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Ask Anne Clapp - Archives Page 23Return to Ask Anne Clapp Archives - Main Page Question: Anne, I have 2 apple trees, 1 red and 1 yellow. How do I prune these trees? They are about 12 feet tall and a lot of branchers going all directions Thank you, Bill S. Anne Clapp: The best time to prune apple trees is in late January or February when they are completely dormant. They are pruned using a spur type pruning cut. The Cooperative Extension Service has a publication with diagrams that will show you how to prune correctly. You can contact your county extension agent for information on getting the information. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Gardenias bloom when they have sun, adequate water and are not pruned before they bloom in the spring. They need an application of fertilizer after danger of the last frost as the new growth starts in the spring. The only time a plant needs another pollinator is when you are trying to produce a fruit or nut. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The best time to move them is when they are dormant in the late fall or winter. You can prune them back drastically now to make them easier to move. You can also root prune the plants right now to force them to make small feeder roots that will provide a smaller rootball to move in the fall. Root pruning is nothing more than taking a sharp spade and cutting the roots of the plants in the ground at a distance from the tree trunk that will provide a root system for the plant. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The popular plants for the shade in our area right now are: Coral Bells (Heuchera sanguinea), Foam flowers (Tiarella cordifolia) and a cross between the two called Heucherella. The winter and early blooming Hellebores are also popular. Hostas come in all shades of green and many of the ones with white flowers are fragrant when they bloom in August. Ferns, toadlily, woodland phlox for early spring bloom and Pulmonaria are good perennials. There are also camellias and azaleas that bloom well in shady gardens. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The plants that grow in both shade and sun are usually better in one condition or the other. The ones you might try are Glossy Abelia (the Chinese Abelia is quite attractive and a butterfly attractor), Snowball Viburnum, Beautyberry (callicarpa), Anise, Gardenia, Loropetalum and Osmanthus fragrans do well in Piedmont North Carolina. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: There are usually two reasons for lack of blooms on hydrangeas. As your friend suggested it may have been pruned incorrectly. The best time to prune a hydrangea is just after it finishes blooming. The other reason in this part of the world is a late freeze that occurs after the plant has started putting out its first leaves. You can tell if the long brown stems are dead by lightly scratching one of the stems to see if there is green wood just under the brown skin. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Jane magnolias usually don't get much larger than 15 feet but they will get as tall as 20 feet on occasion. The plant can be pruned back after it blooms in the spring. Tip prune the main branches to bring it back to the size you want – but remember you will have to prune the plant every year to keep it at the size you want. --------------------------- --------------------------- Anne Clapp: At this point the only thing you can do is make sure the plants are watered each week if you do not have rain. You may want to use a soaker hose in the planting area to provide a deep moisture for the roots. It is always wise to use an “anti-transpirant” spray such as “Wilt-Pruf” on newly planted evergreens to help them get through the first winter. The spray has a wax that provides a coating to seal moisture in the plant leaves. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The beetles and weevils have been eating on a lot of plants including laurels, this winter. At this point the damage has been done and the damaged leaves will remain on the plants until their usual spring or fall leaf drop. There are systemic insecticides that reduce the damage to plants but there will still be some eaten spaces on leaves. The insects do their work at night so you may be able to control them by spraying with liquid Sevin late in the afternoon or early evening. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The Camellia has a wide, shallow root system with a lot of small feeder roots. The Youpon has a deeper root system with some larger roots. Both can be moved when they are small plants but plants taller than 6 feet will be difficult to move. The best time to move both plants is in the fall when they are dormant. In the Myrtle Beach area they can be moved from October to February. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Next year before you bring the hibiscus inside you may want to spray them with a dormant oil spray. It smothers the aphid eggs that hatch during the winter. As a method for taking care of the current crop try using one of the yellow sticky traps that organic gardeners use in greenhouses. If you can't find one in a local garden center just lightly cover a piece of bright yellow plastic with petroleum jelly (Vaseline) and put it near the hibiscus plants. The aphids are attracted to the bright yellow and get stuck in the grease. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Almost anything! There are weevils active during warm days that produce holes in leaves; other possibilities would be slugs, beetles and wasps. Birds will occasionally peck holes looking for insects and mice will occasionally eat new leaves. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Treat your camellia as an espalier. Make the plant more two dimensional and space limbs to give an attractive wall covering. Camellias can survive very hard pruning and grow quite well as espaliered plants. As for the hydrangea, if it blooms in the summer or fall prune it as much as you need to to get it in shape in March. If it blooms in the spring wait until after the plant blooms to prune. I usually remove the oldest stem at ground level to force new growth and then cut back the other stems at varying lengths to make a plant with a more rounded form. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The little black flies are probably fungus gnats. The eggs often come in bags of potting soil and they hatch with moisture and warmth. The insects eat the decaying organic matter in potting soil but they do not harm the living plants. They are a nuisance but they have a fairly short life cycle. Some people will submerge plants in a large container of water to force the insects out of their hiding places and if you want to do that outside on a warm day It may help some. The older gardening books recommended drenching the soil with a solution of an insecticide such as diazinon. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: The only blueberries I know anything about are of genus Vaccinium, the fruits used in pies, muffins etc. I cannot imagine anyone trying to prune them into a conical shape. Obviously there is a shrub by the common name blueberry used in the Houston area that is not listed in the horticulture reference books. I suggest you contact your local cooperative extension for any information they may have on the plant. Surely the ag.tamu.edu website would have some information. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Sometimes oleanders will defoliate from transplant shock but I would have expected that to occur before December. Extreme cold weather will cause defoliation but I do not think you have had anything below 20 in Wilmington this winter. Water – too much will drown the plants and too little affects the foliage as well – can cause defoliation. Break one of the stems to see if there is still a green cambium layer around the stem. If it appears to be live wood the plant may produce new foliage in the spring. Even evergreen plants will lose leaves when they are under stress. Hopefully yours will recover in a few weeks. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: There are very few plants that will grow under a black walnut tree. A chemical, juglans, secreted by the roots of the walnut tree stunts or kills many plants. Most people do not plant black walnuts as an ornamental tree because it is difficult to find a plant that will grow well near the tree's rot system. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: No. Japanese beetles are not attracted to geraniums but they are not repelled by them either. --------------------------- Anne Clapp: Redbuds may be transplanted in January and February. A container-grown plant may be planted at any time but the better time to plant a container-grown redbud id October to April. |