SNAP TO ATTENTION

The wintry snap has wound down the growing season for almost everything except pansies

Winter made a strong opening appearance earlier this week and has wound down the growing season for most of our annual spring-color plants and vegetables.

The burst of winter also interrupted the fall color show on our deciduous trees. Many of these trees will miss part of the coloring process as more of the leaves will drop from the trees prematurely because of the weight and pressure of the ice and winds. Other leaves still may cling to the trees but may skip a lot of the color and go straight to brown after this early cold snap.

You may have lost a bunch of twigs and even significant branches as our trees are not used to getting ice on them when they still have leaves. The leaves provide a lot more surface area to catch ice, and the extra weight can cause much more extensive branch damage than ice on the tree after the leaves have dropped.

If you got tree damage, please clean up the broken branches and remove all broken limbs from the tree canopy and make clean cuts where branches were torn from the trees.

Now that our begonias, marigolds, petunias, penta, sweet potato vine and so many other spring annuals have wrapped up their growing year, it frees up lots of flower bed real estate to plant pansies that will give you a color show all winter. Pansies will bloom all through the winter adding color and excitement to your dull, drab winter landscape.

Pansies are available in bright cheerful colors like purple, yellow, blue, rust, burgundy, white and many other distinctive and bold colors. The bright colors against a drab landscape provide beautiful impact, but what makes pansies charming is how their flower petals are arranged to literally look like faces. The two lower petals or “cheeks” are often one color, and the upper petals are often a different color.

This face design really adds to the landscape impact that pansies make from late fall to early spring in the Oklahoma landscape. Pansy flowers kind of look like kitten or cat face caricatures in bright stimulating colors. When you see pansies' cute blooming faces on a cold snowy or icy day, they can cause an emotional response, and they certainly can make you crack a smile of happiness and hope for the world.

Pansies love cool and cold weather and don't hold up well in hot weather. They grow best in welldrained soil with lots of organic matter. Add some blood meal or fertilizer to the hole or backfill as you plant your pansies. Water your new pansy plantings thoroughly and then periodically though the winter if we have long dry spells without natural rains.

Pansy foliage turns a dull or grayish green instead of bright or deep green if the flowers are dry and needing more water to drink. The plants also wilt a little if dry, standing in poorly drained soil or after a hard or sustained freezing. If wilted because of extreme cold, they usually perk up nicely as the sun shines and the days warm up.

The sooner you plant your pansies, the more the plant canopy will grow and the more flowers each plant can support as we get into the harsher parts of winter. You can plant pansies in decorative containers, as well, but they may not grow as large as pansies in ground beds where the soil temperature won't get as cold and they don't dry out as often.

This is also a great time to plant ornamental kale and cabbage for winter color and interest in your garden. Now is also the time to select and plant spring flowering bulbs like daffodils, tulips, crocus and hyacinth so their roots can grow all winter to give you a splash of color next spring.