Archive for September 2011
Catch fall fever: Tips to properly prune, mulch as cooler
BERTAUSKI COLUMN: Catch fall fever: Tips to properly prune, mulch as cooler temps draw us outside
by Editorial, postandcourier.com
September 25th 2011
With cooler temperatures arriving, many people will spend more time in the garden. Fall fever is undersold compared to spring fever, but it’s a great time to plant.
Cool temperatures favor root growth, which helps get trees and shrubs established before heat stress arrives.
Pruning is another favorite autumn activity. You can prune any time of the year, but fall and winter are often considered the best.
Damaged branches and cross-branching are easier to see and correct. There’s also less sap bleeding from the wounds. Bleeding is not harmful, it’s just unsightly.
If the tree or shrub is valued for flowers, timing is critical. Woody plants either flower on last year’s growth or the current season’s.
For example, azaleas set flower buds for next spring this past summer, so you won’t want to prune now or you’ll remove most of the buds and see very few flowers in the spring.
Crape myrtles, however, flower on the current season’s wood, so fall pruning will not affect next year’s flowers. When in doubt, it’s safe to prune just after flowering to avoid affecting bud development. If flowering is not a concern, like with most large trees, then prune at your leisure.
Pruning wounds don’t heal, they seal. Tree bark is the layer around the living tissue of the tree. When a branch is cut away, it exposes the active wood to insects and disease.
In order to close the wound, the tree will form callus tissue over it, sealing it off from the exposed elements. Pruning paint does not help the wound seal, so save your money. Only a correctly pruned branch will hasten the process.
Avoid leaving branch stubs by always pruning a branch back to the trunk or another branch.
Think of the letter Y. Prune the left line back to where the two lines split so it looks like a single line going up and angling to the right. For smaller shrubs, prune branches just above a bud.
For large branches, use a three-cut method to avoid striping the bark on the trunk. The first cut is only a third of the way through the limb and several inches from the trunk. This cut is made beneath the limb. The second cut is a few inches beyond the first cut and all the way through the branch from the top.
When the limb drops, the bark will peel back to the first cut and the limb will safely fall off without swinging. The third cut is near the base of the limb. Be sure the third cut occurs just outside the swollen collar that contains a high concentration of sealing hormones.
Some trees embed the bark between the branch and the trunk as it grows. The larger it grows, the more bark is embedded and the weaker the connection becomes.
Bradford pears are notorious for this type of growth and it’s the reason why they split during storms. Pruning off susceptible branches could prevent damage to your house or vehicles.
Use leaves as mulch
Raking leaves is an autumn pastime, but there are alternatives to bagging leaves for pickup. Consider raking or blowing leaves into the planting beds as mulch.
It’s not the most visually appealing, but in naturalized areas like the backyard, it’s a good alternative.
Another option is to chop up leaves with the lawn mower.
Mulching mowers recirculate leaves under the deck to shred plant material into small pieces that rapidly break down into the soil. Consider waiting to rake and mow until all the leaves drop to avoid bagging. Research has shown this has no negative impact on turf.
A visual guide to pruning
Here are some examples of what — and what not — to do:
Tony Bertauski is a horticulture instructor at Trident Technical College. To give feedback, e-mail him at tony.bertauski@tridenttech.edu
Original Page: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/sep/25/bertauski-column-catch-fall-fever-tips-properly-pr/
Shared from Read It Later
Felco Number 7
I love these things. At first I was a little skeptical. Swivel handle? Ergonomic handle?
Come on.
After all I have been used to using an 10 year old pair of felcos. Number 2 I believe? Very old. Very basic.
But after pruning my first woody ornamental with these babies, man, I’m in love.
The twisting, swivel handle takes a minute to get used to. Once you do, you find the repeated pressure of opening and closing the handle to be satisfying easy. Smooth. How did I ever prune without the swivel action? These pruners are great. Nice. Well built. Very Nice.
Thank you Felco !
Go get you some. Prune some bushes.
U of T recognized for innovation in urban forestry | theVARSITY.ca
U of T recognized for innovation in urban forestry
thevarsity.ca | Sep 25th 2011
The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Forestry was honoured for its innovation in, and commitment to, urban forestry at Canada’s inaugural National Tree Day celebration and award ceremony on Wednesday. The award, which was made of reclaimed local wood, was presented by LEAF (Local Enhancement & Appreciation of Forests) and Tree Canada.
The event was a part of National Forest Week, which this year also coincides with the UN Year of Forests. It asked Canadians to reflect on the benefits trees provide, including clean air, greater wildlife habitats, and reductions in energy demand and consumption.
“Invest in a Green Future,” read the giant banner that marked the ceremony. Richard Brooks, Forest Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace, urged people to show their own appreciation for trees, to “hug” one if necessary, and to continue to show an interest in a field where “innovation is needed.”
Sandy Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Forestry, said that while recognition came slowly to the program, people are becoming more aware of the prevalence of trees in urban environments, or “green infrastructure,” and “how that interfaces with ‘grey infrastructure’.”
U of T’s Faculty of Forestry, established in 1907, is the oldest forestry faculty in Canada and the second oldest in North America. According to Smith, it was where the term “urban forestry” was coined.
“We all know we benefit from [trees] but many people take them for granted,” said Janet McKay, Executive Director for LEAF.
LEAF is a not-for-profit charitable organization that promotes the planting and maintenance of trees in urban areas — such as backyards and schools — and facilitates carbon-offset projects. It was voted Toronto’s Best Activist Organization by NOW Magazine in 2010. In a recent report, the city estimated that two-thirds of the city’s ash trees, approximately 600,000 on private property, will be harmed by the emerald ash borer, an invasive and highly destructive species of beetle. McKay says that such events in urban forests can drastically affect people’s quality of life.
“It’s a crisis, but it’s also an opportunity when people are listening,” she said.
The city’s manager of urban forest renewal, Beth McEwan, is reported to have said that private property owners are responsible for replacing dead trees to maintain “Toronto’s tree canopy.” McKay, though, says that replacing large trees with seedlings takes too long and that they don’t usually survive.
“Planting trees is good but we need to protect what we already have,” she stressed.
Original Page: http://www.thevarsity.ca/articles/47689
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A visit with the ‘head gardener’ at Asheville’s Biltmore Estate
A visit with the ‘head gardener’ at Asheville’s Biltmore Estate
by Polly McDaniel, citizen-times.com
September 24th 2011
This summer, visitors to the Biltmore Estates rose garden stood, mobile telephones in hand, texting. But rather than missing the beauty around them, they were interacting with it, voting for their favorite flowers.
Not far away, in the Conservatorys courtyard, stood a planting in the shape of a Tiffany butterfly on a vertical wall. It was an example of haute gardening that grabbed the attention of the horticulture world and national media.
Cellphone voting? Blooming walls? Heavens, what would Frederick Law Olmsted, Biltmores original landscaper, say?
Parker Andes just smiles.
Biltmore Estates director of horticulure casts his practiced eye on designs in the walled garden, the Conservatory and even the arrangement of trees.
Andes balances Biltmore tradition with ways to move the garden forward to keep it interesting and current.
His keen eye for the larger landscape, all 8,000 acres of it, makes him more than just an administrator with 60 gardeners and arborists under him.
A great part of my job is I get to see almost all of those 8,000 acres, he said.
Ever-changing landscape
For Andes, a good day at the office is actually one outside it, one that may end with mud on his shoes.
With an easy grace, he checks in with garden managers at the Conservatory or the Walled Garden. A garden, even a grand one, offers an ever-changing landscape, Andes noted.
Trees and plants grow and die, he said. A lot of what makes this garden special is the big trees in it. Theres a power in those trees, an emotional feel that comes from the age and how the trees were laid out.
Andes spends time with Biltmore arborists, such as Bill Hascher, evaluating trees, working on ways to save them or properly replace them. Some 4,200 of the most majestic trees are cataloged, many of them even protected with lightning rods.
But theres no saving every tree. One called the baby tree or Cornelia tree in the azalea garden was recently lost. The cucumber magnolia is believed to have been planted when George and Edith Vanderbilts daughter, Cornelia, was born in 1900.
Original Page: http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20110925/LIVING/309250039/A-visit-head-gardener-Asheville-s-Biltmore-Estate
Shared from Read It Later
A Little Horticultural Therapy…
Parks and Other Green Environments: Essential Comp. of a Healthy Human Habitat
Nature Deficit Disorder.
We need nature. It helps. Greatly.
Drop the political differences. Go hug a Tree…
Year of the Geranium
National Garden Bureau : Year Of…
by Active Articles, ngb.org
November 30th -0001
Introduction and Nomenclature
The bedding plants gardeners plant out in late spring and bring inside in autumn are commonly known as geraniums; but geraniums they are not. They are pelargoniums. True geraniums are the cranesbills, hardy North American and European herbaceous perennials; while pelargoniums are semi-tender or tender plants, mostly from South Africa, that have graced our gardens with their large flowers for decades.
We have to remember that botany wasn’t an exact science in the 17th century when the first geraniums and pelargoniums were introduced. So, based on the shape of their fruit, plant collectors generally lumped both together as “geranium.”
To tackle the complex history of geranium or pelargonium, one has to confront the use of common names versus scientific ones. Scientific names give individuals a common language by which they could communicate with other people, no matter the country they are from or what their mother tongue might be.
In 1753 the famous and influential Swedish botanist, Linnaeus, published his two-volume book called Species Plantarum, in which he attempted to pull together the names and descriptions of all known plants. He placed all geranium and pelargonium plant species in the genus Geranium. A few years later, the French botanist L’Heritier, noting that some geranium species of plants were so distinct that they should be in a different genus, formally transferred them from Geranium to Pelargonium.
However, for reasons unknown, this change in names was not accepted by all botanists and garden writers. A theory exists that H.C. Andrews, a prolific and popular garden writer and illustrator in the early 1800’s, rejected the name Pelargonium in his book on geraniums, thus firmly attaching the name Geranium to all members of the family including the group of widely grown garden plants – namely the zonal or bedding geranium, correctly known today as Pelargonium x hortorum
Last Day of Summer
Well, today is the last official day of summer. Tomorrow brings the first day of the fall equinox. it’s been a pretty good summer as far as plants go. Higher than average rainfall, an earthquake, hurricane, tropical storms, little drought…
Equinox is Latin for “equal night”. Starting tomorrow the sun sets 12 hours after it rises. From here on out we will have an equal amount of 12 hours days and 12 hour nights.
I can’t wait for lower temps. Leaves changing colors.
Enjoy.
VA.PHC 