A whole new crop of chores springs up.
One of those is pruning your fruit trees and getting them ready for their coat of dormant oil spray. I have little knowledge about pruning fruit trees, but I have a friend that owns an apple and peach orchard. It is my understanding that when an apple tree is pruned, the bottom four limbs should form 90-degree angles and be approximately 2 feet off the ground. This allows the "picker" to walk into the center of the tree and allows for the maximum number of major limbs coming off the trunk.A second factor concerns the "height of the tree". When a trunk or limb is trimmed on the end, its "length" stops growing. The trunk/limb will start to form "outward shoots". I am told that the "ideal tree" will not be taller than the pickers highest reach. Instead, the tree is encouraged to grow outward until its limbs can support the total production desired... Ideally, the apple tree should produce FOUR bushels of apples per tree. The idea behind pruning fruit trees is to allow the apple to grow to maximum size without stunting production. Since apples are produced upon "2nd year" and older limbs, this would involve pruning the unnecessary "new sprouts" and removing the older limbs that are "too close together" and/or showing signs of damage. This allows the tree to direct its energy into fewer limbs, making the apples grow larger and maintaining the desired production. I guess it all boils down to this. You want a short, fat tree with relatively few healthy, stout limbs and limited offshoots to produce the apples. More limbs are not necessarily better.
Hydrangeas – I love hydrangeas. Absolutely love them. Bigleaf hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla, also called French, Japanese or Snowball hydrangea, is found in the yards of homes all over the Rogue Valley. We also find them in grocery stores, wrapped in brightly colored foil or cellophane with big bows on them. More about those later.
Hydrangeas like sun in the morning, shade in the afternoon and moist, well-drained soil. They are more sensitive to frost that some other plants. Damage to the buds occurring in winter and late spring can be avoided by covering the plant with and old sheet or blanket or a large cardboard box when temps drop past freezing. Hydrangeas are excellent patio plants and do very well in containers. You can move the containers indoors on very cold nights.
When planting hydrangeas, prepare the soil in a very wide area. Hydrangea should have a whopping 50 pounds of composted organic matter per ten square feet and that should be incorporated into the top foot of the soil with a shovel. Organic matter holds nutrients and water in the soil and helps prevent the stress that occurs in fluctuations in soil moisture.
Science tells us that the actual mechanism that determines color variation in hydrangeas is due to the presence or absence of aluminum compounds in the flower. If the plant has aluminum, the color is blue. If the quantities are smaller the color is somewhere in between. If it is absent, the flowers are pink. When your soil is more acidic, aluminum is generally more available to the roots and your blooms will be blue. When your soil is more alkaline, aluminum availability is decreased and your blooms will be pink. To change you blooms from pink to blue, you can broadcast ½ cup of wettable sulfur per 10 square feet and water it in. To make the flowers pink, broadcast on cup of dolomitic lime per 10 square feet and water that into the soil. Both of these treatments can take up to a year to see a noticeable difference. A quicker way to achieve these changes is through a liquid drench. To make your blooms bluer during the growing season, dissolve one tablespoon of alum in a gallon of water and drench the soil around the plant in March, April and May. To make the blooms pink, dissolve one tablespoon of hydrated lime in a gallon of water and drench the soil around the plant during the same months as above. White, cream or those lovely green hydrangeas don’t generally change color no matter what you put on them.
Occasionally, hydrangeas will fail to bloom. If this happens, there could be a number of reasons why. Frost damage to the flower buds or pruning in the late summer where you may have actually cut off the forming buds is the most common reasons. If your hydrangea is planted in shade, which is too deep, it won’t bloom. If your fertilizer is too high in nitrogen, bloom will be affected. And, finally, your plant may simply not be old enough.
Let’s talk a bit about “gift” hydrangeas. Hydrangeas that come wrapped in colorful foil are beautiful. There are, however, pitfalls that come with these plants.
The most prevalent problem comes from trying to water them properly. Most of the “gift” hydrangeas you purchase are already root bound when you bring them home. The roots have so overgrown their pot that they dry out and the plant wilts much more quickly than we think it should. So we water it. This fills up the foil around the pot and can lead to root rot. Root rot causes the plant to wilt and we wind up thinking we haven’t watered it enough, so we give it more as the health of the plant deteriorates.
Let’s say that we’ve done all the right things with our “gift” hydrangea. We got it out of its foil wrapper, it’s gorgeous, it’s been watered as it should have, and it’s gotten plenty of light. Now we can take it outside and plonk it into a hole in the ground, right? Maybe not.
These hydrangeas have been grown in a greenhouse and have been bred specifically to produce a ton of blooms in a frost-free environment. The producers of these plants don’t really care if the plant lives 25 years; they are only concerned with lots of blooms. You may or may not get a plant that will survive in your garden. If you like a challenge, it’s worth a try. The results are less predictable if the hydrangea you’re putting in your garden came with a bow versus one that was born and bred for the garden.
Either way, the best time to plant hydrangeas is mid to late spring, when the chances of frost are negligible.
Old, established hydrangeas can be divided in the early spring by digging them up and dividing the clump with a shovel, much as you would divide a perennial. This way, several plants can be obtained from one mature clump. Be sure you water the plants very well and keep watering all summer. Perhaps you have a friend with some gorgeous hydrangeas who could use the help in dividing them and maybe will give you one or two in exchange.
One of those is pruning your fruit trees and getting them ready for their coat of dormant oil spray. I have little knowledge about pruning fruit trees, but I have a friend that owns an apple and peach orchard. It is my understanding that when an apple tree is pruned, the bottom four limbs should form 90-degree angles and be approximately 2 feet off the ground. This allows the "picker" to walk into the center of the tree and allows for the maximum number of major limbs coming off the trunk.A second factor concerns the "height of the tree". When a trunk or limb is trimmed on the end, its "length" stops growing. The trunk/limb will start to form "outward shoots". I am told that the "ideal tree" will not be taller than the pickers highest reach. Instead, the tree is encouraged to grow outward until its limbs can support the total production desired... Ideally, the apple tree should produce FOUR bushels of apples per tree. The idea behind pruning fruit trees is to allow the apple to grow to maximum size without stunting production. Since apples are produced upon "2nd year" and older limbs, this would involve pruning the unnecessary "new sprouts" and removing the older limbs that are "too close together" and/or showing signs of damage. This allows the tree to direct its energy into fewer limbs, making the apples grow larger and maintaining the desired production. I guess it all boils down to this. You want a short, fat tree with relatively few healthy, stout limbs and limited offshoots to produce the apples. More limbs are not necessarily better.
Hydrangeas – I love hydrangeas. Absolutely love them. Bigleaf hydrangea, Hydrangea macrophylla, also called French, Japanese or Snowball hydrangea, is found in the yards of homes all over the Rogue Valley. We also find them in grocery stores, wrapped in brightly colored foil or cellophane with big bows on them. More about those later.
Hydrangeas like sun in the morning, shade in the afternoon and moist, well-drained soil. They are more sensitive to frost that some other plants. Damage to the buds occurring in winter and late spring can be avoided by covering the plant with and old sheet or blanket or a large cardboard box when temps drop past freezing. Hydrangeas are excellent patio plants and do very well in containers. You can move the containers indoors on very cold nights.
When planting hydrangeas, prepare the soil in a very wide area. Hydrangea should have a whopping 50 pounds of composted organic matter per ten square feet and that should be incorporated into the top foot of the soil with a shovel. Organic matter holds nutrients and water in the soil and helps prevent the stress that occurs in fluctuations in soil moisture.
Science tells us that the actual mechanism that determines color variation in hydrangeas is due to the presence or absence of aluminum compounds in the flower. If the plant has aluminum, the color is blue. If the quantities are smaller the color is somewhere in between. If it is absent, the flowers are pink. When your soil is more acidic, aluminum is generally more available to the roots and your blooms will be blue. When your soil is more alkaline, aluminum availability is decreased and your blooms will be pink. To change you blooms from pink to blue, you can broadcast ½ cup of wettable sulfur per 10 square feet and water it in. To make the flowers pink, broadcast on cup of dolomitic lime per 10 square feet and water that into the soil. Both of these treatments can take up to a year to see a noticeable difference. A quicker way to achieve these changes is through a liquid drench. To make your blooms bluer during the growing season, dissolve one tablespoon of alum in a gallon of water and drench the soil around the plant in March, April and May. To make the blooms pink, dissolve one tablespoon of hydrated lime in a gallon of water and drench the soil around the plant during the same months as above. White, cream or those lovely green hydrangeas don’t generally change color no matter what you put on them.
Occasionally, hydrangeas will fail to bloom. If this happens, there could be a number of reasons why. Frost damage to the flower buds or pruning in the late summer where you may have actually cut off the forming buds is the most common reasons. If your hydrangea is planted in shade, which is too deep, it won’t bloom. If your fertilizer is too high in nitrogen, bloom will be affected. And, finally, your plant may simply not be old enough.
Let’s talk a bit about “gift” hydrangeas. Hydrangeas that come wrapped in colorful foil are beautiful. There are, however, pitfalls that come with these plants.
The most prevalent problem comes from trying to water them properly. Most of the “gift” hydrangeas you purchase are already root bound when you bring them home. The roots have so overgrown their pot that they dry out and the plant wilts much more quickly than we think it should. So we water it. This fills up the foil around the pot and can lead to root rot. Root rot causes the plant to wilt and we wind up thinking we haven’t watered it enough, so we give it more as the health of the plant deteriorates.
Let’s say that we’ve done all the right things with our “gift” hydrangea. We got it out of its foil wrapper, it’s gorgeous, it’s been watered as it should have, and it’s gotten plenty of light. Now we can take it outside and plonk it into a hole in the ground, right? Maybe not.
These hydrangeas have been grown in a greenhouse and have been bred specifically to produce a ton of blooms in a frost-free environment. The producers of these plants don’t really care if the plant lives 25 years; they are only concerned with lots of blooms. You may or may not get a plant that will survive in your garden. If you like a challenge, it’s worth a try. The results are less predictable if the hydrangea you’re putting in your garden came with a bow versus one that was born and bred for the garden.
Either way, the best time to plant hydrangeas is mid to late spring, when the chances of frost are negligible.
Old, established hydrangeas can be divided in the early spring by digging them up and dividing the clump with a shovel, much as you would divide a perennial. This way, several plants can be obtained from one mature clump. Be sure you water the plants very well and keep watering all summer. Perhaps you have a friend with some gorgeous hydrangeas who could use the help in dividing them and maybe will give you one or two in exchange.
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