Tough Love - Importance of Pruning for Shrubs & Trees

I know we all want to talk about Spring planting and bed and lawn preparations, but Erika just gave me a magazine article on pruning shrubs & trees. The topic is related to an earlier post on Erika's Forsythia bushes (coming soon, I hope). She implemented the tips from this article and her bushes are growing very well. The article is "Tough Love" by Liz Primeau in Canadian Gardening, April 1997, 26-27. (Don't expect perfect citation style here!) I want to get the information down so we'll have it handy when the time comes.

Points to consider:

• know when to prune and what your goal is
• know the shrubs natural shape – rounded, arching, vase-shaped
• rejuvenate by carefully removing dead wood to encourage growth
• younger wood is resistant to disease and more productive than older wood

Prune early-flowering shrubs like Forsythia soon after the flowers fade as they bloom on wood produced the year before:

• don’t remove more than 1/3 or could damage the shrub
• identify and remove dead or diseased branches first, right at ground level
• make cuts close to root level, but not so close to damage branches you want to keep

Prune to carefully open the center of the plant so light can reach the inside:

• remove crossing or rubbing branches
• where you make the cut on a branch can affect its future growth – cut just above a bud node
• trim the tips of the remaining branches, cutting just above an outward-growing bud
• trim just enough to reform the natural shape
• look for extremely long branches, or high-arching or low-drooping ones

When pruning is complete, fertilize with blood meal – promotes bud-growth for the following year.

Tools for woody shrubs:

• 24” (60 cm) lopper (for getting inside)
• curved pruning saw (for thick branches)
• sharp secateurs
• leather-palmed gloves with gauntlets

Node - where new branches erupt
Secateurs - small pruning shears with a spring that holds the handles open and a single blade that closes against a flat surface
Loppers - a type of scissors used for pruning twigs and small branches; usually operated with two hands, and with handles around 65 cm long to give good leverage; divided into 2 types: bypass and anvil

"Residential Landscaping Basics with Angela Sommers"

On February 22, 2012, I attended the web conference, "Residential Landscaping Basics with Angela Sommers", here at RDC. It was excellent! I'll post the notes I frantically scribbled about designing the layout and planting of yard and gardens in a later post. This evening I'm waiting for the web conference to begin for the next Hort Week 2012 Winter Speaker Series: Environmentally Friendly Yards with Dr. Ken Fry. Join us if you can at 7:00 pm in Room 932 here at RDC.

Angela Sommers
Biography: Angela Sommers works as a Landscape Architectural Technologist, owning her own company since 1998, she designs and constructs residential, commercial and municipal gardens. Angela has a great passion and commitment to the environment and community. She is a regular instructor of Landscape Design and Spiritual Gardening courses for Olds College as well as being a feature presenter at Hort Week. Angela’s passion for aesthetic and sustainable landscape / garden design continues to expand bringing people and gardens together in fun and meaningful ways.

Succulents

Michelle and I were discussing plants that would be ideal for her bare, desert-like, hilly front yard. She cannot seem to keep plants from dying in the south-facing dry conditions. Succulents would be the answer, we thought. And I remembered our landscape specialist, Rene, telling me to plant a certain succulent in my south-facing flower bed. It has quite a lovely silvery green, velvety leaf and it was called ___ [something] ears. She said it spreads like crazy, makes a great ground cover plant and I was to make sure it is contained within the scope of the bed. And I proceeded to tell Michelle all about it – but I couldn’t remember the name. I decided to Google it – and these were my search terms:
• Donkey’s Ear (yes, there is such a plant) a little velvety, and little silvery green, but it just didn’t look quite right. And Michelle pointed out it grows in Madagascar...
• Rabbit’s Ear – so again, a little velvety, a little silvery green, but not good for our Zone. Something not quite right. And I noticed one of the pages on Rabbit’s Ear plants asked the question – Rabbit’s Ear or Lamb’s Ear? So I searched Lamb’s Ear and...
• Lamb’s Ear. This is it! This is the plant that I have ready to plant in my south-facing bed.

Here are a couple of sites on Succulents, as drought-resistant, almost-impossible-to-kill plants, for Michelle:

SimplySucculents

Succulents for Northern Gardens

Lovable Lamb's Ears Plant

Lamb's Ear (HGTV)

Anyone with personal experience with this plant or other succulents, we'd love to hear about it. I planted mine to winter last year, and plan to move the plants to its permanent home this year, so I have no personal info on this interesting plant.

Maria's Garden Photos 2009

I tried to create a slideshow gallery of my 2009 garden photos, but haven't figured out how to do that yet. So I've linked to my online album. 2009 was the first year my garden seemed to really bloom. And each year I've added more plants to my flower beds. So the 2010 gardening photos will be posted soon. I'll try not to duplicate the images, just show what is newly planted and newly blooming each year. Enjoy!

Maria's 2009 Flower Garden

Hello and welcome to our gardening blog!

Even though the Central Alberta growing season is rather short, gardening can be on your mind all year long. Beginning in the winter (I know, an odd place to begin when thinking of gardening and planting), planning takes place with the first arrival of the annual seed catalogues. In winter we watch the weather - too little snow means not enough moisture in the soil, too much snow can adversely affect Spring runoff, cold temperatures could mean winter-kill, and the list goes on. Spring comes and May long weekend cannot arrive soon enough - the traditional planting weekend in my family going back to the homesteading days of my grandparents. In summer we wait for the late-blooming perennials and days of family events and living outside with your gardens. Fall arrives and we think of the many things we need to accomplish to put our gardens to bed before the first snowfall of the season. And the cycle begins again. Here we will offer tips, advice and discussion for other gardeners of all abilities, as well as provide a place, a gallery, to look at breathtaking blooms from our gardens.