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Pomegranate

Pomegranates are autumn and winter fruit.

As for fig, date, avocado, grape and olive, the esteemed pomegranate, Punica granatum, has been in cultivation for a very long time. Several thousands of years of domestication have generated countless cultivars. They are now popular in many regions and cultures throughout the World. They produce very well here and in other Mediterranean climates.

Most locally popular pomegranate fruits are brownish red, and about three to four inches wide. Each fruit contains hundreds of seed, which are surrounded by juicy and delicately succulent flesh. They separate easily, like many tiny and tender berries. Most are garnet red. Some cultivars produce fruit with darker purplish, lighter pink or even colorless flesh. 

Without dormant pruning, pomegranate trees can get taller than fifteen feet, and develop dense thicket growth. Fruit is easier to collect from well groomed shorter trees. Individual trees may develop a few trunks, and live for two centuries. Orangish red flowers bloom in spring. Leaves turn yellow prior to defoliation in autumn. Fruit ripens in autumn or winter.

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Bare Root Stock For Winter

Bare roots might fail to impress.

Dormant pruning happens during winter, while the plants that benefit from it are dormant. Obviously, it would not be dormant pruning otherwise. Such processes are less stressful to plants while they are inactive and essentially anesthetized like a surgery patient. This is also why fresh bare root stock becomes available and ready for planting during winter. 

Bare root stock grows on farms for a few years. Any grafting is part of the process. When stock is sufficiently mature, growers dig and separate its roots from the soil that it grew in. Much of the stock goes to retail nurseries for heeling into damp sand for sale. Some gets neat packaging with damp sawdust around its roots. Some goes out for mail order sales.

Regardless of the process, it all happens quickly and early during winter dormancy. Bare root stock must then get into soil again, quickly and before the end of winter dormancy. It will not survive if it resumes growth without soil to contain new roots. Planting should be as soon as possible, so that roots can settle in with rain, and be ready to grow by spring.

Bare root stock is less expensive than canned (potted) stock because it is so lightweight and easier to process. Since it occupies less space than canned stock in retail nurseries, more varieties of bare root stock are available. Bare root stock is easier to load into a car, and plant into a garden. Once in a garden, it disperses roots quickly and more efficiently.

Deciduous fruit trees are the most popular bare root stock. Of these, most are stone fruits or pome fruits. The stone fruits, of the genus Prunus, include cherry, plum, prune, apricot, peach, nectarine, their hybrids, and almond. Apple, pear, and quince are pome (pomme) fruits. Pomegranate, persimmon, fig, mulberry and walnut are somewhat popular as well. 

So much more than deciduous fruit and nut trees are available as bare root stock. Grape, kiwi, currant, gooseberry and blueberry are deciduous fruiting vines or shrubs, not trees. Blackberry, raspberry and strawberry are evergreens. Rhubarb, asparagus and artichoke are perennial vegetables. Rose, wisteria, hydrangea and so many more are fruitless ornamental plants.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Addendum

This old article explains why my involvement with the big valley oak that I shared pictures of yesterday is so limited.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

p90105kThere is much more to the landscapes at work that I wrote about earlier this morning at https://tonytomeo.com/2019/01/05/six-on-saturday-cabin-fever/ . Otherwise, my job would be quite boring.

I do not climb big trees; so any work that the redwoods need must be done by someone else. The big redwoods, as well as the ponderosa pines, Douglas firs and various oaks, are of course the most prominent and memorable features of the landscapes. There are also a few other exotic trees that were added to the landscapes years ago. My primary work with those that have grown beyond my reach is identifying problems for other arborists to correct or remove.

However, there is plenty at ground level to keep us very busy.

Our landscapes are simple and somewhat unrefined. They take as much work as they do because they are so big and dispersed over a large area. There seems to be…

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Windows Of Heaven

Goodness; this really complicates a simple and potentially artistic picture.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P81229KOr . . . a close encounter of the third kind. Let’s just go with the former rather than the latter.

I am no photographer. The pictures that I post are merely illustrations for articles from my gardening column, and other articles. This picture just happened to make itself available while I was getting the first of the six pictures of the earlier ‘Six on Saturday’ post. The location is nothing special. It is not really out in the forest like it seems to be. A lodge building of six suites is directly to the left. A big ‘housekeeping’ building is to the right. There is a road in the background above, as well as below, from where the picture was taken.

Even the flora in uninteresting. The most prominent straight trunk in the middle is that of a young Douglas fir. The slightly leaning trunk with upward reaching branches…

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Six on Saturday: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy January too! Happy Saturday! Really though, what is all the fuss about? There is nothing new about this. New years have been arriving annually for as long as anyone can remember. New days arrive daily. New hours arrive hourly. In fact, a new one just began within the last sixty minutes or so. Perhaps that justifies trying to be happy whenever we want to. I digress. My Six for this Saturday are irrelevant to this New Year, and actually, are not exactly happy. All six pictures involve just two trees, a valley oak, Quercus lobata and a coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia.

1. Thunderstorms are rare here. A real doozy arrived on Christmas morning though. The wind could have landed Rhody in Oz. This distinguished valley oak lost two major limbs. 

2. The worst of the damage is just above and slightly left of the center of this picture. The large limb that fell from there clobbered another large limb that was closer to the center.

3. Can you identify what this picture shows? The pair of short yellow lines near the lower center of the picture is a clue. That is the dirty tip of my left boot in the lower left corner. 

4. Tilting the camera from vertical reveals why I could not return to work after what was supposed to be a quick errand. This large coast live oak fell and totally blocked the road.

5. But wait, there’s more! This was more than we could move efficiently with the tractor. Two crews, working at both ends, took all day to clear it all. Another trunk fell to the left. 

6. The trunks had been deteriorating for decades. The moisture of the adjacent drainage ditch accelerated rot. All that evergreen foliage finally got too heavy when wet from rain. 

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/
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Chinese Evergreen

With such lush foliage, Chinese evergreen is a bold houseplant alone, and is also quite compatible with all other houseplants.

It is no coincidence that Chinese evergreen, Aglaonema, is perhaps the most common tropical plant for interiorscapes. It is quite easy to care for, and available in so many unique personalities. Many have rich deep green foliage. Most are elegantly variegated with white, silvery gray or gold. Leaf shape is quite variable, although most have rather narrow leaves radiating outward from dense rosettes. Leaves can be half a foot to more than a foot long, and a bit more than an inch to almost six inches wide. Mature plants are at least a foot tall and a foot and a half broad.

Indirect sun exposure or partial shade is best. Chinese evergreen likes humidity, so likes to share sheltered enclosed atriums with other lush foliage plants. New plants are easy to propagate by division.

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Get Bare In Winter

Besides the popular deciduous fruit trees and roses, several deciduous ornamentals, like these clematis vines, are also available bare root.

It may not seem like the middle of winter is a good time for much gardening, but now that any unsold Christmas trees have been removed from nurseries, bare roots plants are moving in. They should be available through the rest of winter, until warming spring weather prompts bloom and emergence of new foliage.

As the name implies, ‘bare root’ plants have bare roots. They are not contained within potting media (soil) in cans or pots. Some are wrapped in coarse sawdust to keep roots moist and contained without much weight. Others are simply heeled into damp sand at nurseries where they can be dug and wrapped when purchased.

Without cumbersome cans, bare root plants occupy less space in nurseries, so many more varieties of fruit trees, grapes, roses, berries and various ornamentals can be available bare root than could be available as standard canned stock during the rest of the year. Bare root plants have the added advantage of costing about half of what canned stock costs.

The main advantage of bare root plants though, is that they waste no time getting established in the garden. The process of getting dug, transported and replanted is done while plants are dormant. When they wake in their new homes in the spring, they immediately start to disperse new roots into the surrounding soil.

If bare root plants can not go directly into the garden once they arrive home, they should be heeled into damp soil or mulch and watered. If planting will be delayed only for a day or two, they can instead be put in a bucket of water to submerge the roots. Plants that are packaged in bags of damp sawdust can wait for more than a week in the shade.

Planting holes need not be any larger than the roots of the bare root plants. If soil is disturbed too deeply, it will only settle and possibly cause new plants to sink. Graft unions (which are evident as kinks low on trunks of trees, or where rose plants branch) should stay above the surface of the soil. Backfill soil should be amended only minimally, or not at all. Too much amendment inhibits root dispersion. (Roots may not want to leave amended soil.) There will be plenty of rain through winter. However, new plants should be soaked twice after planting to settle soil around the roots.

Finally, damaged or unnecessary stems can be pruned off. Bare root fruit trees come with more stems than they need, for padding in transportation, and to allow more options for pruning.

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Horridculture – Clearance

After three years, the Italian stone pines in the illustration are in no better condition.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P90102Many arborists mark certain lengths on their pole saws and pole pruners. When stood upright, these marks designate the standard heights for minimal clearance pruning. Not so many need to mark the height of minimal clearance for walkways, since they will prune away anything that is within reasonable reach with hand tools from the ground. The minimal clearance above parking spaces is not so easy to guess at, so is more likely to be marked on poles. So is the minimal clearance over roadways, where the lowest limbs must be high enough to be out of the way of campers and freight trucks.
Clearance to the sides is determined by the location of the curb, but even that might need to be modified at sharp turns, or where the roadway slopes significantly away from the center. Clearance must similarly be a bit higher over dips in a roadway, where the…

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Persimmon

Ripe persimmon is surprisingly sweet.

Most other deciduous fruit trees provide delightfully profuse spring bloom as well as fruit. Persimmon, Diospyros kaki, does not. It compensates though, with brilliant orange foliar color for autumn. Defoliation reveals comparably bright orange ripe fruit. The awkwardly bulky fruit may look silly on lanky limbs of otherwise bare trees, but they sure are yummy! 

Persimmon trees will not require a pollinator to generate an abundance of fruit. However, according to some experts, paired trees of different cultivars produce more abundant fruit of slightly better quality. Abundance is not necessarily an asset though. Unfortunately, all that very perishable fruit ripens at the same time. Fruit is inedible before completely ripe.

Mature persimmon trees can get big enough to become moderate shade trees. If they do, their abundant fruit will be too high to reach, and will generate a horrendous mess when it falls. Although they are handsome trees, they should probably stay relatively short and compact. New trees should be planted while dormant during winter, preferably bare root.

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Dormant Pruning Promotes Fruit Production

Persimmon trees get pruned after harvest.

While they are dormant through winter, deciduous fruit trees require specialized ‘dormant pruning’. Exceptions are rare. Most need major pruning that might seem to be excessive. Without such pruning, fruit trees produce more fruit than they can sustain. Excessive fruit is very likely to be of inferior quality, beyond reach, and heavy enough to disfigure limbs.

Dormant pruning limits the volume and weight of fruit that can develop during a following season. By eliminating structural deficiencies and maintaining compact form, it improves the structural integrity of trees. It eliminates diseased stems, and concentrates resources into healthy stems. Dormant pruning concentrates resources into less but better fruit too.

Dormant pruning is necessary because of extensive breeding to improve the quality and quantity of fruit that fruit trees produce. The ancestors of modern cultivars of fruit produce either smaller or less abundant fruit that they can generally support in the wild. However, even some wild fruit trees will produce better fruit with pruning to concentrate resources.

The many various types of fruit trees need various types of specialized dormant pruning. Unfortunately, such trees, which are so commonly available from nurseries, do not come with instructions. It is important to be aware of the sort of maintenance any particular fruit tree will require, prior to incorporating it into a garden. Some dormant pruning is extreme! 

The various stone fruits are the most popular deciduous fruit trees. They are of the genus ‘Prunus‘. Their fruits contain single large seeds, or ‘stones’. This includes apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach, plum, prune, almond and all their hybrids. They need the most intense dormant pruning. (Almond nuts are stones of leathery fruits that are the hulls of the nuts.)

Although uncommon within the mild coastal climates of Southern California, pome fruits, primarily apple and pear, are very popular too. They require specialized dormant pruning that is very different from what stone fruits need. Likewise, persimmon, pomegranate, fig, mulberry, currant, kiwi, grape and cane berries, each need customized dormant pruning.