Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Apples and pears are the easiest fruits to grow in our area. Choose early, mid-season and late varieties for a continuous harvest from late summer into winter.

• Fill your winter garden with color from primroses and pansies.

• Roses should be pruned in February near the end of the dormant season. You can clean them up now, however, by removing all the old leaves on and around the plants.

• Start seeds of perennial flowers like columbine, coreopsis and echinacea.

Protecting Plants from Freezing Weather

Plants vary in the amount of cold that they can take in the winter time. Where zinnias are completely killed by a frost, pansies thrive in the cold and will even bloom underneath the snow. Some evergreen shrubs, like jasmine vines, fuchsias, citrus and fragrant rhododendrons, are damaged by severe winter cold, but there are measures you can take to protect these plants.

Keeping plants well-watered is very important in freezing weather. While we’ve had enough rainfall for plants in the ground, container plants are especially vulnerable to the desiccating (drying out) effects of freezing.

There are several ways you can provide winter protection including mulching, covering the plants, moving them, spraying them with an anti-transpirant, or taking advantage of a light snow covering.

Once the soil is moist, mulching is one of the best ways to protect plant roots. A two-inch mulch will keep the soil from freezing and allow the roots to continue to pull up water as needed. The combination of dry soil and cold temperatures can cause serious freeze damage to evergreen trees and shrubs.

Covering plants will protect them from frost damage by trapping the heat that is rising up from the ground. Covering with a plastic tent or ‘Harvest-Guard’ (a lightweight fabric) can make a big difference. If plastic touches the leaves, each point of contact will freeze, so it’s better to make a light frame and staple the plastic to it. ‘Harvest-Guard’ is light enough that you can simply drape it over the plant, but it will need to be secured against winds.

You can also move tender plants to a sheltered location on a porch or underneath an eave or patio cover. It is also less cold underneath trees, so that is a good spot for more tender plants. Be sure to keep these plants watered if they will not receive rain water.

You can also spray tender plants with an anti-transpirant spray, such as ‘Cloud Cover’, which is made from an acrylic polymer. When sprayed on a plant, it forms a clear, colorless, flexible, glossy film that doesn’t interfere with the plant’s growth. This protective coating stops water from escaping from the foliage and stems, substantially reducing water loss due to drying winds and frozen ground. It is best to spray when the temperature is above 40 degrees. The spray will gradually break down in about four months under cold weather conditions.

Mother Nature actually provides the best blanket of protection in the form of a light snow. Up to two or three inches of snow not only insulates the ground around your plants it also provides a blanket of protection over the leaves. On the other hand, a heavy, wet snow can cause considerable damage as it tends to place too much weight on the leaves and branches, often causing them to break. So if the snowfall is wet and heavy, you should make it a point to shake-off the excess snow before any damage occurs. Try to do this carefully so some snow remains as a winter protection.

Each measure gives a few degrees of protection, so try them all on tender plants that you value.

• Bare root season is here. Choose and plant your favorite fruit trees and roses now.

• Fruit trees can be pruned this month. If you’re not sure how, take advantage of one of the fine classes being offered this month.

• Primroses will give you the most color during this cold weather. Choose some pretty ones now for your boxes and beds.

• Strawberries can be planted any time now. Get them in early, and you’ll be picking strawberries this summer.

• FREE Fruit Tree Pruning Classes on Saturday and Sunday, January 19-20 from 10 AM to 3 PM. Call Sanhedrin Nursery, 459-9009, for details.

Backyard Orchard Culture

For years, most of the information about growing fruit trees came from commercial orchard culture. These methods promote maximum size for maximum yield but require 12-foot ladders for pruning, thinning and picking, and 400 to 600 square feet of land per tree to allow for tractors.

But the needs and priorities of the backyard orchardist are quite different. Most homeowners want to maximize the amount of fruit production in a limited area and be able to harvest fruit over a long season. This includes planting a variety of fruit trees with different ripening times.

If you have limited space for your orchard, there are several techniques you can use to maximize the yield in that area. Two, three or four trees in one hole, espalier, and hedgerow are the most common of these techniques.

By planting two or more trees in one hole, you restrict the vigor of the trees, effectively dwarfing them. It is important that they are on rootstocks of similar vigor. For example, using a four-in-one-hole planting, four trees on Citation rootstock would be easier to maintain than a combination of one tree on Lovell, one on Mazzard, one on Citation, and one on M-27.

Planting more varieties can also mean better cross-pollination of pears, apples, plums and cherries, which means more consistent production.

Espalier is the practice of controlling plant growth so that it grows relatively flat against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis. To develop an espalier, fan, or other two-dimensional form, plant the tree 6-12 inches from the structure and remove everything that doesn’t grow flat. Selectively thin and train what’s left to space the fruiting wood.

Many fruit trees are well suited for planting in hedgerows. When planted tightly together they form a lovely screen that works well in an edible landscape on a boundary line or to block an unsightly view. The trees should be spaced 4 to 5 feet apart and again be on similar rootstocks.

Smaller trees are easier to spray, prune, thin, net to protect from birds and harvest. With small trees, it’s possible to have more varieties that ripen at different times and give you lots of delicious flavors. Pruning is the only way to keep most fruit trees small. You will need to prune in both winter and summer. Summer pruning is the easiest way to keep trees small. Take in a pruning class or two so you know what to do and develop some confidence in pruning.

There is a special pleasure in growing your own fruit, growing new varieties of fruit, producing fruit that is unusually sweet and tasty, having fruit over a long season, and in sharing tree-ripe fruit with others. These are the rewards of learning and experimenting with new cultural practices and techniques as you become an accomplished backyard fruit grower.

• Many fine varieties of flowering dogwoods, tulip magnolias, Japanese maples and other specimen plants are now available at nurseries for winter planting.

• Prune fruit trees, grapes, berries, and ornamental trees this month. Take in a pruning class and sharpen your shears before you start.

• Spring flowers and vegetables can be started from seeds now on your window sill. Try pansies and snapdragons, broccoli, cabbage and lettuces.

• Blueberries are a delicious fruit that can be planted now from young plants. Give them a rich, acid bed prepared with lots of peat moss.

Planning the Backyard Orchard

Whether you have 20 acres or 1/4 of an acre, you can have fruit-bearing trees on your property that will give you mouthwatering, tree-ripened fruit as well as a sense of pride and accomplishment.

In choosing the location for fruit trees, a place with as much summer sun as possible is best. With a short season to ripen fruits here, we need as much sunlight as possible. Fruit trees should not be planted in the vegetable garden. Worse than root competition, the shade created by the trees diminishes the productivity of the garden.

There is some advantage to planting early blooming fruit trees, like apricots, plums and peaches, on a north slope or the north side of a building. The winter shade will delay the blooming of these trees and increase your chances of having a good harvest. 

Fruit trees should always have good drainage. This is especially true for stone fruits (cherries, peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines), which will not tolerate standing water around their trunks.

The question of whether to plant standard trees or dwarf trees is mostly determined by how large your orchard is. Standard apple and pear trees should be set 20 feet apart and semi-dwarf trees can be spaced 12 to 15 feet apart. In an area 100 feet by 100 feet you could plant 25 standard trees or 50 to 65 semi-dwarf trees at that spacing.

Dwarf trees can also be planted in hedgerows 4 feet apart where space is at a premium. They take a lot of care when planted so close together but will give you a bountiful harvest. Even standard sized trees can be kept much smaller with pruning. This requires summer pruning as well as winter “dormant” pruning, but it can be done where space is at a premium.

You will also want to consider which varieties to plant for a long harvesting season. Cherries are the first to ripen, around the first of June, followed by apricots, plums, peaches and pluots which ripen at different times through the summer depending on variety. The first apples and pears ripen in late August and other varieties ripen through the fall months. Persimmons ripen around Thanksgiving. With careful planning you can have fresh fruit over a six month period.

Not all fruit trees will bear every year. Spring weather conditions frequently damage the crops of apricots, peaches and plums and even apples and pears have good and bad years. Plant enough trees so that you will have more food than you need in the good years, and in the bad years you will still get enough.