Trains, boats, & planes, & coaches lead to coppiced trees

No boats actually, but the other three came into play, and clearly TPP is not in Kansas any more, not that he was or even wanted to be.  But here on the north west coast of Italy is where we find ourselves in a rented villa of an heir to the Fiat fortunes.  One of the many things that give it away are how they treat their street trees.  They use a lot of lindens, that are sometimes called lime trees because their flowers smell sweet rather like those of citrus trees.  And they prune the heck out of them, a type of coppicing.  In this little town the crowns are pruned to meet over the center of the street, which is typically enough one-way and narrow.  And you drive under these leafy arches.  It is quite lovely and as you know TPP does not like to see trees and shrubs poodled.  But this is a bit different and on a grand scale.  This is just not done in the USA except on a small scale in some gardens.  

Such a deal for you! Books on trees, and pruning, and more.

Alex Shigo was a singular fellow, a noted tree pathologist, and he really knew his trees.  TPP was a postdoc on a project collaborating with Alex, not to mention working with befriending his son-in-law, Dr. Chips, and his daughter along the way.  At any rate just a few blogs ago, the topic dealt with tree injury and TPP provided a link to Shigo and Trees Associates as a source for information on pruning and tree injury.  So not only do they have highly informative books and pamphlets written by Alex, but mention The Phytophactor and get a discount!  TPP doesn't get anything, so this blog remains unsullied by money, the deal is for readers, not TPP.  You can even get a Touch Tree bumper sticker.

Spring bits and pieces

Here's some bits and pieces that have popped up along with the spring flowers. First, remember when planting new trees and shrubs, especially those that have been grown in plastic pots, to tease out pot bound roots. A large blunt screw driver or a large plastic tent stake work effectively to dislodge and tease out pot bound roots before planting. Teasing out roots is rather like combing out tangled hair or like getting a lump of chewing gum out of the coat of a Maine coon cat. The cat doesn't chew gum, and the child had no idea how such a thing could happen, but some local anesthetic was needed, in this case a couple of sardines. When a cat's nose & mouth are so occupied they notice little else.  So if  you want successful transplants you would do well to untangle root balls. 
Second, now is the time to plant early kitchen garden crops. Broccoli, spinach, lettuces, and the like, do very well in cool weather especially under a floating row cover. To maximize yield with minimal space use some interplantings. TPP's best such trick is to plant broccoli at about 18" spacing, and then interplant with bibb or romaine lettuce seedlings. The lettuce will mature and be ready to harvest before the broccoli would crowd it. 
Third, this is the time of year to prune things. Sorry TPP can easily show you how to prune, but it's hard to describe, hard to use hard fast rules because trees and shrubs vary. It's so easy when you know how woody plants grow but so hard to transfer that knowledge verbally. 
Fourth, nothing says spring as much as woodland wildflowers, perennial ephemerals that grow fast, flower, and fruit before the leaves above close the canopy. Our earliest are liverwort, trilliums, and bloodroot. Nothing is more cheerful than finding these small plants poking up through the leaf litter. If you have a shady, tree-covered portion of your property, then this is one of the easiest of all natural gardens to develop.

Bad and Ugly

Landscaping is usually either pretty good, or pretty bad and very ugly, and nothing serves up the latter category any better than poodled shrubs.  So the dear people over at Garden Rant really get it right with regard to KnockOut roses.  What you get when you poodle the very over-used, and seldom cared for correctly, KnockOut roses it's not just a crime against nature, but an abomination!  So here is my warning; the images are horrifying!  Somebody should have their hedge pruners & clippers taken away.  Keep them away from junipers and yews.  These roses are not big favorites, in fact they come close to TPP's do not plant list, but he actually has some and they do provide a lot of color. Their care is about the same as raspberries, but this is apparently beyond most people. 

Tree pruning - man with a machete

Pruning trees correctly is a skill; pruning trees well is an art.  When you see a person, OK, in this case it will always be a man, heading toward a tree with the intent of pruning it and he's carrying a machete, nothing good will come of this.  No connection exists between pruning and a machete.  Most certainly the tree will suffer and more than likely the machete wielder will injure themselves in the bargain, and yes, TPP hears some of you out there saying, he got what he deserved.  Anybody who desides to use a machete to prune a tree knows so little about pruning, or the use of a machete, that they should not be allowed near either one.  To someone who knows pruning, you can see the results of bad pruning decades afterwards, tsk, tsk. Now of course taking a machete away from someone may not be easy.  But maybe they can be distracted by that shiny new saw!

Thorny and terrifying memories

The knock-out roses were an exception; they grew, and grew, well last year.  They look best when periodically cut back anyways, but this is not one of TPP's favorite gardening chores.  It conjures up some painful memories. In some minor way this is like the opening scene of Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen awakens in a bad way to discover that his nightmare of hearing helicopter blades whumping the air were actually the blades of a ceiling fan, but it didn't matter because he was back in Saigon anyways.  So you lop off a two foot section of the rose bush, and you try to throw the branch to the side, but it's thorns cling to your gloves.  You try to get a new grip, but now the branch has reached over your shoulder and grabbed your shirt, and no matter which way to pull, you still are getting grabbed by your shirt sleeve. So it goes, branch after branch, thorns tugging at your clothes and ripping any exposed skin.  Then the memories come flooding back of rattan palms in the dim understory of Queensland's rain forests.  These palms climb by means of grappling hooks, recurved spines on three sides of long, whip-like modified shoots

 with the tensile strength of piano wire, and they extend across your path as if waiting to garrot the next field biologist who happens along.  There were three species of three different sizes that TPP fondly named "rip your ankle off", "rip your leg off", and "rip you head off".  As soon as you were grappled, you had to stop, immediately, reach around with a pair of pruning shears, and cut the shoot.  With the tension relieved it would usually fall off; just never try to pull away.  This gets tricky when grabbed from different sides all at once.  Locally they are called "lawyer canes" because once they get their hooks into you, .....   With the ravages of the rattans, field gear just got shreaded.  You just keep on working, branch by branch, shrub by shrub, until the bloody roses are pruned.  Then you get a margarita to help the scary memories subside.  Maybe the roses won't grow so well this year; maybe the next pruning won't be so bad.  Maybe the war won't so be horrible this tour.  And the nightmares start again.

Prunophobia? Don't stand too close!

The single most common gardening mistake TPP observes is poor pruning, including none pruning.  Knowing how plants grow is essential, but you can learn most of what you need to know by careful observation.  Knowing what you want to accomplish is also essential.  Knowing that poodling (and here) is a total no-no is totally essential.  So what can possibly go wrong? No wonder many people fear pruning to the point that they make an even greater mistake - they don't prune at all.  Now you put pruning shears into TPP's hands and that mild-mannered, easy-going botanist turns into a clipping demon!  Don't stand too close, and please, never, ever point!  Snip!  Oops.  Sorry.  Of course some plants are a struggle.  Two dwarf apples of the same variety, and one is well-behaved and the other is growing all over the place.  They are clones aren't they?  And who would have ever thought that one of the most difficult pruning challenges is a thread-leafed (branched) Chamaecyparis?  Don't prune enough and it takes over; prune too much and it won't grow back.  Oh, and it grows fast too, so it's real battle.  Here's the things to look for with fruit trees: multiple leaders (leave only 1), downward growing branches, criss-crossing branches, weak branches, damaged or broken branches, suckers (a problem with grafted stock), vigorous new growth (reduce by 1/2 to 1/3).  If more than 2/3s of a branch needs to be removed, remove the whole thing.  Cut branches perpendicularly and cleanly.  Cut branches off flush to the stem; they heal faster.  Don't cheap out on your equipment. Don't ever go near a tree or shrub with a chain saw unless to intend to basal prune it. One real problem is that you need the right size clippers for the job, and they get bigger for bigger branches, but then they can be too big for some people's hands (this from Mrs. Phactor).  Good loppers are needed for big branches or major pruning, and they can provide a lot of mechanical advantage.  Keep them sharp.  If you find a rusty pair laying around somewhere, it may belong to yours truly.  A pair went missing somewhere out there a few years back.  TPP's earliest lesson on pruning came from a great gardener who told his young helper to prune out the oldest stems from some lilacs and beauty bushes.  When TPP asked how much to prune, his response was "there should be room for the birds to fly".  When the job was done, and being inspected, he let out a big sigh, "Ah, here I was thinking of sparrows, and you were thinking of eagles."  But, nonetheless, for the next few years they looked great. 

Annual Berry Bramble Battle

One of the annual March chores is doing battle with the raspberry bramble. The reason for this is simple: the aerial shoots (canes) of red raspberries have a biennial cycle. In their first year new canes remain vegetative and unbranched, growing into long whips and over wintering in this condition. In their second year, raspberry canes branch, flower, and fruit, and then these shoots die as the season ends. This means you have to do two things each spring: one, remove all of last year’s dead canes, and two, cut all of the year-old canes back to about two feet tall to promote branching, flowering, and fruiting, and less flopping of fruit laden canes. This means you have to make sure you can tell the difference between live one-year-old canes and dead two-year-old canes; this sounds easy, but people screw up easier things than this. Every time you make a mistake, you shoot yourself in the berry basket. All of this is made more fun because the canes tend to tangle together and they’re armed with prickles (yes, this is a technical term for smallish thorns). Now these prickles are nothing compared to the thorns on climbing roses, and those are nothing compared to climbing rattan palms, but the joy and the bleeding are there. Other than this red raspberries are a pretty carefree, reliable, bountiful, and delicious crop, except of course once you realize you must establish a de-militarized zone, preferably a mine field or retired star wars laser cannons, where any entering raspberries get vaporized. Or as an alternative to bramble warfare, let them spread into the neighbors’ yard.