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Exceptions To The Pruning Rules

80228thumbWinter is the best time for major pruning of most plants. They do not mind it so much while they are dormant. However, there are exceptions. Winter pruning might be a bit too early for a few plants that are grown for their late winter or early spring bloom. It is best to wait until immediately after bloom to prune or trim flowering cherry, flowering plum, flowering crabapple and flowering quince.

Because these trees will be in the process of coming out of dormancy, it is best to prune them just after the blossoms finish, as new foliage is emerging. Some of the new buds will likely be ruined in the process, but there should be plenty to spare. If a few extra stems were left on deciduous fruit trees when they were pruned earlier, they can be taken as cut flowers prior to or while blooming.

Forsythia and Oregon grape should also be pruned after bloom, but with different technique. Oregon grape certainly does not need to be pruned annually, and may only need to be occasionally groomed of deteriorating stems. If and when it gets pruned, the oldest canes should be cut to the ground to favor newer canes. Forsythia canes should be cut to the ground after their second year.

Red twig dogwood and small willows that are grown for the color of their twigs must be pruned aggressively to produce new twigs for next winter; but there is no point in pruning their colorful twigs off while they are at their best. It is better to wait until just before new foliage is about to come out and obscure the twigs. They can be pollarded or coppiced. This applies to pussy willows as well.

Clumping grasses will start to grow soon, so can be shorn of their old foliage from last year that likely started to look rather tired by the end of winter. If left unshorn, new foliage and flower stalks will do just fine, but will come up through the old growth from last year, as the old growth lays down next to it and continue to decay. Once new growth develops, it will be more difficult to remove the old without damaging the new. Clumped grasses will look silly longer if shorn too early.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 27 Comments

Pollarding And Coppicing Pruning Techniques

80221thumbJust about any other arborist will say that pollarding and coppicing are wrong. These techniques ruin trees so that they can never develop into their natural form. Although restorative pruning after pollarding or coppicing is possible, it is usually more trouble than it is worth. However, no one can deny that properly pollarded and coppiced trees can live much longer than they would naturally.

Pollarding and coppicing are extreme pruning. Coppicing is literally cutting a tree down to a stump just above the ground. Pollarding is almost as severe, but allows the main trunk and main limbs to remain. It does not end there of course. It must be repeated annually to maintain the coppiced stump or pollarded trunk and limbs. Secondary growth gets pruned off, back to the previous cuts.

After this process is repeated for a few years, coppiced stumps and pollarded limbs develop distended ‘knuckles’. Cutting back to but not below these knuckles facilitates compartmentalization (healing) of pruning wounds. Because the secondary growth is only a year old when cut annually, the wounds are relatively small, so they get grown over by new growth during the following season.

English style pollarding leaves one or two stubs of any desired length on each knuckle annually. These stubs are generally but not necessarily selected from stems that are aimed upward and outward. This technique elongates knuckles so that the trees are more gnarly and sculptural. Otherwise, all other stems must be pruned away cleanly. Stubs interfere with compartmentalization.

Pollarding and coppicing are done while trees are dormant in winter, and only to the few specie of trees that are conducive to it. These techniques were historically used to generate firewood, wiry willow stems for weaving baskets, straight fence stakes, or lush foliage for livestock and silkworms. Nowadays, they are done to keep big trees small, enhance the size and color of leaves, enhance the color of bark (on twiggy secondary growth), maintain juvenile foliage, or to prevent the bloom of allergenic flowers.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 31 Comments

Roses Get Pruned In Winter

30508thumb++Winter is no excuse to be less diligent in the garden. It would seem that gardening would be less demanding because there is less going on, and so many plants are dormant. However, dormancy is precisely why there is so much to do through winter. Bare root plants and bulbs are planted because they are dormant. Fruit trees get pruned because they are dormant. Now it is time for roses.

Just like fruit trees, modern roses were intensively bred for enhanced production. Their flowers are too big and abundant for overgrown plants to sustain. Consequently, aggressive specialized pruning is necessary to concentrate resources and promote vigorous growth. Rather than producing an abundance of inferior blooms, well pruned canes produce fewer blooms of superior quality.

Also like deciduous fruit trees, roses should be pruned while dormant, preferably after defoliated, and before new buds swell. This sounds easier than it really is. Some roses might still be trying to bloom on canes from last year. Others might be trying to generate new foliage for this year. Fortunately, they are tougher than they look. Besides, early or late pruning is better than no pruning.

Hybrid tea, floribunda and grandiflora roses need the same sort of pruning. They all should be pruned back to only a few canes that grew last year. Older canes should be pruned out completely, unless there are not enough new canes that grew last year. Hybrid tea and floribunda roses need only three to six canes, only about two feet tall. Floribunda roses might have a few more canes. Tree roses should be pruned just like shrub roses, as if the upper graft union is at ground level. The canes can be pruned shorter.

Suckers from below the swollen graft union (from where canes emerge) should be removed completely. If possible, they should be pulled or peeled off instead of cut. This seems harsh, but leaves less of a stub from which more suckers might develop later. Because fungal spores and bacterial diseases overwinter in decomposing foliage, fallen leaves should be raked from around roses.IMG_20140331_112633

Posted on by tonytomeo · 19 Comments

Okie Mowers

P80120They are excellent at weeding and vegetation management too, particularly where brambles are too thick to get through. They also convert unwanted vegetation into useful fertilizer. Goats are remarkably versatile and useful machines around the garden.

The goat in this picture is no ordinary goat. She is a pygmy fainting goat. Her kind were bred to faint when startled, in order to keep a predator occupied instead of eating other more desirable livestock in their herd. What a strange job description! When we went to Oklahoma a few years ago, we stayed on a farm with quite a herd of these small and pleasantly mannered goats.

It was winter while we were there, so there was not much to do in regard to vegetation management or gardening. There were a few blackjack oaks near the homes that I pruned up for clearance and just to neaten them up a bit. The goats came over to watch what I was doing, and seemed to know to stay back when branches fell. Nonetheless, the commotion of some of the larger branches falling was enough to cause some of the closer goats to faint and fall to the ground. They would get back up within a few seconds and proceed to eat the twigs from the branches. By the time I was finished pruning, only the larger stems remained to be dragged off and staged next to a burn pile of other debris that had accumulated earlier in the year.

Late one evening, my friend Steven decided to burn the burn pile. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/oklahoma/ and https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/birthday/ ) I do not know why Steven thought that it would be a good idea to burn it in the dark. The neighbors off in the distance were probably wondering the same thing. Once it was started, there was no point in extinguishing it for a more convenient time. I went out to help him finish the job.

The initial pile flared up pretty well, and then took some time to die down. All the goats who happened to be in the main pasture at the time came over and gathered around to watch. They all seemed to be so interested, and formed a very neat and uniform circle around the fire. Their happy faces glowed like those of a really big troop of Boy Scouts.

It took a while, but the fire eventually died down enough to start throwing on the staged limbs of the blackjack oaks. The goats did not seem to mind as Steven shooed a few of them aside to get a nice hefty limb. From a few feet back, Steven innocently dropped the limb onto the fire.

The limb went down.

The flurry of sparks went up.

The entire herd of goats went down.

Neither Steven nor I saw much of what happened after that. As fast as the goats got back up, we both went down, laughing too hard to stand. The neighbors must have thought we were crazy. The goats were more certain of it. By the time we recovered and got back up, all the goats were gone . . . off into the distance and the darkness of that cool winter night in Oklahoma.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 3 Comments

Most Pruning Happens In Winter

30206thumbWithout specialized pruning while they are bare and dormant in winter, many deciduous fruit trees would be overburdened by their own fruit next summer. The production of excess fruit can waste resources. The weight can disfigure and break limbs. The trees certainly do not want to get so overworked; but they have been unnaturally bred to produce bigger, better and more abundant fruit.

Proper pruning of dormant fruit trees improves the structural integrity of the limbs, and limits the weight of fruit that will develop on the remaining stems. This might seem to be counterproductive, but it is the only way to keep limbs from breaking or growing so high that the fruit is out of reach. It also concentrates resources into fewer but superior fruit, instead of more fruit of inferior quality.

Dormant fruit tree pruning can not be adequately described in only a few paragraphs. Yet, it is so important and so specialized that anyone wanting to grow fruit trees should learn about it. Each type of tree requires a particular style of pruning. Something they have in common is that the ‘four Ds’, which are ‘Dead, Dying, Diseased and Damaged’ stems, obviously need to be pruned out.

The various stone fruit trees (which are of the genus Prunus) need various degrees of a similar style of pruning. Heavy fruit, like peach and nectarine, necessitate more aggressive pruning than does lighter fruit, like plum and prune. Lighter fruit is easier to support. Some cherry and almond trees may not need to be pruned every year. (Almonds are ‘stones’, and their hulls are the ‘fruit’.)

Flowers of next spring and fruit of next summer will develop on stems that grew last year. These stems need to be pruned short enough to support the fruit that can potentially develop on them. If too long, they will sag from the weight of the fruit. If too short, they will not produce enough fruit. Stems that grow beyond reach can be pruned even more aggressively to stimulate lower growth.

Apple and pear trees also produce on the stems that grew during the previous year, but produce more on short and gnarled spur stems that continue to produce for many years without elongating much. Therefore, the tall vigorous stems that reach upward, particularly from upper limbs, can be cut back very aggressively if necessary. Aggressive but specialized pruning keeps trees sturdy and contained, and also improves the quality of fruit production.40101thumb

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Holy Guacamole!

P71202.jpgHorticulturists have a way of making all those long Latin names sound easy to pronounce. Lyanothamnus floribundus ‘Asplenifolius’ – Syzigium paniculatum – Metasequoia glyptostroboides. I do not know why proper pronunciation of their names is so important. They have no ears. They can not hear if we simply call them ‘Earl’. Even if they could hear, they would not respond.

Communication with other people is probably more important. Yet, we are so often unable to spell something as seemingly simple as the sound of a palm frond falling to the ground. Does it sound like “whoosh”, or “splat”, or some combination of both? What do the Santa Anna Winds sound like as they blow through a grove of Aleppo pines? What does a red flowering gum full of bees sound like?

Heck, Brent could not even tell me what an incident that he heard in his own backyard sounded like. As he came home from work and was getting out of the car in the driveway a few days ago, he heard in rapid succession, a loud ‘CRACK!’ followed immediately by a loud ‘WHOOSH!’ and a big ‘THUD!’ and ‘BANG!’. Well, I was sort of clear on all that, but it was the finale that was baffling him.

He said it sounded like someone dumping out a big bucked of tennis balls filled with something to make them heavy. I did not ask how he knew what that sounded like, or what the tennis balls were filled with, or why anyone would fill tennis balls with anything, or . . . He was obviously unsatisfied with that explanation, so said it sounded more like a whole bunch of billiard balls bouncing off of the bumpers all at the same time, without bumping into each other. Well, that is some pretty talented pool.

Okay, so it sounded like when you get into an elevator on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Tower, you know the big one downtown, and the bottom falls out of your big bag of ‘Eureka’ lemons somewhere between the fifth and fourth floors, and everyone is staring because it is noon thirty on Friday, and . . . well you know, . . . and then there was this . . . and . . . ain’t nobody got time for that!

Dude, just shut up! I get it.

Well, he went to the backyard to investigate. The source of the commotion was not immediately apparent from ground level. Everything seemed to be in order, maybe a bit sunnier, which might not have been noticed anywhere else after autumn . . . but this is Los Angeles. When Brent looked up to the deck on the flat roof of the office, it all became clear.

The big avocado tree in the neighbor’s garden dropped a big limb onto the deck. The last strange sound he heard was that of so many heavy avocados hitting the deck and scattering in every which direction, including down the wrought iron spiral stairs. All the patio furniture and cool potted plants up there got clobbered. Fortunately, there was no serious damage, and the avocado tree should be fine. Most of the fruit was in good condition. Only those that fell down the stairs were pulverized into lumpy guacamole.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 9 Comments

Sculpture

P71206

I use the term loosely. Okay, so maybe I use it mockingly in this context. This sort of thing really should have no connection to the works of Calder, Rodin or Brancusi. It might be worthy of a few fancy adjectives, such as ‘severe’, ‘unusual’, ‘dramatic’ and ‘bold’. Horticulturally though, we might be thinking more like ‘disgraceful’, ‘abhorrent’, ‘ridiculous’ or ‘just plain sad’.

There is nothing wrong with pollarding, that severe sort of pruning that almost all other arborists will tell you is wrong. It involves pruning trees back to the same distended terminal knuckles every winter. Only a few trees are adaptable to the technique, and technically, sweetgum happens to be one of those few trees.

The stipulation is that once pollarded, they MUST be cut back to the same knuckles EVERY winter. A small stub or maybe two can be left on knuckles to allow them to elongate a bit annually, but that is about all. Pollarding is severely disfiguring, and ruins structurally integrity for all growth after the first growing season. Without this annual and aggressive maintenance, pollarded trees are very likely to drop limbs and possibly disintegrate faster than they can recover.

Sweetgums are not often pollarded because they are usually grown for their autumn color. Secondary growth that develops in response to pollarding is too vigorous to color well. The foliage stays green well into winter, and then falls without much color at all. Pollarding sort of defeats the purpose of growing a sweetgum.

The real problem with this particular tree is that it was not pollarded correctly. For one, it was probably cut like this because someone thought that it was too big. It should have been cut much lower if someone was going to put the work into pollarding it at all. Now, the secondary growth that must be pruned away will be very high, and take much more work to prune away. It will also be more exposed to wind. Limbs that break away will fall from higher up, so will fall farther away, and with more inertia.

Secondly, the pruning technique really was ‘abhorrent’. Small stubs are acceptable on established knuckles in order to direct growth. Long stubs that are expected to develop into knuckles are also acceptable. The weird stubs on the trunks of this tree are both too short and too stout. Because they are too short, they will be too shaded to develop into knuckles. They are too stout to compartmentalize or ‘heal’ (if they do not form knuckles) so are likely to decay, and spread decay into the trunks.

Thirdly, this tree was pollarded in summer, which is why the secondary growth is so stunted and underdeveloped now that the tree should be going dormant for autumn. The stunting should not be much of problem, since new growth should develop in spring. The problem is that the lightly colored bark likely scaled when it suddenly became exposed to sunlight by the removal of all of the foliage in the middle of summer. The scalded areas will eventually decay and become open wounds, which will spread decay into the main trunks and limbs. Even if secondary growth is healthy, and the tree gets pollarded correctly every winter, the limbs will eventually become unable to support the weight of healthy foliage.

This is one of the many reasons it is so important to procure the services of a qualifies arborist. Someone payed a significant amount of money to get this valuable tree ruined, and will eventually need to pay more money to have it removed. It would have been much less expensive to pay a bit more to get the tree pruned properly, or to have it removed completely.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

Winter Is The Season For Pruning

71213thumbNow that winter is only two weeks away, and many deciduous plants are defoliating and dormant, it may seem as if there will be less work to do in the garden. After all, not much is growing. The funny thing is that this is the best time to sneak up on some of them, and prune them while they are sleeping. Depending on what is in the garden, winter can be just as busy as any other season.

There are a few things that should most certainly not be pruned in winter. Maples and birches should either be pruned before or after winter. They bleed profusely if pruned in winter. Plants that bloom in winter or early spring should be pruned after they have finished blooming. Pruning forsythias, flowering cherries and flowering crabapples earlier will remove much of the blooming stems.

Deciduous fruit trees are of course an exception to that rule. They require annual winter pruning so that they to do not produce too much fruit. Excessive fruit is of inferior quality, and can break limbs. It is acceptable when pruning fruit trees to leave a few unpruned stems to cut and bring in later, as long as they are not forgotten. They can be less refined alternatives to flowering cherries.

Once we determine what should not be pruned in winter, it is easier to see that most deciduous plants should be pruned while bare in winter. Elm, oak, poplar, willow, mulberry, pistache, gingko, crepe myrtle and most popular deciduous trees are sound asleep and unaware of what might happen to them for the next few months. They would be pleased to wake already pruned next spring.

Some evergreen plants should probably be pruned as well. Tristania, redwood, podocarpus, Carolina cherry, bottlebrush and the various eucalypti would prefer to be pruned while the weather is cool. Conifers bleed less this time of year; and pine and cypress are less susceptible to pathogens that are attracted to wounds during warm weather. Avocados and citrus, particularly lemons, should not be pruned in winter, because pruning stimulates new growth which is more sensitive to frost.

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Prune Maples and Birches Before Sugaring Season

71206thumbMost of us Californians are probably wondering what that means. Sugaring season is more familiar to horticultural enthusiasts in New England, Canada, and more recently, in Alaska. It is the time of year that sugary sap get harvested from maples, and in Alaska, from birches. Maple sap gets refined into maple syrup and sugar. Birch sap makes birch syrup and sugar, a recent fad up north.

Why is this important here? Well, maples and birches know what time of year it is. Their sugaring season is relatively brief here; and they do not produce as much sap as they do in cold climates. Nonetheless, their sap will eventually start to flow later in winter, just when we expect it least. By the time we will be pruning dormant fruit trees and roses, it will be too late for maples and birches.

Therefore, maples and birches should either be pruned as soon as practical after defoliation, or after refoliation later next spring or early summer. They tend to defoliate before their sap gets too pressurized. However, if opting or the autumn pruning schedule, it is advisable to prune off one small stem first and then wait a few minutes to see if it bleeds. If it does, pruning should be delayed.

Bleeding may not be as harmful as it would seem to be for mature trees, especially since birches and many of the maples do not need much pruning of viable stems. If they get infested with sooty mold, a few small bleeding wounds on a big birch tree are more unsightly than unhealthy. However, several bleeding wounds can be somewhat distressful, especially for young Japanese maples.

If opting for the spring pruning schedule, maples and birches should be allowed to refoliate first. Their first leaves should be fully developed. This might be difficult for those of us who believe in pruning during dormancy, but it is better than causing sap to bleed when the trees need it most. Pruning can be done during summer too, but summer pruning should not be aggressive enough to suddenly expose formerly shaded bark to direct sunlight. Otherwise, bark can scald. So once again, timing is everything.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Seriously?!

P71104Gardening is not for everyone. If you are reading this, you probably enjoy gardening. There are many more people who simply are not interested in it. Some tend to their own gardens in a basic manner just to keep their homes looking good. Most hire gardeners to maintain their landscapes for them.

I use the term ‘maintain’ very lightly. What they really do is keep the lawn from getting too deep, and other plants from getting too overgrown. Very few really care how they accomplish these basic requirements.

I could go into the detail about how they brag about saving water while wasting enough to drown trees, or how they shear everything within reach into nondescript . . . whatever they get shorn into, or how most problems that arborists encounter in their work are caused by gardeners. Instead, I am just gong to talk briefly about two examples of the lack of expertise or concern or both exhibited by gardeners who maintain the landscape at a small office building in my neighborhood.

There are a few healthy ‘Prairie Fire’ flowering crabapple trees in this landscape. A few years ago, they bloomed spectacularly! The following year, they were about to do the same thing. They were quite healthy, with plump buds that were swelling nicely as winter became spring. Just as the buds were about to pop, and the bright pink of the flowers within was becoming visible between the bud scales, the gardeners arrived and pollarded all the trees. Yes, they pruned away ALL of the blooming stems, cut them up, and disposed of them, leaving bare trunks and limbs. There was not bloom.

The trees recovered through the year, and produced plenty of stems to bloom the following spring. Again, the buds swelled at the end of winter, only to be completely removed when the trees were pollarded just before bloom. The trees were not even pollarded correctly. It was quite a hack job. This happens every year now. The trees never bloom.

A stone retaining wall below this landscape was well landscaped with rosemary hanging down from the top, and Boston ivy climbing up from below. The two will eventually be redundant to each other as the rosemary grows enough to cover the wall without the help of the Boston ivy, but for now, they work well together.

The Boston ivy was just beginning to show autumn color. It happens to be one of the few plants that colors reliably in our mild climate, with bright yellow, orange, red and burgundy. It would have been spectacular, but, like the budded stems of the flowering crabapples, all the Boston ivy was cut down to the ground. All the foliage that was just about to do what it does best was completely removed and disposed of.

There is certainly nothing wrong with exposing parts of the handsome stone wall. The rosemary still cascades from above to break up the expansiveness of the wall. The problem is the untimely removal of something that should have been an asset for the landscape, rather than just a liability. The Boston Ivy could have been cut back in winter, after displaying its spectacular autumn foliar color. Professionals should know how to accomplish this.

The property manager pays a lot of money for this sort of nonsense. Hey, we all know mistakes happen; but this is inexcusable. Seriously, people who know nothing about gardening could do better than these so called professionals.