I started pruning the fig trees, south of the house.
These are my main-producing and favorite fig varieties. I'm cutting about half of the top portions back to 5 or 6 feet. That is to keep them within reach. Depending on the variety, those are fall crop (main crop).
The other growth is left in place, or just the growth tip cut. Those are for summer (breba ) crop. Again, depending on variety.
Of course, I remove crossing branches, center congestion, branches in the way or dead.
These are the two Trachycarpus palms. I don't like taking off too many leaves. I removed the bottom leaves to facilitate mowing, using a riding mower.
One winter (roughly 2014 maybe?) a hard freeze killed most of the growing point of the tree on the right. I thought it was dead, so planted the other. Sometimes life finds a way. A new growing point emerged. Crooked and one-sides at first. Then it grew back to normal.
All it takes is a little breeze, and the fronds quiver and dance. Same idea as quaking aspen, but these remind me of egrets dancing.
These are two of the Redlove that I trained as Espaliers. They have healthy, mature root systems and trunks. So far in my garden, the apples have deep red flesh as promoted, but are hard, lemon-sour, and inedible.
My space is limited, and I'm not getting any younger. I decided to replace the Redlove tiers with proven varieties that I love, Jonagold and Akane.
Since these are going onto low tiers, I think they need to be vigorous varieties, which is true for both selections. With mature rootstocks and vigorous varieties, maybe I'll see fruit in three years.
I'm serious about safety. I think whip-and-tongue makes a sturdy, beautiful graft. When well done, there is little or no wood exposure to the elements. It's always been my go- to method. My success rate approaches 100%. But. There is a lot of cutting and maneuvering, and the cut can give way to injury easily.
So this time, I chose cleft grafting. All of the scion work can be (was) done on a cutting board, with blade facing down (wearing mandolin gloves).
The tree work can be done with blade facing away from the worker and his hands. In addition, it's only one cut, and it faces the tree.
Assembling the graft is not quite so elegant. Apples take grafts easily, and cleft grafting has been used for eons, so I think they will take.
By the way, here is the whip-and-tongue graft, same tree and variety, that I gave a blood sacrifice last year.
Fully healed. I had never unwrapped it, so the growth was restricted. Now it is free to grow. It did heal fine. In another year or two, growth will make the graft invisible.
The tree now. I cut about 90% of the spur and new growth from the branches. I will let a few apples form, but I want most nutrients to go to those grafts to push growth. The top tier is Blue Pearmain, which I'm keeping.
The completed work. The new grafts are circled in yellow. For the challenged gardener, all of the grafting and a lot of the pruning were done sitting on the gardening bench. The espalier can be as short as convenient for accessible gardening.
The replacement glazed pots came. I selected the most well branched, vigorous looking from the yellow miniature roses, and up potted it.
Here's the result.
They are all growing very nicely. I wanted one that I can bring indoors. I might plant three pf the others together in a larger pot, and the fifth in the garden.
My theory is that the group makes a nice, sort of living bouquet to sell, with lots of flowers on short plants. They get intense, wavelength - specific LED designed to keep the internodes short, specially formulated fertilizer and hormones.
At home, they need home growing conditions. More room, completely different soil, pruning etc. They might grow a bit taller, with longer internodes. I'm just theorizing there. Ad the plant matures, I think it could be bushier (with good pruning too) and more floriferous.
When wind catches those tall containers I planted them in, sometimes they fall over. This one is heavier and not top heavy
Not root bound at all.
When I potted these a month or so ago, no roots reached the bottom. I think they're quite healthy looking.
I did searches on all of the rose varieties on the original container. Two were not found. The only yellow one was KORpot055. A little searching on that came up with Sunmaid Kordana. I think the images confirm that. I'm surmising, this is not Sunmaid Floribunda or Sunmaid Grande.
It doesn't matter. I'm not going to propagate or sell. It's just nicer to say "Sunmaid Kordana" than "that yellow minuature rose that i bought at Fred Meyer" or "KORpot055"
I grew this Forsythia from a cutting, maybe 12 years ago. Now it's also the source of many more cuttings which I started to make a privacy hedge.
If you want a forsythia bush, ask a neighbor or friend for cuttings from their's. It's so easy and rewarding.
