by Dwight Bradley

Owing to the lack of snow cover until January the winter of 95-96 had the potential to be rough on tender plants. I heard one report that the ground in Anchorage froze down to 14 feet below the surface. Whether or not this is an exaggeration, there certainly were a lot more frozen water mains and sewer pipes than usual. From what I can tell so far (buds are just beginning to swell), our apple orchard did much better than in the previous, milder, very snowy winter, when we lost about one-third of our 50+ trees to sunscald. The only dead trees this year are Lodi, Vista Bella, and Carroll, all of which were badly weakened last year.