fishing line to prevent disaster.

And when time comes to decorate the tree:

(1) Make sure your light cords aren’t cracked or frayed. If they are, they could start a fire in your home when you turn on the lights.

(2) Consider spraying your tree with an antitranspirant spray to retard evaporation of water through the needles.

(3) Place holly and mistletoe (both toxic if ingested), dried flowers, pinecones, and little breakable ornaments high up on the tree where dogs and toddlers can’t get to them.

And by the way: choosing evergreen swags and garlands for home decoration? Balsam fir, white pine, and Colorado spruce are the best, since they dry slowly and resist needle drop. Spruce smell good, but drop needles easily. We sell swags and garlands here at Payne’s, or you can cut them yourself if you have evergreens growing around your place. Just make sure you don’t disfigure and weaken your tree by cutting huge hunks out of it. Use a pair of very sharp pruning shears, and take your pieces evenly from around the tree. (It’s better to take one piece of branch from twelve trees than twelve pieces from a single tree.)

WINTER SHRUB CARE: Do you have shrubs growing under the eaves of your house? Protect them from ice falling off the roof by wrapping their limbs in burlap or erecting wooden teepees around them. If ice or heavy snow collects on the branches of your trees and shrubs, don’t rush to stake or prune. Usually, the branches will straighten up on their own once the ice and snow melt, so wait until the first thaw to take action. (If you do need to prune, make sure those shears are sharp!).

NOTE: If your house contains pets or small children, bear in mind that mistletoe, English ivy, and holly berries can be highly poisonous if ingested. Ingested holly berries can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Ingested mistletoe berries can cause acute stomach and intestinal disorders. Keep all such plants well out of reach of indiscriminate noshers.

Poinsettias, on the other hand, are not poisonous, according to the POINSINDEX Information Service, the main information resource for poison control centers around the country. POINSINDEX reports that even if a 50-pound child ate more than 500 poinsettia bracts — the amount tested in scientific experiments — the consequences would not be fatal. Even at this high level, no toxicity was found.

This doesn’t mean that poinsettias should be put in your salad. When eaten, poinsettia bracts can cause stomach irritation and discomfort. Cats and toddlers also may choke on the fibrous parts, and the white sap can be a skin irritant for some people. So keep your poinsettias out of reach of the livestock and diminutive progeny.

Vegetables & Fruits

In the old days, before air fresheners, folks carried around pomanders to sniff when the air got too mephitic. Pomanders are easy to make, and they can be lovely arranged in an open bowl or hanging from the tree over the holidays. To make a pomander, you will need a fresh orange (limes and lemons work, too); a sharp-ended bodkin or knitting needle; ribbon half-inch wide; and around 3 ounces of whole cloves.

• Lay down some newspaper and place the orange upon it.

• Wind a hunk of ribbon all around the outside of the fruit so that the cut ends of the ribbon meet at the top of the fruit. Make the ribbon long enough so that you have enough extra ribbon to make a hanging-loop for the finished pomander. Then crisscross another hunk of ribbon over the first at right angles to it, with the ends of this ribbon meeting at the top, too. If you did it correctly, the two ribbons will have divided the fruit into four equal exposed peel surfaces.

• Prick the orange’s exposed peel surfaces all over with the bodkin or knitting needle. Make the pricks no more than one-third of an inch apart. Don’t prick so deeply that you cut into the flesh, or juice will well up from the wound, making your pomander sticky.

• Into each pin-prick insert a whole clove, stem down. Push the clove in until its butt is flat against the surface of the fruit. Continue until the exposed surfaces of the fruit are completely studded with cloves.

• Hang the finished pomander on your tree, or arrange a bunch of them in an open bowl in a warm place. Throughout the season, they will exhale their delicate spice-and-citrus scent throughout the room. To enhance their scent, you may also add to each a drop of true essential oil, available in many fragrances from Santa Fe’s natural food stores and herb shops.

Vines

Crafters take note! Do you have trumpet vine (Campsis sp.) in your yard? Chances are that this fall it will have formed its long, characteristic, hard-shelled seedpods. When the seeds are ready for dispersal, the pots split down their sides, ejected the papery seeds within. Well, I discovered some years back that trumpet vine pods make wonderful Christmas ornaments! Just cut them from the vines, put them on newspaper indoors to dry thoroughly; then, once they’re dry, spray or brush them with metallic paint. When the paint has dried, spray the painted pods again, this time with adhesive. Then dip the pods into pots of glitter. Let them dry again, tie ribbons around their ends, and affix them to wreaths, garlands, or your holiday tree. (If you are really inspired, you can paint the pods with silver or gold on their outer, concave surface; paint their inner, convex surface plain white; and then use the white as a background for glued-on fake pearls, tiny figures, or painted Nativity scenes.)

Watering

Keep watering your outdoor plants, particularly the ones you put in the ground this past year. Trees, shrubs, and perennials often die over the winter not because of the cold, but because they haven’t been watered enough. Focus upon deep watering once a week till the ground freezes. After the ground freezes, water deeply twice a month whenever sunny days appear to thaw out your hoses.

When you’re done watering, be sure to let your hoses drain thoroughly before recoiling them. Just stretch them out with both ends open, preferably on a gentle slope. Otherwise, the water left in the hose may freeze and split the hose. And make sure your outdoor faucets are covered to protect them from freezing! You can purchase faucet covers at any hardware store.

Weeding

Weeding? Weeding? The only weeding I will be doing this month is weeding the newspaper!

Wildlife

As the weather gets colder, check your bird feeders daily. Remember: when in doubt, give the birds black oil sunflower seeds. Don’t forget fresh water (ground level is best) and suet blocks for the insect eaters! You could also pop a bunch of popcorn, and drape your trees near the house with popcorn and fruit (grapes or cranberries) strings for the critters.