All winter long, I’ve walked around the yard doing odds and end jobs… picking up broken limbs resulting from sleeze storms (snow,sleet,freezing rain), cleaning beds, harvesting greenery for Christmas, mulching asparagus.  Sometimes I’ve just wandered, wistfully thinking of warmer weather and what I’d like to do when the weather is right.  In the course of this activity I have really been appraising the State of the Garden and in the back of my head conjuring up a rough understanding of what I need to do this year.  Now winter’s coming to a close and I must do a more thorough, detailed, methodical and practical appraisal of the health of the garden components.  This involves a taking more time to look at each element of the garden, each bed, each shrub, each grouping of shrubs, each tree and of course the various areas of the veggie/fruit garden (berry patch, the new blue berry planting, the asparagus area, the general veggie areas.)  Having a note book in hand helps keep track of things.

So let’s do a walk-through of some of my yard and evaluate its needs. First the Trees:

The Front Yard is dominated by the perpetual dense shade of three cursed Norway maples. A dense mat of tree roots and a southern exposure makes this zone a dry one to go along with the heavy shade. Not really in good health as these trees were planted too close together to begin with and then abused pruning wise prior to my acquisition of the house.

Norway maples are often planted because they are fast growers and have a spreading crown form. They produce a dense shade and turn bright yellow in autumn. They were a popular choice to plant for landscape specimens in the 60’s and 70s. Most owners of a Norway maple now we recognize them for what they are, better suited for someone else’ yard, but alas many of us are stuck with someone’s mistake from the past and try to cope. Norway maples produce a dense shade, are brittle and have a soft wood prone to decay. They not only break up bad in storms, but then they sit there and rot. Their roots invariably grow on the ground surface and suck up every last vestige of moisture during the growing season. They push out retaining walls and penetrate and widen the cracks in basement walls. Finally they are subject to a malady called “girdling root” where one or more major roots encircles the root collar and as both the root and trunk grow in girth, the root literally chokes off the tubular tissues that carry water and nutrients up to the crown. This often results in a sudden dying of a hunk of the crown.

Tree Number 1: Norway Maple showing Girdling Root: Notice the girdling root on the left side of the trunk.

Tree number 1:  the western most of the three is slowly dying. It’s lost about ¼ of its crown on the south side the tree over the past two years. It’s the smallest of the three, planted too close to the front yard retaining wall and is suffering from a severe case of girdling root. The crown losses coincide with the location of girdling roots and have most surely been hastened by the dryness of the last two summers. It’s probably a goner in a couple of years.

Tree Number 2: Large old wound from loss of major limb in a storm years earlier.  Notice callus tissue trying to cover open wound.  A wound this size wil;l never heal.Tree number 2 is wedged between the smaller #1 and the dominant #3. Sometime prior to our acquisition of the house, this tree had incurred the loss of what I estimate to be about ½ of its crown through the loss of a major limb, probably in one of the severe ice/snow loads of 1977/78. That was my first winter in this county and it started off on October10 with a foot of wet snow while the leaves were still on the trees, then in early April, on Easter Weekend we endured between 1 and two inches of freezing rain. At any rate, the tree had a gaping rotten hole and only half a crown when I came along in 1988. It’ in poor shape and needs to be removed before it falls on its own accord. I should have removed it when I moved in… better yet it should have been removed when it was first devastated. It really had been injured so badly it had little chance to recover properly.

Norway Maple Number 3: Low Hanging Branches: The overly long and spindly branches that arose from past "dehorning"  Hang to low and block sunlight.Tree number 3 is an over grown specimen exhibiting pruning abuse from the past. It was “Dehorned” sometime in the late 70s I expect, probably after incurring is own share of storm damage. The resultant flush of sprouts and suckers have slowly thinned themselves over the years. The remaining “limbs” are spindly, too long and weak. They hang dangerously over the porch roof on one side and bow nearly to the ground on the street side. There is no effective corrective pruning for this tree, the past dehorning (aka rounding over or pollarding) is very difficult to correct if it can be corrected at all.

I have long known that these trees eventually would have to go. I have put off removals as long as possible (the coping part). These trees, as decrepit as they are, serve a very real function of shading the front and south facing exposure of the house during the long, hot Valley summer days. I daren’t hazard a guess how much the lack of shade will raise the temperature of our home. Removal of the trees will also leave the house “naked, a two story turn of the century gothic farm house with no tall vegetation on its front will stand out like a sore thumb.

I think my move this year will be to remove tree number two. It is being squeezed by its neighbors and is a real hazard. At the same time, I will prune out the dead portions of tree number 1, which will only be a temporary fix at best. Towards the end of summer I may well need to finish the job in time for a fall planting project to replace the two with a carefully selected specimen. I will re-evaluate as summer progresses. On tree number 3, I will remove the most offensive low hanging limbs.  This will have the effect of raising the canopy and make the yard feel more open and airy without decreasing shade on the south face of the house. This will involve some heavy cuts and will result in additional decay entry points, but it will be a few years before and major structural damage develops. But it will doom this tree to eventual removal. I’ll enter this process with my eyes open.

Now down to line of trees along the road in front of the veggie garden.  We don’t want any of these to get too tall and shade the garden.  The first is an old eastern red cedar about 30 feet tall.  It’s a bit rugged looking, but definitely in character.  This tree needs little work, and what pruning I do will be minor shaping next November if it bears a good crop of Blue berries.  This is one of my Christmas greens stock trees. 

Sassafras Copse: My little "sassafras copse"  The sapling stems are getting to be a bit large.  I need to remove a few of the bigger ones.Next comes the mini-copse of sassafras.  It consists of a slew of closely spaced sapling sized stems.  I like the dense forest-like quality of this specimen (it is essentially a single tree of interconnected roots and sprouts).  My long term intention is to keep this looking like a copse with a daylily under story added.  It is a small copse and there is enough side light to maintain most plants under it.  A couple of the taller sapling stems will need to be cut out.  These will be replaced by new sprouts quickly enough and will maintain the effect I like.

Redbud with Sprouts: This redbud is still sprouting from a dieback several years ago.  I'm gradually remaking it into a single stem tree.Now to the row of 5 redbuds I planted back from the old fence row 5 or 6 years ago.  These were mere seedlings when I put them in, and developed nicely.  One had died back to the ground its second winter out and had responded the next spring with a bevy of sprouts from the root collar.  It has taken pretty diligent annual pruning to get this one back into a single stem form, but it looks as if I’ve got it licked. 

A quick check of the buds reveals I will likely have a nice flower show this spring.  Redbuds are among my favorites and I can hardly with for the show.  No pruning before bloom and then maybe a snip or two on each to thin the crowns a bit.

Up the hill, on the edge of the garden plot is a small Yellow Delicious apple.  It has been out 4 growing seasons now.  It had a McIntosh  partner unil two years ago the Mac had to go to make way for a drain field.  This tree was threatened too, but survived the digging and traffic around it.  It’s on the upper edge of the drain field.  At any rate I have held off pruning on this tree to allow it time to recover from the trauma. 

Young Apple Tree in Need of Prunning: This young apple needs prunning to remove weak crotches and creat scaffold limbs.As I approach it now, I see a tangle of branches-- a couple trying to bolt for the sky from low in the crown,  others crisscrossing as they try to resort how they should be growing.  The tree certainly looks vigorous enough.  I think this is the year I revisit this tree with the pruners.  Objective—to reestablish the main leader by removing the would be pretenders and to begin to thin the lower crown to a more sustainable density.  As it is, it is a future ice storm victim.  So I’ll focus on removing the narrow crotched limbs and thinning the future major scaffold branches to a more sustainable foot or so spacing. 

One thing is obvious, there is more that I would like to remove than is wise removing at one time.  So I will be judicious and plan this as a two or three year project, anticipating always that the tree will be growing over these two years and some of this new growth will need to go too.  If I avoid “shearing” the tree, maybe I can lessen the epicormic (water) sprouts that will be one response to pruning.  Also, some of the smaller branches haven’t developed well defined “branch collars” yet.  Generally it is best to wait until branch collars form to prune off small branches.  One thing to remember about pruning small trees is that there is always next year.  Focus first on a firm scaffold.   I do need to get started this year though.

 

There are more trees in my yard, but these illustrate how I go about evaluating their needs.  I don’t give such a close look at the big  trees every year, but this year the maples are beginning to concern me and that apple will quickly develop problems if I don’t have a go at it.  The small trees are examined every year.  That way a few snips here and a cut or two there keeps these the way I like them.

Contributed by Wesley Ford, alias  "treeman"

 

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