March Week 2

Organic Gardening Calendar
5 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

If you don’t know by now to get those seeds started, there’s no hope for you. But this week is a good time to look at all the woody plants in the yard and do some trimming.

Things you will need:
Pruning Shears
Hand saw
Bleach

Around here 2007 was the most devastating year on record weather wise. We had a very early spring and a very late hard freeze in Late April or early May, I can’t recall which, but the damage was beyond anything I could have imagined.

Even if you were spared the wrath of Mother Nature last year, there is always dead wood and suckers that need to be trimmed.

First, you need to get out your cutting tools and disinfect them. Use a bleach/ water mix; wipe down the blades, handles, every thing. You want to be sure you are not bringing in any fungi or mildew spores to your plants. After every cut, dip your tools in the bleach water mix.

Inspect your trees, for dead wood. Remove dead wood with a straight cut that is sloped such that water will not accumulate on the surface of the cut. Cut the dead wood as close to the main stem or trunk as possible without digging into green wood.

Fruit trees need to be trimmed back so that branches do not rub against each other. The rubbing will cause; essentially an open sore that with invite disease. Remove branches from fruit trees that are growing in toward the center of the tree. These branches block light and air to the tree interior. As with all things growing, being crowded together where moisture can be trapped is a sure recipe for disease.

If last year, you noticed that some of the leaves were turning brown and dying back on a particular branch, you should trim back that branch and take a look at the heart wood. If the center of the open cut has any brown in it whatsoever, there is a good chance the tree has developed fire blight. If you see this brown on the heart wood, SANITIZE your pruning shears or handsaw and cut the branch back at least 12 inches. Check for brown in the heart wood again. Repeat until you have removed all the brown heartwood and are into clean healthy wood by at least 6 inches, 12 is better.

Unfortunately, if all this cutting gets you into the trunk, your tree is probably not going to make it. If it is a tree you don’t care much about, you are better off getting rid of it so it doesn’t spread the blight to other trees. If it is a tree that is important to you, you must start a spraying regimine. The best product I have found for this is MVP. It can be purchased by mail order through GardensAlive! and other organic gardening retailers. When you spray, be sure to follow the label directions carefully. Spray not only the tree that is exhibiting symptoms of blight, but every tree, especially every fruit tree in sight.

But we were talking about trimming. Examine all grafted trees for growth coming up from the ground or below the graft and remove it. These are never going to develop into the variety you purchased. They will suck the life out of the desired plant, or at the least, will over whelm it with growth from the root stock.

I had one experience where in my early gardening days, I did not understand how named varieties are grafted onto sturdy root stock, of a similar type plant. I had purchased a weeping cherry tree from the nursery and it ha been growing very well for 3 years, when our neighbor’s cow came over and used it for a scratching post. The cow broke the tree about 4 inches up from the ground. I straightened up the tree, bound the open wounds tightly together in an effort to save the tree. Very quickly shoots came up from the ground. I didn’t cut them down because I could tell by the leaves it was a cherry tree coming up. I hoped I would get my weeping cherry back. And I did, not the variety I had purchased but a native weeping cherry. The tree grew to 20-25 feet tall and a bit wider in just a few years, and every spring is covered with the palest pink flowers I think I’ve ever seen. It looks almost silver when the sun hits it. It is now my favorite tree. But that was dumb luck. It could have grown up to be a messy tree, but instead I have a 5 trunk weeping cherry.

Trim back Hydrangeas. If you cut into one and the wood is green, be careful to remove only the dead stalks. Some Hydrangeas bloom on last years’ wood. If you cut that out, you will not get blooms this year. Beware of landscapers, if you hire someone to do your trimming, keep a close eye on them. In my experience they don’t know anything about growing plants, just tossing mulch.

If you think you want to cut back Rhododendrons or Azaleas, DON’T. At least not until after they bloom. Their blooms are formed in the preceding summer, so ignorant landscapers or deer can wipe out a full season’s blooms in nothing flat.

Clean your cutting tools thoroughly to store them. You’ll probably want to do more trimming after the leaves pop out and you can see if any are not looking too healthy.

As for the branches you’ve cut off, pick them up immediately. You do not want any parasites or diseases getting into the soil from the diseased wood. Personally, I burn mine. I figure that kills the nasty stuff in the wood and keeps at least that much of it from spreading. If you live where you cannot burn the trimmed wood, bag it and get it to the garbage bin immediately.

Next week planning an orchard.

Next week you will need:
Mail order catalogs, preferably Stark Brothers….