imple Vegetarian | Gardeners' Holidays 2018: Pruning Day

Winter seems to be at its top right now. When I ventured outdoor yesterday for my afternoon walk, it was so cold that I grew to emerge as back in advance than I'd long past blocks. Today's not as sour bloodless, but it is nevertheless below freezing, and our yard is a flat, barren desert, with now not whatever to be seen however vain grass and bare branches. And consistent with vintage Punxsutawney Phil, we've were given got as a minimum six greater weeks of this to stay up for.

Yet if iciness is certainly at its peak, which means its decline ought to be simply throughout the nook. And absolutely, in case you appearance carefully, it's far possible to discover the first faint sigs of coming close to spring: tiny recommendations of leaf buds at the branches of our plum trees. So as little as it looks like spring proper now, it's none too early to begin planning if we want our lawn to be equipped whilst it arrives.

Our seed order from Fedco has arrived (with the exception of two plants that were on back order), and we've already gone through it and determined just how much we want to plant of what. The first batch of seedlings, the parsley, is due to be started soon, and Brian has already dug out a bunch of dirt to sterilize for our seed-starting system (even though he had to chip it out with the viciousStructron Super Shovel, because the ground was frozen solid). But in addition to these usual February tasks, we had one more job to attend to this year in preparation for the coming growing season: pruning our plum trees.

For the last years, our plum crop has been suffering substantially from brown rot. I to start with tried to deal with it thru truly doing away with any diseased fruits as quick as I noticed them, however even as the depredations of the disorder have been mixed final 12 months with pilfering with the aid of squirrels to deprive us of certainly our whole crop, I determined I couldn't provide you with the cash for to play around. So I did a few studies to try to decide out a way to manage each the ones pests efficaciously?First, to preserve the fungus at bay lengthy sufficient to allow the fruits ripen, after which to hold the squirrels' grubby little paws off them until we were able to harvest them.

The assets I consulted said the first-rate manner to prevent brown rot is to prune the wooden effectively. Beyond simply putting off all culmination and branches that display any sign of ailment, you want to prune the entire tree to preserve the branches from entering touch with every exceptional. Good air move across the fruit is high to maintaining it wholesome. And the nice time to do this pruning, they said, is in February, right before the trees begin to leaf out in earnest.

Since Brian is a foot taller than I am and has higher grip strength, he did the real pruning, at the same time as I stood lower returned from the wood, directed him toward the first-rate spots to clip, and collected the branches right into a pile after he'd eliminated them. The suggestions he emerge as trying to follow, based totally on some reading he'd finished on-line, had been:

1. Wherever possible, remove branches that directly overlap with other branches.
2. Also, remove branches that point inward toward the main trunk of the tree.
3. When removing a branch, clip it as close to the trunk or limb as possible without damaging the "collar" (a ring of dense wood immediately surrounding the base of the branch).
4. Do not remove more than one-quarter of the "crown" (the total volume of branches).

He quickly found that it wasn't possible to stick to these rules exactly, since removing every branch that overlapped another branch would definitely have meant taking off more than a quarter of the total. (Probably that's partly our fault, since we neglected to prune these trees for the first few years we had them. It may be easier next year.) However, he was able to cut away all the worst offenders without stripping the trees down too heavily. Here's a before-and-after comparison of the Mount Royal tree, which has the widest branch spread of the three; the difference is subtle, but you can tell there's a bit more light coming through the branches in the second picture, and the pile of trimmings on the ground is testimony to how much we took off.

This is just the first stage in our three-point plum protection plan. Some time before the trees actually blossom, we plan to pick up a bottle of an appropriate fungicide that's not too hazardous and spray the trees with it throughout the spring. Planet Natural recommends a copper or sulfur-based fungicide, applied weekly, starting as soon as the blossoms first start to open. I'm hoping that if we aggressively strike back against the fungus this year, the trees will have a clean bill of health next year, and regular pruning will be sufficient to keep them disease-free after that.

Then, once the fruits start to ripen, we plan to use every trick in the book to deter squirrels. We'll apply Tree Tanglefoot to the trunks, covering every branch within jumping distance of the ground, to discourage the little buggers from climbing, as well as scattering our own hair around the base of the trees to deter them from approaching. If need be, we'll even offer them something tastier to eat—maybe birdseed, which we know they like—some distance away from the trees, in the hopes they'll go for that and leave the fruit alone.

Here's hoping these efforts will allow us to enjoy a decent crop of plums this summer. In the meantime, we'll just stay nice and snug inside with our crop of little seedlings until it's finally warm enough to get them into the ground.