A Drippy, Cold Spring

A Drippy, Cold Spring

Pacific Beaked Hazelnut and Red Alder are heavy with catkins with River Birch getting ready grow its own. Soon Oceanspray will add to the pollen cacophony bursting into the local atmosphere. It doesn’t surprise me anymore when people have allergic reactions like a cold during this time of the year. Not many realize the green space of trees just outside have so much effect on their respiratory health. Running a stand-alone HEPA filter unit full time in the house is an economical way to have at least one ‘clean’ space. The late freeze from the Arctic North detrimentally affected early blooming Plums, Hydrangea, and plants that are less cold hardy.  Another freeze within the month will make this a very bad year for all fruit trees. Along those lines…it wouldn’t be the worst idea to throw out a couple handfuls each of deciduous wood ash and agricultural lime under the drip line of each fruit tree before a spring rain. These will help support tree and fruit health but be careful around acid-loving plants! Remember, annual maintenance pruning on plums and cherries is after blooming is finished. Apples and Pears can be pruned at the same time as well, but this is not recommended for young trees, where increasing complexity of structure is the aim. Annual sprouts of an apple tree can be tied down with a running bowline knot to help make faster branch complexity where needed. You can also act like a honey-bee or mason-bee and go around with a Q-Tip when your fruit trees are blossoming and hand pollinate- if other pollinators have taken the day off. Have you painted your sun-exposed, fruit tree lower stem with a 1 to 4 or 5 ratio of latex paint to water (or tree-specific paint like substance available online?). This keeps sun scalding (creating vertical cracks) from happening during winters that deviate from cold to warm and then back. Where temps rise into the 50’s and there is humidity in the air, time to spray your weeping Blue Atlas Cedars with copper sulphate or similar solution (look it up!) to combat pink needles (a fungal disease- spray once a week until humidity lessens) if present on the tree. You’ll have to clean up cast needles on the ground as well- best to put a tarp underneath to catch and run your hands over the pinkish needles, which will fall off. Hedges are best to cut after some spring growth has occurred but before summer arrives.

Yours-In-Trees

Sal

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