Posted on by tonytomeo

Getting an early start to winter pruning may have certain advantages

Without specialized pruning, fruit trees become sloppy and unable to sustain all of their fruit.

As long as it gets done well before buds begin to swell late in winter, the meticulous and specialized pruning that deciduous fruit trees and roses require during winter dormancy does not need to be done immediately. Here where the climate is so mild, some roses may still be blooming. The main advantage to getting an early start is that those of us who have many fruit trees and roses in need of pruning have more time to get them all done within the proper time.

If it helps to start pruning early, it is best to prune fruit trees and roses in the same order that they go dormant and defoliate. The ‘stone’ fruits (those of the genus Prunus, that have large pits known as ‘stones’), like apricots, cherries, nectarines and peaches typically defoliate earlier than the ‘pomme’ fruits, like apples, pears and quinces. Modern ‘carpet’ roses may not defoliate completely, so can be delayed until after all the bare roses get pruned, but may eventually need to get pruned while still partially foliated.

The specialized pruning that deciduous fruit trees and roses need is serious business. Those who do not know how to do it properly should learn about it before actually doing it. Improper pruning of fruit trees can inhibit production and damage the trees. Roses are not so easily damaged, but will get overgrown and not bloom as well if not pruned aggressively enough. (This sort of pruning will be a topic later in the season.)

Like fruit trees and roses, other trees and shrubs that need pruning prefer to be pruned while dormant through autumn and winter. Deciduous trees and shrubs are obviously dormant while bare, but realistically, are ready to be pruned when their foliage is no longer green.

Evergreen plants are not so obviously dormant, but will be as dormant as they get through winter. This would therefore be a good time to prune to eliminate pine limbs that are too low. If pruned a bit early, the pruning wounds will get weathered more through winter and consequently bleed less through spring.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Horridculture – Multi-Grafts

You know, as much as I dislike multi-grafts, I feel compelled to prune the multi-grafted roses in such a manner that one scion does not overwhelm another.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91116+++Bare root fruit trees will be available in about a month. It is probably my favorite time of year for going to nurseries. (Since I grow just about everything I want from bits of landscape debris, I do not often go to retail nurseries.) It is also rather frustrating to see what sorts of bare root material are popular nowadays, and what sorts are not. Horticulture has gotten so ridiculous!

Most of the formerly common cultivars of fruit trees that I remember are no longer available. They were common for a reason. They perform well here. Retailers used to select cultivars for their respective regions, instead of pimping out weird new but unproven cultivars, or just taking the same faddish cultivars that get sent to other stores within a vast chain of big box stores.

One of the weirdest of fads are multi-grafted fruit trees and roses.

Multi-grafts are certainly…

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Posted on by tonytomeo

Firethorn

Firethorn is a familiar wintry berry.

Its name says it all. Firethorn, Pyracantha coccinea, produces an abundance of fiery red berries on unavoidably thorny stems. A few old fashioned cultivars produce equally fiery orange berries. Cultivars with fiery yellow berries are now rare. Berries ripen for autumn, in time to feed migratory birds. Late berries can last longer after migratory birds are gone.

The rigid and wickedly thorny stems of firethorn work well as impenetrable hedges. They are rather difficult to prune and handle without impalement though. Unfortunately, simple shearing deprives formal hedges of some of their new growth that blooms and fruits most abundantly. Selective pruning is tedious and more hazardous, but might enhance bloom.

Shrubby cultivars of firethorn can grow higher than first floor eaves. Mature and vigorous hedges with hefty interior trunks at such height can generate spirelike growth that almost reaches second floor eaves. With pruning, some cultivars that sprawl close to the ground can stay quite low. Without pruning, some slowly form thickets that are several feet deep.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 26 Comments

Winter Berries Attract Migrating Birds

English hawthorn is like deciduous firethorn.

Bloom and colorful foliage provide most of the color besides green within home gardens during spring and summer. Deciduous foliage becomes more colorful for autumn. Winter berries and a few other lingering fruits become more colorful as deciduous foliage sheds through winter. All this color adheres to precise schedules within a collective ecosystem.

Many plants exploit wildlife. It is how they compensate for their immobility. Many provide incentive for the services that they desire from the wildlife that they exploit. For example, after enticing pollinators with fragrance or color, flowers happily exchange extra pollen or nectar for pollination. Many plants provide edible fruits in exchange for seed distribution.

It is no coincidence that so many different winter berries ripen through autumn for winter. They provide sustenance to many migratory birds who rely on them. Overwintering birds who compete with migratory birds appreciate their efforts as well. Such winter berries are small but abundant, for ‘grab and go’ convenience. Bright color is the best advertisement.

Some people appreciate how winter berries attract birds and squirrels into their gardens. Some appreciate the seasonal color of such berries more than the wildlife. Unfortunately, wildlife decides the outcome, and such outcomes are variable. It is impossible to predict if berries will disappear as they ripen, or linger as they deteriorate through most of winter.

Firethorn is likely the most familiar of the winter berries here. It seems to be more prolific with its brilliant red berries than any other species. Some old fashioned cultivars produce bright orange or perhaps even bright yellow berries. Some sorts of cotoneaster resemble firethorn, but with subdued rusty or orangish red display for less refined woodsy gardens.

Toyon, or California holly, is most prolific with winter berries where it grows wildly without pruning. It gets big though. Real hollies, which are more popular in other regions, do not produce many berries locally, particularly since male pollinators are uncommon. English Hawthorn is a small deciduous tree that displays berries that resemble those of firethorn, but on bare stems.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Street-Smart Gingko

While in the Los Angeles region a month or so ago, it was gratifying to see some of the trees that we installed within the median of San Vicente Boulevard years ago.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91124Much of my work involves street trees. They need more of my kind of attention than most other trees. They must conform to more restrictive limitations. They endure more abuse. They are the most prominent trees on urban properties. Because some are assets of their respective municipalities, they are more stringently protected by local ordinances than other trees are.

I planted quite a few street trees too. While selecting trees for the medians of San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles, we considered the clearance of the lowest limbs above the highest truck traffic, the docility of roots under curbs and pavement, the potential for foliar debris, the resiliency to neglect, and the resistance to pathogens. Those were just some of the major concerns.

We sort of wanted them to look good too.

Ginkgoes, at least modern (fruitless) cultivars, work well as street trees. They are tall and slender, and can…

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Almost RAIN!

Goodness, this rainy season started a month earlier than it did three years ago. I suppose that it is still within the normal range.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91123KThere have been only three hints at precipitation since last spring.

The (sideways) picture above shows the same dampened hood of a Chevrolet that provided the illustration for a post on another blog on September 30.

The picture below shows a similarly dampened but different windshield from that which provided the illustration for a post on November 16, regarding a bit of precipitation two days prior, on November 14.P91123K+

All four pictures here were actually taken just after a very brief rain shower that happened just after midnight on November 19. I tried to be artistic with them, but I am not a photographer.

The picture below demonstrates how difficult it is to hold the camera steady while getting a close up picture of rain dripping from a lumber rack at night. Do digital cameras automatically extend exposure to accommodate for the darkness? Is it blurred or merely…

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Six on Saturday: Zinnia

Zinnia are enviable. They seem to perform exemplarily for everyone else and everywhere else. They have never done well for me though. I can not explain why. I stopped trying to grow them many years ago, but I encounter them at work, where the other horticulturist grows some as warm season annuals. This year here, some performed reasonably well as bedding plants, and a few more bloomed impressively within a pair of half wine barrels. They are done now that the weather is cool, but I got a few pictures of them as they were removed and replaced with pansies for winter.

1. Yellow is a primary color, but the scarcest among the few prolific zinnia that grew in a pair of half wine barrels through summer. Only one of the ten zinnia here bloom yellow.

2. Orange is a secondary color between yellow and red, but is a bit more abundant in our barrels than either yellow or red. Maybe three or so of the ten zinnia here bloom orange.

3. Red is another primary color, which is beyond orange from yellow. Perhaps two or so zinnia bloom red, but they are less profuse than those that bloom pink, orange or white.

4. Pink is not really a color, but is merely a tint of red, or red mixed with white. Only two of the ten zinnia here bloom pink, but they are bigger and more profuse than the others.

5. White should be my favorite, but to me, seems to be mundane relative to other colors. Two of the ten zinnia bloom white, but they are neither prominent nor prolific in bloom.

6. Rhody is as unimpressed with our unusually florific zinnia as he is uncooperative with my attempts for a good picture of him. Fortunately, even a bad picture of Rhody is good.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

Posted on by tonytomeo

Colorado Blue Spruce

With such densely foliated low limbs reaching the ground, Colorado blue spruce functions as much as large shrubbery as a small tree.

Colorado and Utah share the same stately state tree; the Colorado blue spruce, Picea pungens, which is native to the Rocky Mountains between Arizona, New Mexico and southern Idaho. Colorado blue spruce are stoutly conical trees that grow slowly to eventually get more than seventy five feet tall. Where they need to compete with other trees in forests, the biggest are nearly twice as tall with trunks nearly five feet wide. However, because they grow so slowly, and do not get much bigger then they need to, well exposed trees stay proportionate to home gardens for many decades. Many shrubby compact cultivars actually stay less than ten feet tall. Foliage can be grayish green to silvery pale blue. The stiff and sharply pointed needles are about three quarters to an inch and a quarter long, and densely set on relatively rigid stems.

The elegant silvery blue foliage of the Colorado blue spruce is striking either in front of or behind darker evergreen foliage, like that of redwoods or junipers. These stout and densely foliated trees make any garden look a bit more woodsy.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Winter berries provide more color as autumn foliar color finishes.

Pyracantha, although inedible, is likely the most colorful of the winter berries here.

Seasonal color is as variable as the weather. Just as the many different spring flowers bloom differently every spring, and the autumn foliage color is different every autumn, the colorful berries and fruits that linger on many plants through winter respond to the weather. Then, the various birds and other animals that devour them do so at different times, and at different rates every year.

Pyracantha (or firethorn) is probably the most reliable for an abundance of brightly colored red berries. Old varieties with orange or even yellow berries are very rare, perhaps because they are comparably wimpy. Unfortunately, because they are so colorful, and also because they ripen before many of the migratory birds have gone, the berries often get eaten by birds soon after they ripen.

Berries of the various cotoneasters are not quite as colorful, and many ripen slightly later, so they are not so efficiently stripped by birds. Cotoneasters are now more popular than related pyracantha because there are so many varieties with so many different growth habits. Larger types grow into large shrubbery while prostrate types grow as ground cover. Cotoneaster also has the advantage of lacking thorns.

The native toyon can provide large clusters of similar red berries, but only if it is allowed to grow somewhat wildly. It is unable to bloom and subsequently produce berries if regularly shorn. Yet, even in the wild, toyon is unpredictable. Because damp weather can cause berries to rot before they ripen, toyon may be unproductive for many years, and then produce remarkably colorful displays of berries when least expected.

Hollies are the most familiar of colorful winter berries, but are not as colorful as pyracantha or the various cotoneasters because they are almost never provided with male pollinators that they require to develop fruit. Fortunately, their remarkably glossy and prickly foliage is appealing alone.

Flowering crabapples are grown for their impressively colorful pink, white or nearly red spring bloom, but some types also produce sparse and minute red, orange or even yellow crabapples that stay after the foliage turns yellow and falls. English hawthorn lacks the flower color of flowering crabapples, but has more abundant and colorful red or orange berries that linger into early winter after the foliage is gone, or at least until birds find them.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Horridculture – “One Of These Things . . . “

The California sycamores in the pictures are bigger after three years, but not yet big enough to justify the removal of the London planes.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91120Remember this from Sesame Street?

One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn’t belong
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Identifying a blue balloon as different from three red balloons might be construed as discriminatory, but was fun back before we went into kindergarten. So was selecting the bigger bowl of Big Bird’s birdseed from three small bowls; or the beanie from three pairs of sunglasses; or the letter from three numbers. It is not so fun now, when conformity to a landscape is important.

In the picture above, one of the four prominent trees in the foreground of the walkway and rail fence, excluding the obscured middle tree, is different from the others. They are all the same age. They are all sycamores. They are all happy and healthy. They were…

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