Spring is just around the corner and Paul James, host of HGTV's
Gardening by the Yard, begins the season with an assessment of winter damage on some of his trees and shrubs:
A small Leyland cypress in James' yard suffered a brutal summer and an even more brutal winter. Several of the small branches look dead. Because this variety grows quickly--up to three feet a year--James plans to revive it with a little corrective pruning, and that means cutting dead branches back to the main trunk. Soon it should return to normal shape.
A dwarf Gumpo azalea also shows some damage; however, a quick scraping of the bark reveals plenty of green tissue, which means the plant should rebound. James slightly prunes some of the dead wood.
The cranberrybush viburnums are leafing out, but one is distressed. Although the dieback resembles winter damage, it was actually the result of a fungal disease that didn't affect any neighboring plants. Regardless of the cause, the solution is to remove the dead branches, and the plant should resume its normal shape. To be on the safe side, begin a routine spraying of all viburnums with an all-natural fungicide and continue spraying every seven to 10 days throughout the growing season.
James found a beautiful viburnum at the nursery that needs planting. It's a variety called 'Chicago Luster'. It appears to be container-grown, but it's a ball-and-burlap shrub. James shows how to plant it:
- Begin by removing the plant from its container so you can get an idea how big the root ball is.
- Dig a saucer-shaped hole about twice the diameter of the root ball and two-thirds as deep. In the process, avoid loosening the soil at the bottom of the hole, because this can cause the plant to settle too deeply in the hole. But do loosen the sides of the planting hole with a garden fork so that the roots can more easily penetrate into the surrounding soil.
- Set the plant in the hole, and verify that it's at the proper depth.
- Remove the burlap from around the top half of the root ball or get rid of it altogether.
- James doesn't recommend improving the soil when planting trees and shrubs--they grow best in their native soil--but in this case he makes an exception. The soil in this particular spot isn't native--it's fill dirt. So he blends the excavated soil with the improved, composted soil from the container.
- Add the soil--or blended soil--to fill the planting hole, gently tamping the soil as you go with your feet to eliminate any air pockets.
- Water well, and top the soil with a thick layer of bark mulch.
A 'Tanyosho' pine (a cultivar of Japanese red pine) that James planted last year in a container did well over the winter, and now it's time to prune the emerging candles (long slender shoots that grow from buds at the end of each branch in the spring) to maintain the tree's classic shape. Using sharp shears, James snips off roughly half of each candle. You can use this candle-pruning technique on any pine to maintain its shape and make it a bit bushier.
Weeds pop up in your planting beds no matter how much mulch you use--especially around the edges. Many people would use a herbicide for this job, but James is an advocate of the old-fashioned way--pulling them out by hand. Grassy weeds tend to come up easily with a gentle tug, especially when you've taken the time to water beds the day before. Weeds with taproots aren't all that hard to remove either, especially when you use a weeding tool such as a Japanese hori-hori.
Last fall James planted 200 daffodils in his conifer bed. Some are still blooming, but most of the blossoms have faded, and it's time to deadhead each of the plants so that the plant's energy goes back into bulb and root development rather than into seed production. Scissors or shears can do the job, but sometimes a gentle tug is all that's needed to remove the spent flowers, and that's a whole lot easier.
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