Pruning and Shrub Bed Construction
A personal note first before returning to gardening. Thanks to everyone at All Animals Veterinary Service for treating my sick cat. Montel suffered an infection from a punctured paw. Dr. Schultz and staff saw him on short notice and prescribed an antibiotic which has my adopted cat back to his old routine: eating, sleeping and using his cat box. Thanks also to Mary Ann at All Animals for suggesting I write a tree pruning article. I'll devote an entire column on structural tree pruning in my next column. For now, I want you to give you a specific pruning recommendation and a general remark.
My specific advice is also my Tip of The Week. Do not prune your flowering fruit tree now. Leave your purple leafed plum, flowering cherry, crabapple or flowering pear alone until after they bloom. All these roseaceous species bloom on second year wood, that is, wood already on the tree. You'll cut off flowering wood, consequently, if you prune now. Wait until late spring instead, no matter how scraggly or unkempt your flowering fruit tree looks. All that congested growth means great looking blooms in just a little while. Pruning in spring or summer is perfectly acceptable and the only way to ensure a robust blooming tree.
My general remark concerns thinning, about lightly pruning older trees and shrubs without making the kind of brutal heading cuts that you see on decapitated Mulberries. A thinning cut takes a branch back to its point of origin. This retains a plant's character. A heading cut gets done at some arbitrary point. This destroys a plant's character. Tree topping is an example of heading cuts. Not good. Thinning seeks to rejuvenate a heavily congested plant with light handed pruning. Many avoid thinning, though, because they don't know where to begin.
Look at the tangle of branches in the first illustration. Where does one start? As a simple guide, try removing 20% of interior branches. I'll have a step by step description of how to do that next column. But for now, I just want you to know that a good method is to strike a rough balance between open space and closed space throughout the canopy. Think of it as a balance between dark and light. This thought will guide you as you prune out the interior. Step back from the plant frequently to check your work -- you cannot judge the overall job unless you are ten to fifteen feet away.
Let's now finish the shrub bed design and construction article I started last column. We got a design figured out and now it's time to start building the bed. Begin by spading your shrub outline. Push the shovel in about halfway into the soil and pull back on the handle. You don't need to turn the soil just yet. Instead, get an outline going in the ground that you can see and then take a look. Fine tune its shape as you go. An edging tool, if you can find one, also works well. A gasoline powered edger with a steel blade, the kind used to trim grass against sidewalks, is the fastest and easiest method to cut a shrub outline (Just make sure you hose down the machine when you give it back to your neighbor or rental yard!) Do this half shoveling all the way to the end. If you are happy with the basic shape then it's time to go further.
Go back to the beginning and push the shovel in completely. Pull the handle all the way back and shovel the clump of soil and Bermuda into the future shrub bed. Continue with this until you reach the end of your border. You'll now have a ragged outline and a bunch of clumpy looking dirt strewn about. Bash each soil clump repeatedly with your shovel until most of the soil becomes free and you are left with raw, fibrous Bermuda root. Discard the root into a large leaf bag and throw it away. A steel garden rake also helps break down clumps. The best approach is to use a spading fork if you are dealing with Bermuda grass. The wide, flat tines pull Bermuda roots fairly easily out of the soil. Proper soil moisture, though, is essential. Give up on spading or forking the bed if the soil sticks together. Only when the soil is slightly crumbly can you make real progress.
Dig up the entire bed area in this manner. Take your time. Big beds take days of effort at a moderate pace. Don't go more than a shovel blade deep. Double digging is a silly, masochistic idea and should not be followed. Sharpen the shrub bed edge as you work by making short cuts with the shovel blade turned round. You'll soon have lots of excess soil when you start cultivating. Pile it off to one side and the distribute it back over the bed once you've cultivated the entire area. Consider using a small rototiller with a two cycle engine if you own a large property or find the shovel work tedious. These little machines till about a foot at a time, are light, highly maneuverable and perfect for shrub bed work. I used one with great success for several years. I noticed a Homelite model on sale at Oilwell Materials and Hardware last Sunday for $219. They also rent it for $30 dollars a day. Another option is to have your beds rototilled for you. Remove the turf first in all examples and then make sure your contractor calls 1-800-642-2444 to locate any utilities a day before work begins.
After spading the bed and removing as much root as possible you are ready to rake it out. Pick up any leftover Bermuda debris while breaking up all the smaller dirt clods that came loose when you first dug the bed. This will take some time. Try to break up the clods until they are pea size or smaller. That kind of texture is fine for planting seed or putting in small transplants. There's no need in the Delta, by the way, to add amendments such as peat moss, fir bark or rice hulls. Perennials, shrubs and trees will root into our parent soil without a problem. You should be able to grow most everything with just fertilizer. Feel free, though, to use these amendments as mulch on top of the soil.
Many people think that edging material is necessary to add to the border. I disagree. A mowing strip simply gives you a solid, crisp edge to trim your lawn against. It will do nothing to keep Bermuda from moving into the shrub bed. The other purpose for a mowing strip is ornamental. And while a well done mowing strip is pretty by itself, I must tell you that not a piece of redwood, brick or concrete graces any important British or Scottish garden. Believe me, I've looked. Visit Kew, Stourhead or the Royal Botanical Garden at Edinburgh and you will not find a mowing strip of any description – just a shrub bed and then turf. You can maintain a nice grass edge along the shrub bed if you practice a little. I find an electric weedeater works best since its low power won't destroy the edge you've built up.
Still suffering from edging envy? Want something low cost? How about a bottle border? Green beer bottles like Henry Weinhard's work great. Place them next to each other, upside down along the edge of bed and lawn. Leave three inches of bottle above grade. Anchor each end of the border with a single large wine bottle, also placed upside down. I once did about thirty feet worth of border in this fashion. It worked design wise, although the 74 multi-colored gerberas in the planting bed may have been a distraction. Keep a light trigger finger on your weedeater and you'll be able to trim along the border without breaking any glass. But you may want to try this sort of border in the backyard, lest your neighbors become concerned for you.
Your shrub bed should be ready for planting after these steps. You may want to wait a week or two, however, to see how many weeds will come up from your cultivation. Hoe those weeds down when they come up and you'll be ready to go. As you contemplate your new shrub beds, remember that these same simple steps can also be used for tree wells. Why have a boring circle or a square cutout around a tree? Try a liver shape or an ellipse instead and then fill the interior with flowers or bulbs. This kind of outline will give your garden a distinctive character, even when your plants are out of bloom.
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