Winterizing the Urban Garden
All throughout the city, tents and bamboo are going up to protect the weak ones...
It's really pretty cool. From around mid-December to mid-March it will DUMP snow in Sapporo, meaning a semi-permanent 3 feet or more of snow around town. Houses are built tough -- but gardens are not. Therefore, in the past week, I've witnessed an immense quantity of bamboo poles and coffee sack-esque geometry being raised across the city -- wherever there be even the smallest little shrub or tree shorter than about 4 feet. Check it out:
The idea is not really to keep the plants warm as I first thought (der!) but instead to act as a structural shell that keeps the weight of three feet of snow and ice off the plants' branches. Here's a few more pix:
Not wanting to be left out, I ran out to the Homak, the Japanese version of Home Depot, and purchased winterizing materials from the large outdoor display. Without any sort of deep understanding of the bamboo torture method, I decided to take the burlap tent approach. I stabbed a few thin bamboo stakes in a tripod formation into the pots, wrapped the burlap around them, and tied it all down with some hemp twine. Here are my three potted plants out on the balcony, ready for the winter:
- Winterizing my outdoor plants.
