Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Stop peach leaf curl by spraying now with copper sulfate to help prevent this disfiguring disease from attacking your trees next spring.

• Choose living Christmas trees now. Most will be able to be kept in their containers and used for one or two more years as a Christmas tree.

• Clean up rose bushes by removing spent flowers and raking up old leaves, but wait until February for heavy pruning.

• Plant bright red amaryllis in pots now for Christmas gifts.

• Rake and destroy leaves from fruit trees that were diseased this year.

Bewitching Hazels

Native to Great Britain, hazels have been cultivated for their nutritious nuts and useful branches for centuries. Hazel branches were once used for fences and wattle-and-daub walls, but are used today mostly for basketry as they send up many slender limbs remarkable for their brown bark and their great flexibility. 

In Britain, hazels have been coppiced for centuries. This woodland management technique involves cutting all the branches down to the stump every 7 years. Cut limbs are used for firewood, walking-sticks, fishing-rods and rustic furniture. The new growth is vigorous and coppicing actually extends the life of the tree.

The subject of many superstitions, hazel twigs were said to protect houses from lightning, and forked branches are commonly chosen in Europe as dowsing rods to locate ground water. Grown as hedges, hazels make excellent cover for birds and small wildlife.

Hazels are most commonly seen as shrubs and will grow 15 to 20 feet tall at maturity. Also known as filberts and hazelnuts, these large shrubs can produce delicious nuts. They are long-lived and begin bearing in about four years, but it takes about seven years for filberts to become fully productive.

Filberts like sun, average summer watering and deep well-drained soil. Don’t let them dry out during our long, hot summers. Allow the nuts to drop to the ground and then gather them up. You must have two different varieties for good pollination. Check with your nurseryman for varieties that will do well together.

There are also some very decorative ornamental hazels. The best known is the Contorted Hazel, or Henry Lauder’s Walking Stick. Twisted and spiraling stems give this variety the common name of corkscrew hazel. In winter it is a striking addition to the garden and should be planted alone where its unusual form can be enjoyed. It grows slowly and gains character as it ages, eventually reaching a height and spread of about 10 feet.

Similar in habit is the purple-leaved corkscrew hazel called ‘Red Majestic.’ In spring bright red foliage emerges along with large purple catkins. As summer approaches and temperatures rise, the red deepens to a dark burgundy until, by late-summer, the mature foliage turns a beautiful dark green. The large crinkled round leaves turn an outstanding red in the fall. The twisted dark brown bark and brown branches are extremely showy and add significant winter interest. Shrubs grow to about 7 feet tall and wide. Cut branches are excellent in floral arrangements.

Hazels look lovely with bulbs, like crocus and daffodils, planted underneath them. Good companion shrubs include Forsythia and Witch hazel, with their yellow spring flowers, and red-leaved Japanese barberry or bright green Viburnum ‘Spring Bouquet’.

Enjoy these useful and ornamental shrubs on your property.

• Empty birdbaths and fountains and cover them for the winter, to prevent water freezing and cracking the bowls.

• Liquidambar and Japanese maple trees can’t be beat for fall color. Choose them now while you can see their bright colors.

• Transplant shrubs that need to be moved this month. It’s also a good time to transplant natives.

• Clean up dead foliage on perennials like peonies, daylilies and balloon flower and cut back dead flower stems on Echinacea, blanket flower and penstemon.

• Persimmons look beautiful hanging on the bare branches of trees. Consider planting one in your orchard.

Spreading Chestnut Trees

The cold, crisp days of fall are the time when spiny chestnut balls pop open to reveal the sweet nuts inside ready to be roasted or cooked and made into delightful stuffings and desserts. The trees which grow these delicious nuts are large and spreading and make fine shade trees, growing 40 to 50 feet tall and wide.

Only a century ago, the American chestnut was one of the most prized of the eastern hardwoods. Because its wood was durable and rot resistant, it was used for home siding and shingles, furniture and fencing, as well as other uses. The chestnut blight, which was introduced in 1904 from Asia, has virtually eliminated the American chestnut tree from its original range. Fortunately, this disease does not occur west of the Rocky Mountains.

Four species of chestnuts have been grown in the West: European, American, Chinese and Japanese chestnuts. There are also hybrids which do very well here. One of them is named ‘Colossal’ for the extra large nuts it bears which average 16 nuts per pound. They are sweet and easy to peel and they dry and store well. It makes a fine, fast-growing tree.

Two varieties of chestnuts, or two seedling trees are needed to insure pollination. Grafted trees will begin bearing in 2 to 3 years, and seedlings in 5 to 7 years. A mature tree will produce hundreds of pounds of nuts each year in October and November.

Chestnuts are beautiful trees. Their long, toothed, green leaves turn golden yellow in the fall. Flowers grow in long, slender clusters that completely cover the tree with sweet-smelling, creamy-pink sprays in June or July. Trees live for hundreds of years.

They grow best in well-drained sandy loam, and require better drainage than apples. They will, however, grow in heavy soil on sloping terrain, and grow wherever pine trees do well.

The nuts are rich in sugar and starch, but unlike other nuts, they are low in fat. They are used for food or for animal feed. When chestnuts drop to the ground, they should be gathered every day wearing gloves to protect your hands from the prickly burrs. (These prickly hulls deter squirrels and rodents from gathering the nuts before you.) You can store nuts in a sealed container in the refrigerator for several months.

Chestnuts can be boiled, roasted over an open fire, baked in the oven, and steamed. They can also be eaten raw after the two skins are removed.

Chestnut trees can be grown for a commercial crop. The value of the nuts is directly related to the size, but is usually at least $5.00 per pound wholesale and up to $8.00 per pound retail. Trees will start to give a significant yield at about 10 years old, and yields range from 14 pounds to 130 pounds per tree.

Chestnuts are a good food source, and a few acres can yield nuts for your own enjoyment, or for sale to your local market.

• Cover vegetable plants with bird netting to keep quail and other birds away.

• Broadcast wildflower seeds and annual ryegrass on hillsides to stop erosion and give you lots of flowers next spring.

• Spray citrus and other tender plants with Cloud Cover to give them some protection from frosts.

• Plant Paperwhite Narcissus in pots for Christmas gifts.

• Primroses and pansies will add instant color to pots and flower beds. Combine them with bulbs for an extended season of bloom.

Reds and Yellows Galore

What a beautiful fall we are having and what a fine opportunity to choose shrubs and trees that will decorate your garden each year with their bright, warm colors.

Some unusual shrubs are showing their colors right now. Fothergilla ‘Mount Airy’ is a deciduous shrub that grows 4-5’ tall and is prized for its profuse spring flowering of bottlebrush-like spikes of fragrant white flowers, and excellent yellow, orange and red-purple fall color.

Smoketrees, Cotinus coggygria, are multi-stemmed shrubs that grows 10-15’ tall. After the flowers they are covered with fluffy, hazy, smoke-like puffs. In fall the bluish-green leaves turn bright red. The variety ‘Royal Purple’ has dark purple leaves throughout the summer and fall.

Spiraeas are a large family of shrubs with tiny flowers in clusters. The spring-blooming varieties, like ‘Bridal Wreath’, have long arching branches covered with delicate white flowers. In the fall they are again colorful as the leaves turn a red-orange-yellow fall color.

We have many fine trees to choose from for fall color. Start with the Japanese maples, small trees that are beautiful in every season. Depending on the variety, leaves may turn to bright yellow, soft apricot, or brilliant scarlet. Look for trees now that provide you with just the look that you want.

Ginkgo is commonly called maidenhair tree, which refers to the resemblance of the fan-shaped leaves to maidenhair fern leaflets. In fall the leaves turn bright golden yellow leaves and are spectacular when backlit by early morning or late afternoon sun. The leaves drop all at once forming a golden carpet around the tree.

Some of our edible plants in addition to producing delicious fruit, will also add color to your landscape in the fall. Blueberries are deciduous shrubs that typically grows 5-8′ tall. After you enjoy their nutritious berries in the summer, you can watch their leaves turn attractive shades of red in the fall.

Pomegranates celebrate the end of the season with their bright yellow leaves – a nice contrast to dark green evergreens. Currant bushes, particularly the Crandall black currant, have now turned a soft, orange-red.

Persimmon trees come into their own in the fall. Their spectacular bright red to orange fall color is followed by orange ripening fruit that hangs majestically on bare branches into late fall.

Even the peach trees are attractive right now. Their light green leaves have taken on a soft pinkish hue. Some plum trees, like Satsuma and Burbank, as well as the tasty Pluots, turn shades of red, yellow and orange.

And don’t forget the beautiful grapevines for colors from bright yellows to intense reds.

Dress up your garden with the bright reds and yellows of shrubs, trees and edible plants.