George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

I’ll Take the Smaller One, Please

September 29th, 2020

   I’ve planted 11 trees at my new place in the last year and a half, and in every case, I bought small ones.

This weeping beech is little now, but it’ll transform into a beauty year by year.

   Small as in ones in the four- to six-foot-tall range as opposed to the bigger ones that many nurseries also offer.

   I mention this because it’s a question I often get – “Which size tree should I buy?”

   Nurseries and garden centers will tell you that tree shoppers often ask for the biggest and fastest-growing trees, saying something like, “I’ll be dead before I see a little one amount to anything.”

   Fast-growers might throw out more shade than average- and slow-growers, but they also too often keep going to the point where they outgrow the space. And they do so at the expense of more brittle and less dense wood in exchange for the speedy growth.

   Unfortunately,  you can’t hit a pause or stop button on those fast-growers once the size is just right.

   As for the size at buying time, numerous studies have found that smaller trees establish faster and usually match or surpass the size of the larger one, sometimes in as little as three years, according to a 2016 study at Texas A&M University.

   That’s because large trees are generally field-grown ones that lose one-third to nearly one-half of their root systems when being dug and wrapped in burlap for transport.

   Those trees tend to lag in growth until their root systems recover enough for the tree to invest energy in producing more and longer branches and more water-hungry foliage. They need to fortify their roots first.

Gardening in the New Climate

September 22nd, 2020

   For better or worse (mostly for worse), it’s time to rethink how we garden in our new and changing climate conditions.

Get used to summer landscapes that look like this.

   This summer served up a model for what climate researchers and horticulturists say we should get used to in the coming years – warmer winters, earlier springs, hotter/drier summers, increasingly erratic changes in temperature, and more weather extremes that alternate between ever-heavier rain dumpings and “flash droughts.”

   All of these affect our plants and how we garden. And they’re getting hard to write off as occasional abnormalities.

   I’m convinced we’re moving into a “new normal” that involves more than just getting used to warmer temperatures or planting more crape myrtles, nandinas, and other “southern” heat-lovers.

   Nature is complicated. It’s so interconnected that even small changes in one facet can cause a ripple effect of changes throughout others.

   I first noticed something was up about 20 years ago when a sugar maple in my front yard started growing smaller leaves than normal and lost its former fullness and vibrant fall color. The following fall it started leaning, and the next spring, it never leafed out at all. It just died.

   There were no bugs, no disease, and no obvious explanation… until I read that Longwood Gardens was seeing the same problem and attributing it to increased heat.

   Sugar maple is just one species that’s on the southern edge of its climate range here. As our climate becomes more like what Baltimore’s used to be, cool-preferring species are running into increasing trouble.

   It’s behind why we’re losing so many Colorado blue spruces and why so many Japanese maples are struggling lately.

   We’ll save a lot of money avoiding future plant deaths if we’re aware of the changes and base our plant-picking decisions on the coming climate.

Good Tree Goes Rogue

September 16th, 2020

   This is a classic tale of a good guy turned bad… except the star is a tree instead of a movie villain.

These callery pears have seeded into an untended roadside bank in Hampden Twp.

   It’s about the ornamental or “callery” pear, that hard-to-kill spring beauty that blooms white in yards, parking lots, and along streets all over Pennsylvania and beyond.

   When it came to market in the 1950s as a cultivar named ‘Bradford,’ the tree sounded like a wunderplant.

   It bloomed profusely in spring, then turned an equally stunning glossy blood-red in fall.

   It grew in lousy soil, grew fast, hardly ever ran into bugs or disease, and didn’t produce fruits that would make patios, streets, and sidewalks “messy.”

   No wonder people planted them everywhere.

   Then by the 1970s, the first chink in this tree’s armor started appearing.

   It turned out that as ‘Bradfords’ aged, their wood became brittle. Trees were soon notorious for cracking apart in storms.

Read George’s article on “Muscle Trees” that are strongest in storms

   No problem. Breeders got to work developing new cultivars that were stronger-limbed alternatives with the same prolific spring blooms, brilliant fall foliage, and can’t-kill-me attitude.

   Cultivars such as ‘Aristocrat,’ ‘Cleveland Select’ (a.k.a. Chanticleer), and ‘Redspire’ became the new choices in the growing callery pear family. (The species, Pyrus calleryana, was named after the French missionary Joseph Callery, who discovered it in Asia in 1858.)

   Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of this roguish story.

10 Trees with Peeling or Flaking Bark

September 8th, 2020

   Flowers and fall foliage are the two big traits that drive most tree-selection decisions.

The showy bark of the paperbark maple tree.

   Interesting bark is an overlooked feature that most people don’t pay much attention to until winter – if even then.

   In some tree species, though, the bark is arguably the most attractive trait.

   If you’re looking to add a tree or two to the landscape this fall, here are 10 good choices that have outstanding peeling or flaking bark.

   1.) Paperbark maple (Acer griseum). One of the smaller and slowest-growing maples, paperbark maple is best known for its peeling cinnamon-colored bark. It’s as nice in winter when bare as any time. Fall foliage isn’t as brilliant as red and sugar maples but still pretty good. Grows 25’ x 20’ in full sun to light shade.

   2.) Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa). More clay-, sun-, heat-, bug- and disease-tolerant than the American dogwood, this popular Chinese species has flaking bark that eventually gives the trunk a Dalmatian-like appearance. It blooms white in June and gets warty, marble-sized red fruits in fall. 25’ x 18’. Sun or part shade.

I Wasn’t Going to Bulb Up the Yard, but…

September 1st, 2020

   Now that I’m into the run-out-of-gas years, I wasn’t planning to plant a lot of spring-flowering bulbs in my new Pittsburgh-area yard.

I used to have whole beds full of bulbs at my Cumberland County house.

   It’s a lot of work, the bulbs cost money that I already spent on brick repairs and a roof, and then there are those dreaded deer that turn beauty into dinner.

   It turns out that I can’t do without them. The bulbs, that is, not the deer.

   My order is in with two of my favorite bulb companies for 300 bulbs. They’ll be here in October. The bulbs, that is, not the companies.

   I had bulbs everywhere in my Cumberland County yard.

   I planted thousands of them over the years. Except for the tulips and some of the hyacinths, most came back to flower year after year.

   It got to the point where the whole yard was full of color early each spring, even before the “real” landscape of trees, flowering shrubs, perennials, and annuals got started.

   I missed that this spring. Yeah, I planted 150 yellow daffodils out front last fall, but other than that, not much was happening in the yard until late May.

   That made me realize just how much bulbs contribute to the spring landscape. No other group of plants gives that much color and variety that early in the season.

   Rather than go hog-wild all at once, my game plan is to add spots of bulb color a little at a time.