The Cupertino Courier

Gardening

Whenever the rains come, some fruit tree is bound to complain

By Tony Tomeo

The Virgilio fir in my garden has me worried about other trees. Despite the recent duration of unusually pleasant weather, it remains very dormant. Its tiny, dark foliar buds are still closed at the tips of last year's growth, and no new growth has emerged. It knows something that the other trees do not seem to comprehend: Winter is not finished yet.

A friend in Olympia, Wash., has been bragging to me about his abundantly blooming saucer magnolia that is doing quite the opposite. It took advantage of the spring-like weather to get an early start. As the bloom finishes and fades, tender new foliage will develop. At least, that is the plan.

This enviable magnolia is certainly not the only tree that is blooming prematurely. Many fruit trees, particularly almond, apricot, cherry, plum and prune, are blooming throughout the Santa Clara Valley. A few of the peach and nectarine trees that typically bloom a bit later than the earliest fruit trees are also blooming. Once the process is initiated, it cannot be stopped. The trees need to finish what they started.

Unfortunately, lingering winter weather is not conducive to the processes that these trees really should be going through in the spring. Flowers or newly developing fruit can be abscised (shed) by the trees if the weather gets uncomfortably cool again. Flowers or fruit that are not abscised easily rot if rain keeps them wet too long, particularly if rainy weather alternates with warm weather. Heavy rain and wind can dislodge flowers and fruit, and can even damage tender new foliage.

Damage is variable, depending upon the sensitivity of the particular type of fruit tree, the maturity of the blossoms or fruit when damage is incurred, and of course, the severity of the weather. Complete elimination of fruit from trees that are appropriate to the local climate is actually not very common. Although, every year, no matter how "typical" the weather is, I hear about more than a few fruit trees of various types that produce less than a dozen fruit.

There is no remedy for the weather. We can only hope for the best and take what we get when the fruit ripens later. Unfortunately, the weather will likely cause this year to be bad for almond and plum production. Cherry blossoms are a bit more tolerant of wind and rain, but are still likely to be compromised significantly if already in bloom. Apricots and prunes are about as sensitive to the weather as plums are, but most have not yet bloomed.

Apples, pears and walnuts are usually immune from the effects of sustained unseasonably warm winter weather because they bloom and set fruit later anyway. Yet, many people found that pear production last year was limited, probably as a result of late rain. Other types of fruit that developed earlier were mature enough by that time to survive the rain that arrived just in time to damage pear blossoms.

The good news is that the fruit trees will not be damaged by any elimination of fruit. They will grow as if nothing ever happened, and need their annual pruning next winter. Some compromised trees may actually grow somewhat more vigorously without sustaining fruit development.

Tree of the Week: Western red cedar

To many Native American Indian people of the Pacific Northwest, the western red cedar, Thuja plicata, is the most sacred tree in the forest. Because of its resistance to decay, it was also historically useful for everything from totem poles to canoes. In its native range that extends from the coast of Northern California, north to Alaska, and east to Montana, western red cedar commonly grows larger than 80 feet tall and half as broad. It can grow taller than 200 feet on the coast of Washington!

Locally though, western red cedar rarely gets larger than 60 feet tall, and they grow slowly enough to fit into urban gardens for many decades. In fact, most are already a few decades old, since western red cedar has been very uncommon in nurseries since about 1970. Unfortunately, the smaller and more compact cultivars that would be more proportionate to modern gardens are even more rare. At least two cultivars have yellowish foliage. All have scale-like foliage arranged in flat planes, on fine, limber branches.

Horticulturist Tony Tomeo can be reached at lghorticulture@aol.com or 408.358.2574.