Category: Outdoors

Put on a hoodie and shake off the snow

We recently got hit by a big winter storm that dropped at least 15 inches of heavy, wet snow. It clung to branches, breaking some and bending others to near their breaking points. If you suffer the same sometime this winter, here are some things you might consider to help your woody plants.

First, the best thing to do is be proactive. Even before the storm had finished I went outside and started shaking branches to get snow off them. Wear a hoodie! Snow can go right down your neck if you don’t. For shrubs and small trees, you can shake the central stem, and it will clear the snow from the entire plant. For larger trees, you will need to shake individual branches.

A good tool for clearing snow is a bamboo pole, the longer and thicker the better. Some hardware stores and feed-and-grain stores will have them. I used one to knock snow off branches I couldn’t reach.

So what can you do to repair cracked and broken branches? Generally, nothing. Take a sharp saw or loppers and remove the branch back to its point of origin — the main trunk or a large branch. But don’t cut flush to the trunk if you can avoid it. And never leave a stub as it will have to rot back to the branch collar to heal.

The tree heals itself at what is called the branch collar. The branch collar is a swollen area at the base of each branch. If you cut that off flush to the trunk, it will be harder to heal and take longer. Often the branch collar has ridges or rings around it, and you should leave them in place.

Two winters ago we had a big snowstorm and my small leatherwood shrub (Dirca palustris) split up the middle. The break was not complete: There was still an attachment point for both halves of the shrub. I didn’t notice the damage for a few days, but when I did, I decided to try to repair it.

Grafting is a well-known but difficult skill whereby a skilled person can add a branch to a living tree. This is most often done with fruit trees, allowing orchardists to add other varieties of apple on a tree. I have an apple with three different flavors of apple because it had other varieties grafted to the original tree. Truth be known, the tree came like that. I’ve taken classes in grafting and tried to do it, but have never succeeded. It’s an art.

But back to my little leatherwood tree. Because it was still hinged at the bottom of the break, I moved it back together and used some stretchy green plastic tape to wrap the two halves together. I wound it tightly, and lo and behold, it worked! I removed the tape (which is usually used for tying flower stems to stakes to keep them from breaking in the rain) after two or three months. Now, two years later, the shrub shows no signs of ever being damaged, other than a little scar tissue.

What else did the storm do? It almost flattened a small grove of willow trees I had planted 20 years ago. They are a variety of Salix integra called Hakuro Nishiki. Very popular, these willows have tri-colored leaves (green, white and for part of the summer pink) and are fast-growing. There is nothing I can do for them. They are bent over and weighed down by snow, but should recover once the snow melts in a week or two. And if they don’t spring back up? I will lop off the bent stems and let them re-grow. It’s difficult to kill a willow, and they should have been shortened long ago.

The storm also knocked down a large tree on our property, a wild black cherry (Prunus serotina). The black cherry doesn’t produce cherries we can eat, but birds eat them. The fruit is just a third of an inch across with a pit. Not much food for anybody, really. The blossoms are not important, either, but it is a good plant for pollinators, one of the keystone species.

The tree we lost had a diameter of 14 inches at its base and stood over 67 feet tall — I measured it after it fell. It was not one I had planted, but a bird probably dropped a seed in our woods. I will count the growth rings when it gets cut up for firewood. Where it grew is a good example of where not to plant a tree.

So what was wrong with our tree? Most trees do not have tap roots going down deep into the soil. Two feet is probably average. But they spread widely. I was told in a horticulture class to think of a tree as a wine glass sitting on a dinner plate. The plate represents the root system, the wine glass the trunk and branches.

But ours was growing right next to a rock ledge that was actually showing above ground. The roots could not grow that way, so all the roots were on just three sides. The wind came from the fourth side, and with the snow load, it blew over. So if you plant trees, be mindful of bedrock and ledge. Keep away from them. You can use a steel rod or crowbar to poke the soil to find ledge before planting.

Although I will miss that big tree, I try to never mourn a plant that dies. After all, it provides me a chance to plant something else there. My best wishes to you all for the holidays.

Featured photo: Cut back a broken branch to the branch collar. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Pruned trees for outside, cut branches for inside

Normally at this time of year I can go out to the stream behind my house and pick stems of a shrub called winterberry (Ilex verticillata) to use in vases and on my wreath. It is generally loaded with small red berries that persist until mid-winter when hungry birds eat them, or they just plain fall off.

Winterberry is a great decorative shrub in winter that prefers wet feet but will grow in ordinary garden soil too. It is dioecious, meaning that it requires male and female plants — usually one male will take care of all the females. This year I didn’t get many of those bright red berries I like so much for decoration, and I have heard from other gardeners that they had few, too.

This prompted me to walk around my property looking at my woody shrubs to see what might substitute for winterberries. I didn’t find any berries at all. But I did cut some red-twigged dogwood (Cornus sericea) to use in a vase, and some budded branches of a Merrill magnolia (Magnolia x loebneri).

The magnolia buds are a bit like pussywillows on steroids: an inch long and very fuzzy. I have some in a vase on the table, and they look very good, and will for many weeks ahead. I’ve done this before, and will occasionally get a few buds to open into white flowers. I cut some greenery to go with them, a few stems of white pine. Hemlock would look good instead, but doesn’t hold needles well indoors.

It struck me that winter can be pretty bleak for people who don’t have nice-looking winter shrubs and trees. Judicious pruning can transform a messy tree full of small branches going every which way into sculpture. I recently helped a client prune a 50-year-old Japanese maple into sculpture that will keep it looking great for several years — with only a few minor pruning cuts each year.

When pruning, I ask myself, what will this little branch, currently the thickness of a finger, look like when it is the thickness of an arm — or a leg. If it is growing sideways toward a walkway, it must come off. Going through the middle of the tree? Remove it! The maple I pruned had many small dead branches that had been choked out because bigger branches had blocked off the sun, effectively starving them.

Bark is important. I like plants that have exfoliating bark, which means bark that is shaggy and peeling off — thus showing more than one color. My Seven Sons Flower Tree (Heptacodium miconioides) is one of those. In addition to the nice bark it offers me a display of small white flowers each fall. White birch (Betula papyrifera) and river birch (Betula nigra) are others with interesting bark. In fact all the birches have handsome bark.

I’ve been growing a paperbark maple (Acer griseum) for about 20 years. It has lovely shaggy reddish-brown bark that is very handsome. It is a very slow-growing tree, at least in this climate. It is listed as a Zone 5 plant (good to minus 20 F) but mine has survived colder temperatures. It looks great in winter.

One of my favorites — but one I do not grow — is sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), which I knew growing up in Connecticut but is rare in New Hampshire where I live. It reminds me of the English plane tree, so common in Europe. The bark peels off in big swaths, showing light gray-green in some areas, dark brown in others. It is just barely hardy to Zone 4, and prefers to grow in river bottoms, but will grow in drier soils, too.

Of the bigger trees, I like American beech (Fagus sylvatica) for its smooth gray bark. Unfortunately, beeches are prone to a fungal disease that mars the bark and eventually kills the tree.

That same smooth bark is a prominent feature of a shrub known variously as shad bush, serviceberry and Saskatoon bush. All belong to the genus Amelanchierbut bear different species names. Most are multi-stemmed bushes that get no more than 10 feet tall, though I have a wild one more than twice that height. Their blossoms are similar to apple blossoms. They do well in partial sun, often growing and blooming on roadsides.

Apple trees, particularly crabapples, can look great in winter. Some crabs hold onto their fruit throughout much of the winter, some drop their fruit in fall and many provide fruit for the birds to eat (that disappears before winter is done). Ask at the nursery when you buy a crabapple if the birds like the fruit. The form and bark of a well-pruned apple or crabapple is gorgeous to my eye.

So if your landscape has little to offer you in winter, plan on adding some winter interest come planting time. And if your trees and shrubs are drab, think about adding some strings of little winter lights to brighten them up, at least at night.

Featured photo: Merrill magnolia buds look like pussywillows all winter long, and bloom in late April. Photo by Henry Homeyer.