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Frost Is Not An Enemy

Among canna, frost damage is harmless.

Rain was one clue. Cooler weather is another. It is now so late into autumn that it will be winter soon. Every regional climate experiences some degree of chill. Some, particularly to the north, experience frost. This limits gardening in two ways. Several species prefer a bit less cool weather. Several prefer a bit more. Every species prefers a particular range.

Apple trees, for example, require vernalization, which is a specific duration of chill. Some cultivars require more than others. Without it, they can not distinguish seasons, so do not know when to bloom for spring. Consequently, few cultivars of apple perform adequately within Los Angeles. However, many perform very well in the cooler climates of San Jose.

Banana trees, conversely, need no chill, and are instead set back by frost. Some tolerate a bit more chill than others; but ultimately, they are all tropical species. They produce fruit only within the months between frosts. Consequently, not many banana trees are notably productive within San Jose. However, they perform better in the climates of Los Angeles.

Banana trees stop growing when the weather is cooler than fifty degrees or so. That is a bit too much chill for them. However, frost does not occur until the weather is cooler than thirty-two degrees. Banana foliage can therefore be safely dormant during chilly weather. That is a range of twenty-two degrees. Different tropical species survive different ranges.

The simplest form of frost protection is to not cultivate species that are vulnerable to frost. This is, of course, a bit too restrictive for many who enjoy gardening. Instead, some grow vulnerable species in pots to move to shelter prior to frost. Some simply grow vulnerable species below the shelter of eaves or big trees. Tenting may also be effective protection.

Alternatively, some species can endure frost damage to recover during warmer weather. If possible, outer foliage that succumbs to frost should remain through winter. It insulates inner growth from subsequent damage. Besides, premature grooming can stimulate new growth that is more vulnerable. Many perennials prefer cutting back after winter anyway.

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Bulbs For Spring Start Now

Ranunculus will bloom for early spring.

Summer bulbs, such as canna, calla and dahlia, can wait until spring. They do not enjoy winter chill during their dormancy like spring bulbs do. Spring bulbs become available at nurseries now because this is the time to plant them. They wait patiently for winter to end before blooming. A bit of winter chill actually helps them to maintain their strict schedule.

That certainly does not mean that their strict schedule is not adjustable. Most early bulbs prefer interment into their shallow graves within weeks of Halloween. However, they can wait as late as New Year’s Day. This allows for successive planting, which prolongs their ultimate bloom. Early planting promotes early bloom. Late planting promotes late bloom.

Most spring bulbs from nurseries are prechilled because winters are relatively mild here. They are therefore less reliant on significant winter chill. However, some of such bulbs in several of the milder climates may bloom only once. They lack the winter chill they need to bloom for subsequent springs. Avid garden enthusiasts compensate with refrigeration.

That requires major diligence, though. Most who enjoy gardening do not want to dig and refrigerate dirty spring bulbs. Consequently, most who grow them enjoy them as annuals or disposable perennials. Unfortunately though, spring bulbs do not bloom for very long, and are not inexpensive. That is why they are not as prevalent here as in other climates.

Freesia and narcissus, including daffodil, do not need much chill. They can settle in and bloom for many years after their initial planting. Ranunculus and anemone may not need much chill either, but are less likely to regenerate from year to year. Dutch iris and Dutch crocus are unpredictable. They might become reliably perennial, but may not cooperate.

Tulip and hyacinth may be more disappointing, since they require significant winter chill. If they can not experience such chill naturally from the weather, they require refrigeration. Otherwise, they bloom only once for their primary season, and only after prechilling. Yet, both are among the most popular of spring bulbs. Their blooms are simply too appealing.

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Winter Squash Grew Last Summer

Pumpkins are the familiar winter squash.

Cool season vegetables do not include any winter squash. All squash are warm season vegetables. They all begin their growing season in early spring to grow through summer. Their foliage begins to fade by autumn, and then succumbs to winter chill. The difference between summer and winter squash is their harvest time. Winter squash ripen for winter.

Conversely, summer squash produce for summer. They produce several more individual fruit that are ready for harvest before they ripen. They produce even more in response to the harvest of their juvenile fruit. Any fruit that matures for too long can get big and tough. It also diverts resources that should otherwise sustain production of fresh young squash.

Winter squash produce fewer fruit that mature through summer to ripen by autumn. Some types produce only two or three individual fruit. Fewer fruit concentrate resources, so that individual fruit are relatively large. Pumpkin, which is a famously big winter squash, may grow singly on its vines. Once ripe, some winter squash might last for months into winter.

Ideally, some type of squash should always be available from the garden. Winter squash become available as summer squash finish. Then, summer squash become available as stored winter squash deplete. However, winter squash are supposedly better if they cure for two weeks after harvest. Summer squash might finish a while before that can happen.

Hubbard, butternut, acorn and kabocha squash are all types of winter squash. Countless others are available. Their vines are more rampant than those of typical summer squash. Those with relatively lightweight fruit can climb trellises or shrubbery to conserve space. Although they do not bloom as much as summer squash, their yellow flowers are edible.

Winter squash develop more uniformly with occasional turning as they grow. This entails turning fruit weekly so that all sides of it get exposure sometime. By now, the palest sides should face upward. Fruit should retain its short stem when cut from its vine. It is likely to mold without it. There is no rush to harvest though, since fruit can remain as vines wither. Exposure to mild frost supposedly enhances the flavor of winter squash.

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Cool Season Vegetables Begin Now

Kale is productive until spring warmth.

Warm season vegetables that started late last winter will be finishing their seasons soon. Cool season vegetables, or winter vegetables, should begin to replace them. This might sound familiar as the same scenario for warm and cool season annuals. After all, almost all vegetable plants are either annuals or biennials. Few perform for more than a season.

Just like annual bedding plants, different vegetable plants perform to different schedules. Some warm season vegetables begin to deteriorate as warm weather ends. Others may continue to produce until frost. Some cool season vegetables need an early start. Others can start late and grow through cool winter weather. Gardens need not transition quickly.

Besides, different phases of some types of vegetables begin and finish at different times. Although late phases of corn continue to grow, early phases are already done and gone. Although late phases of beet might begin months from now, early phases can begin now. Warm season vegetables, ideally, relinquish space as cool season vegetables require it.

Cool season vegetables grow slower than warm season vegetables. Also, more of them are true vegetables rather than fruit that contain seed. Many are distended roots, such as beet and carrot. Many are distended foliage, such as cabbage and chard. A few, such as broccoli and cauliflower, are distended floral bloom. Peas are actually fruiting structures.

All root vegetables should grow directly from seed. They are vulnerable to disfigurement if transplanted. Besides, they typically grow in significant quantities that are not practical for transplant. These include beet, carrot, radish, turnip and parsnip. Cucumber and pea, although conducive to transplanting, also perform better from seed. So do lettuce greens.

Heading lettuce, though, is more like cabbage and larger cool season vegetables. Since only a few are necessary, transplanting them as seedlings is practical. Besides, they are conducive to transplanting. Cell pack seedlings for cool season vegetables are available from nurseries now. Seed is always available. It can go directly into a garden or into cells for transplanting later, as summer becomes autumn, then winter.

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Male Delivery

Flowers of all fruit need pollination for fruit to develop. Most are self pollinating. Some require pollination from another variety. Some are dioecious, so female flowers need pollination from male flowers. A few, such as figs and muscadines, are even more complicated, but they are topics for another article. For now, I am concerned with my female kiwi vine, which is growing like a weed, but would have been unable to produce any fruit without a male pollinator. It was not a planned acquisition. I grew it from cuttings from a bit of vine scrap that someone brought to dump in the debris piles here. Because it grew so well, I requested some male vine scrap from the same person who provided the female vine scrap. Obviously, since he grows the female vine in his home garden, he also grows a male vine to provide pollen. I wanted the scrap while it was dormant through winter, because that is when I prefer to start hardwood cuttings. By the end of winter, I figured that it was too late to start cuttings, and that I would need to wait to try next winter. Then, just a few days ago, the person who provided the female vine scrap brought me a small piece of the male vine, which was already foliated and growing! This presents a challenge, since I lack access to a greenhouse with bottom heat and mist. I cut the stem into five cuttings. Three have single axillary buds that are still dormant. Two are vascularly active terminal cuttings, which are merely short shoots that grew from two axillary buds that are still attached. All but the smallest leaves were removed from the terminal cuttings. So far, they seem happy under a jar. Now, I can only watch and wait.

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Not All Pruning Happens In Winter

If necessary, Oregon grape can be pruned to the ground now.

Spring has sprung; and winter has wenter . . . or whatever winter does to get out of the way of spring. Plants are more active now than at any other time of year. Deciduous plants that were dormant and bare through winter have already started to bloom and produce new foliage. Evergreen plants are now making new foliage to replace their tired old foliage that lingered through cold, wet and windy winter weather. 

Frost is very unlikely this late. It is safe to sow seeds for all sorts of warm season vegetables and annual flowers, like beans, okra, zucchini, nasturtiums and sunflowers. It is likewise time to plant small plants for certain vegetables and flowers that are too slow to start from seed, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, petunias and impatiens.

Winter was the time to prune almost all deciduous plants (which defoliate) and many evergreen plants while they were dormant. However, pruning of plants that are susceptible to frost damage needed to be delayed until about now, even if they had been damaged earlier. Premature pruning would have stimulated new growth, which would have been even more sensitive to subsequent frost.

Any lavender starflower, bougainvillea, marguerite daisy or blue potato bush foliage that was damaged by earlier frost can now be pruned away. New foliage should already be appearing. Also, any mushy frost damaged leaves of giant-bird-of-Paradise and banana can be removed, and should be replaced by new foliage as the weather gets warmer.

The end of winter and beginning of spring is also the best time for any necessary severe restorative pruning of plants that can be damaged by frost, as well as many heartier evergreen plants. It is late enough to avoid frost, while early enough to take advantage of the first new growth phase of the season.

For example, lavender starflower that is both overgrown and damaged by frost can be pruned back to the main stems now, instead of merely shorn to remove damaged foliage. If pruned earlier, it would have not only been more sensitive to frost, but would have remained unsightly as long as weather remained too cool for it to regenerate new foliage.

It likewise can not be pruned much later without wasting most of the new spring growth that is presently developing, which would be very stressful and delay bloom. Pruning severely now will be unsightly for the least amount of time before new growth regenerates and blooms. It would also be less stressful, since it coincides with natural dormancy and regenerative cycles.

Privets, junipers, oleanders, photinias, bottlebrush and pittosporums that need restoration should also get it now, not because they are sensitive to frost, but so that they recover as efficiently as possible as weather gets warmer. Besides, bottlebrush, pittosporum and some other plants are susceptible to disease if pruned during winter, because pruning wounds are easily infected during rainy weather.

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Six on Saturday: Late Winter Color

Color is relatively scarce as spring bloom is only slowly beginning. A bit of winter bloom remains. Not all flowers bloom earlier here than in other regions. Some could actually be a bit later than expected.

1. Lemna minor, duckweed does not grow much during cool winter weather, but lingers until sloshed by rain. After surviving through a dry January, it finally succumbed to rain during early February. Its monochromatic green revealed this more vibrant color below.

2. Viburnum tinus, laurustinus is not among my favorites. I seriously do not understand why it is as popular as it is. Nonetheless, several feral specimens inhabit some of the less refined landscapes. I do appreciate how the white bloom of this specimen is not blushed.

3. Arctostaphylos X densiflora ‘Howard McMinn’ manzanita qualifies as a locally native species, but is actually an unnatural hybrid of two species that, although native close by, are not locally native. I should not be so critical. It performs well within our landscapes.

4. Leucojum aestivum, summer snowflake does not wait for summer to bloom. We know it as snowdrop because it blooms when real snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, would bloom. There is no confusion since real snowdrop is very rare here. I have actually never seen it.

5. Iris X germanica ‘Rosalie Figge’ bearded iris is redundant to a similar picture two and a half months ago, but continues to bloom. I am beginning to wonder if it ever stops now that it has been doing so continually for so long. Fortunately, no one is bored with it yet.

6. Camellia japonica, camellia is a different unidentified cultivar than that which posted with ‘Rosalie Figge’ bearded iris two and a half months ago, so is not so redundant. Most camellias were not blooming then, and even now, many are only beginning their bloom.

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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Restorative Pruning

There is some good flowering quince in there, . . . somewhere.

Winter is the time to go wild in the garden, while plants are mostly dormant and not aware of what is going on. This is the time to tend to all the aggressive pruning that fruit trees and roses need annually, and to take care of overgrown deciduous plants that may not need to be pruned every year, but need it now. . . or may have needed it last year. . . or even a few years ago.

Regardless, if they are bare now, they are dormant. By the time their buds start to swell in spring, it will be too late, since they will no longer be dormant, and are likely to be damaged by overly aggressive pruning. Evergreen plants that can be sensitive to frost, like avocadoes and citrus, are the only ones that should not be pruned now, since aggressive pruning may stimulate new growth that is even more sensitive to late frost.

Plants that are too overgrown to be salvaged by tame pruning or typical shearing should be evaluated. Would a particular plant be more desirable if it were tamed? Is removal the only alternative to aggressive pruning? It is sometimes worth taking a chance that an obtrusively overgrown but otherwise desirable plant may actually be killed by aggressive renovation if it is about to removed anyway. For example, overgrown oleanders can be cut down instead of removed. Those that survive will grow into fresh new shrubs by the end of summer.

(The last paragraph of this recycled article is omitted here because the information that it provides about a particular horticultural event is very outdated.)

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Coppiced Vegetation Regenerates With Vigor

Coppicing can alleviate congested basal growth.

Winter dormancy has advantages. It facilitates acquisition and establishment of bare root stock, and winter dormant pruning. Coppicing and pollarding are the most severe sorts of winter dormant pruning. Although initially ugly, coppiced and pollarded vegetation mostly grow vigorously later. Most species bloom and fruit better. All species foliate more lushly.

There is certainly nothing wrong with proper coppicing and pollarding. Both are common beyond America, particularly within Europe. However, both are very unfortunately vilified as disfigurement here. Not many arborists know how to perform such techniques, or may not admit to it. Yet, some coppiced vegetation is covertly popular in some home gardens.

Coppicing and pollarding are genuinely extreme and harsh techniques. Coppicing is the removal of almost all growth that is above the surface of the ground. For some shrubbery or trees, short stumps may remain. Coppiced vegetation is therefore not much to look at. Pollarding is similar, but retains primary trunks and limbs. Pollarded trees seem hideous.

Hideousness is subjective, though. By European standards, pollarding is an acceptable horticultural technique. European arborists know how to perform it properly during winter dormancy. They do so neatly, without stubs or torn bark, and direct growth as necessary. Coppiced vegetation is not as hideous because not much of it remains to see afterwards.

Because of its vilification, coppicing became more tolerable with different classifications. “Cutting back” perennials, such as African iris, lion’s tail and canna, is the same process. So is cutting back carpet roses or honeysuckle to the ground. The alternate classification is more acceptable. It is just as effective for removal of thicket or deteriorating old growth.

Also, coppiced vegetation regenerates more vigorously for spring than it may otherwise. Elderberries prefer selective grooming, but coppiced plants produce bigger fruit clusters. English Laurel, osmanthus, photinia and red twig dogwood respond nicely to coppicing. However, coral bark Japanese maple is grafted, so is likely to lose its scion if cut too low down.

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Winter Pruning Deciduous Fruit Trees

Specialized dormant pruning improves fruit production.

Bare root season is synchronous with winter for one simple reason. Winter is when bare root stock is dormant. Dormancy similarly justifies winter pruning of deciduous fruit trees. It functions like anesthesia for surgery. While dormant, deciduous fruit trees are unaware of relocation or pruning. They resume growth for spring as if nothing stressful happened.

Winter pruning, or dormant pruning, would be inappropriate at any time other than winter. It is both very specialized for particular deciduous fruit trees, and, for most, very extreme. Some trees that benefit from it could not survive such procedures while vascularly active. Such pruning would involve the removal of most or all foliage if it were not already gone.

Winter pruning is no more unnatural than major breeding that necessitated it. Because of breeding, fruit trees produce unnaturally heavy and abundant fruit. Many can not support the weight of the fruit that they could potentially generate. Major pruning limits production and improves structural integrity of stems. It also confines production to reachable stems.

Production of unnaturally big and abundant fruit consumes substantial resources. Winter pruning concentrates resources into less excessive fruit of better quality. Since fruit is not as congested as it would otherwise be, it is more resilient to pathogens. So are its stems, foliage and precursory bloom. Fruit is easier to harvest from less congested stem growth.

Stone fruit trees and pomme fruit trees are the most common that require winter pruning. Stone fruit include cherry, apricot, plum, prune, peach, nectarine and almond. They need distinct degrees of similar pruning. Large fruit like peach necessitate aggressive pruning. Cherry and almond do not require as much. Pomme fruit include apple, pear and quince.

Deciduous fruit trees are certainly not low maintenance. Their reliance on winter pruning is undeniable. Those who would like to grow such trees should be aware of their cultural requirements. Diligent research of pruning techniques is very helpful. Annual experience is even better. It is an opportunity to observe how trees respond to all earlier procedures.