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Plant bare root trees now to a good start
By Tony Tomeo
When I was about 5 years old, my parents gave me child-sized garden tools and my grandfather gave me a lemon tree and vegetable seeds for Christmas. The following year, I received an incense cedar and a silver maple. The next few years, I received various gardening paraphernalia, including cabbage seedlings, gladiola bulbs, fuchsias, asparagus ferns and a lilac. I greatly enjoyed all these gifts until a few years ago, when my former college roommate (Brent Green, of course) sent me a Chia Pet. He thought this was funny. However, my gift to Brent--who happens to be the greatest landscape designer in the world--was even funnier: a pair of pink plastic flamingoes for his lawn. He was not amused.
If you were not as fortunate and did not get the deciduous trees you wanted for Christmas, January is the beginning of bare root season. Although few shade trees are available bare root, most deciduous fruit trees perform best when planted bare root. Canned trees (those in containers) that are purchased during summer were actually bare root trees the previous winter. If the trees were planted directly in the garden rather than in cans, their root systems would be much more dispersed and established. The black vinyl of which the cans are composed can become uncomfortably warm if exposed to sunlight. Foliar growth is minimized by such stress. Branch structure is consequently stunted and deformed. Necessary root dispersal only begins when the canned trees are planted in the ground, long after trees planted bare root have become established and started building stable branch structure.
When planting bare root trees, proper pruning is very important. Excessive branches are usually left on so that whoever acquires the trees may select preferred form and structure to suit individual requirements. Extra branches are also left as packing material and in consideration of the inevitable damage resulting from packaging and handling. After all damaged branches are removed, those remaining may not seem so excessive. However, it is still important to prune up to half of the branches from newly planted bare root trees. It is best to only keep branches which are healthy, well structured and in desirable positions, keeping in mind that the amount of material removed is proportionate to the amount of resources conserved for remaining branches.
Fruit trees most commonly available bare root include apple, apricot, cherry, fig, peach, pear, persimmon, plum, pomegranate, prune and nectarine. Similar non-bearing ornamentals, such as flowering cherry, flowering crabapple, flowering pear, flowering plum (purple leaf plum), flowering peach or nectarine and sometimes flowering apricot are also available. A few nurseries also stock almonds, chestnuts, filberts, pecans and walnuts during bare root season. Other ornamentals that may be found bare root include various ash, alder, birch, forsythia, lilac, maple (not Japanese maple), poplar, sycamore and wisteria.
With all of these choices for winter planting, there is much to do while the weather is too cold for other gardening. If this is not enough to choose from, remember that you can also plant the various cane berries, strawberries, artichokes, asparagus, rhubarb and cool-season vegetables. Most of these vegetables grow slowly during cold weather, but you probably don't have much else going on in your garden this time of year anyway.
Tree of the Week: English Holly
I have been waiting all year to write about English holly, Ilex aquilifolium. It is one of my favorite species, but I wanted to feature it after Christmas, when many of us wonder what to do with the small potted hollies often received as gifts. Fortunately, English holly, also know as Christmas holly, is much more useful and manageable than live Christmas trees and more hardy than disposable poinsettias. Most holly is grown from cuttings of female clones so that it will produce the attractive red berries for which it is famous. In large-scale production, it can be sprayed with hormones to stimulate berry production, but once in the garden, without hormones or male pollinators, berry production is usually negligible or nonexistent. Because almost all holly is female, similar plants in the garden or neighboring gardens cannot act as pollinators.
I recommend forgetting about the berries and growing English holly for its very handsome foliage. The leaves are very glossy, rigid and spiny. The most popular varieties have deep green leaves about 2 inches long; others have white or yellow variegation, either around the edge or in the center of the leaves. Variegated holly and many dwarf varieties are slower growing and stay smaller than typical green holly, which can eventually get up to 15 feet tall. Although it is very attractive as a small tree, English holly may also be maintained lower and shrubby or even as a formal hedge. Doing so will require selective pruning rather than shearing, because foliage looks tattered when cut, and shearing promotes excessively dense growth. The spiny texture that makes it less desirable to some garden enthusiasts also makes English holly very effective as a barrier. Trespassers will only go through it once. What I like most about English holly is that it may be used as an alternative for many other more basic shrubs but presents a much more distinguished and refined appearance.
Horticulturist Tony Tomeo may be contacted at 408.358.2574.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
