Your viewership helps make Virginia Homegrown a success.

For information on how to become a financial partner, please contact Lanie Fields at 8045608226 or L fields at Ideas stations dot org.

Thank you.

Coming up in the first half of tonight's episode, we'll visit with Todd Ellis and Gordon to learn about growing bonsai.

And in the second half of our show will be on the streets of Richmond with the city arborist learning the fine art of pruning.

As always, we welcome your gardening questions via phone call or email.

Stay tuned for Virginia Home Grown.

And welcome to the 15th season premiere here on your community of stations.

I'm Amy Williams.

And I'm Peggy Singlemann and welcome to Virginia home grown in the second half of our show.

We'll be talking with the Richmond City Arborists about the fine art of pruning.

As always, we do welcome your gardening questions via phone call or email.

Amy.

Well, Peggy, last week I had the opportunity to go to Garden Fell to meet with Todd Ellis and learn about Bonsai.

Take a look.

So, Todd, thank you for having us out here on this rainy March day.

Your garden is lovely and full of wonderful plants.

Tell me about what you do here.

I raised Bonsai, and I've been interested in Bonsai for over 30 years.

I'm intrigued by their charm, their size, the care.

It provides me a lot of enjoyment, relaxation, meditation.

And I just love it.

Now, I'm not very familiar with the art.

I look at a plant the size of a container, and I assume that it's something that you do inside.

There are some trees, species that can be grown indoors in greenhouses, but it's primarily an outdoor art where the material has to experience all of the seasons for optimum health.

Interesting.

That makes sense because you're using what type of plant material?

Anything that has woody bark can be made into bonsai.

You can find already made bonsai from sellers, dealers, some nurseries.

Mail order on the internet.

You can start one from seed.

That takes a very long time.

When a person starts out, ideally they could go to a nursery and find a shrub and start creating a bonsai.

That way, that'll save a lot of time and give them a lot of enjoyment.

Now, traditionally bonsai were collected in the wild trees that had unusual shapes where highly prized and people would go out and dig them off of mountainsides and risk their lives.

And I noticed on one of the tables in your backyard, you have a couple that are trained around rock rocks, and you see that in nature.

You do.

And that's exactly what bonsai is.

It's an imitation, a mimicry of what you see in nature to bring a large tree in the wild into your own backyard.

And it's really old art, isn't it?

I know I've been to the National Arboretum and they're display is 300 plus years old.

Yeah.

A lot of trees that are in the big collections like that may have been started hundreds of years old.

If they were collected in the wild, they may have had hundreds of years living in the wild.

Nature certainly beat them up and created these unusual shapes.

So talk to me about some of the plants here.

This is commonly people call Andromeda.

It's pear.

Yes.

And beautiful plant.

It's flowering just like it would in nature.

Yes.

And that's the charm of this particular bonsai.

This came out of a garden and it had a lot of unique characteristics for bonsai and it'll be in full bloom in about three weeks, probably.

It's beautiful.

And the shape is lovely.

I mean, it is exactly as you would find on the side of a mountain, but smaller.

Yes.

And same with this guy.

We've all seen sort of that windswept look of, you know, on the side of a hill when you're climbing or hiking.

So what's this one?

This is a chimpanzee, juniper.

And it was started as a cutting.

I wired it when it was very young into this twisted shape and have been growing it in a container.

And I killed a branch, took off the bark to create a deadwood effect.

And now so that's interesting.

So you made the choice to have that dead branch appearance because that's what would happen in nature.

Yes.

And you do the you do train them to have these interesting shapes.

Do they try to make them all look natural or do some artists make them into crazy bow?

The the bonsai art is is an illusion and you're trying to mimic what you see in nature.

So you want to make it look realistic.

But there there are a lot of horticultural principles that are applied that are really similar to topiary.

Okay.

The Japanese are particularly fond of a certain esthetic in their bonsai and you'll see patterns of foliage look beautiful, whereas the Chinese are more interested in a more natural style looking tree.

And now it is early in the season so we don't get to see it.

But you mentioned that they're not usually grown alone, that they do have complementary plants that aren't bonds.

I'd better get along with them.

Yes, we create accents to help create a mood when we're displaying the bones.

I like this particular tree here you can see growing on top of a large mountain, and in springtime you'll see wildflowers growing around it.

So you create an accent plant to give that.

And we noticed one of yours in the back.

Again, everything is dormant at this point, but had some see them growing that gave that appearance.

Lovely.

So this plant you still have wired.

I notice you're taking them off the others.

How long does a plant have to stay with the wires on it?

That varies.

When you start out with with an image in mind, you want to put the branch into to a particular shape.

You apply the wire.

A conifer generally grow slower than let's say, a deciduous tree.

You have to look at the wire weekly in the act of growing season because you really don't want it to grow into the wire and leave a wire scar.

Sometimes you can use that in the design and if you have a long range plan, this wire, this was a Christmas tree that we bought in a nursery in Waynesboro.

My wife bought it for the solstice and it's a blue dwarf, Blue Atlas cedar.

And I saw that it had potential for bonsai.

It had a nice movement to the trunk.

It had a lot of branches to select from.

It has roots.

You can't see them now because they're covered with moss.

Nice, flared roots, surface roots.

And I put the wire on and it's been on there for over a year.

It's a beautiful shape and I keep looking at it to make sure it's not dig it in yet.

Pierce would grow faster.

I've had wire on this and I've had to take it off after a month of active growth.

And I can see you see plants and nature that somebody wraps the wire fence around and girdle.

Yeah that's about it.

So I can see why it would be a lot of maintenance.

Now here it's cut and waxed.

It's cut.

It was sealed and I'm going to cut that off.

But this tree was five feet tall.

It was a, you know, holiday seasonal tree.

And I left this on to make sure that this bird here was actively growing.

I didn't want to cut off its lifeline and I can use a pair of pliers.

This is the top of the tree, but this is definitely in the way it distracts you.

So I can just cut it right off and so I seal it later.

Are they regularly topped to remove that apical mirror stone so that they're not growing bigger or depends on what you're trying to achieve?

Sometimes you need to grow a plant on it, particularly if it's young you want.

The more you have growing, the more wood it creates and the the bigger it'll get quicker.

So now you have a deciduous tree here.

Yes.

That you have wrapped wire on told me about this.

Well, this is a young peach.

It has bloom buds and I have this here to show you that you can go to a nursery, find a stick of a tree that appears to have no bones.

I show or design potential, but you really can make something pretty out of this.

Well, you have an amazing eye.

This is a really interesting topic and one that I was not familiar with, so I appreciate you sharing it with us today.

Thanks for having us.

You're welcome.

Todd.

I'm completely fascinated by this.

And like I said, it was something I knew nothing about before meeting you.

And I appreciate you sharing it with us.

You have a lot to share.

But before we get started, I want to remind everyone that our phone and email are on the screen.

So go ahead and send in your questions and we'll get to those in a few minutes.

You are going to demonstrate how to repot a bonsai, but I want to point out that the last plant that we were looking at that was a perfectly straight twig.

And that was on Friday.

Looks like this today.

Yes, I do.

That I applied a lot of wire and put some bends and twists to give it some nice form.

It's not completely finished yet.

I'll wait until it gets into the pot, but it's ready to go.

But it's striking that in three days you can go from straight up and down.

I actually bent that in about 15 minutes.

Okay.

So walk us through the process because we're not just going to plop a bonsai in any old container of potting soil.

Correct.

Start off with a pot that has a drainage hole and a piece of wire in the bottom.

And now when I have gone to a garden center, let's hold that so they can see the sugar wire.

When I've gone to a garden center, I see them selling bones I containers and they all tend to be rather shallow.

Yes, that's a key that has to do with esthetic.

It helps with the illusion of making a tree look older.

But there are trees that are planted in deep pots too, for this is a deeper pot which is going to help with the illusion of this cascading down to a mountain slope.

Okay.

And it'll give it room to do so.

It has a hole in the bottom and you put a screen so that the material doesn't run straight through.

I put a screen there and I have wire that I am going to tie the tree into the pot, which makes that because this mix that you have is like gravel.

It is gravel, it is actually granite, it's sifted pine bark.

It is also turf s, which is a baked clay.

They call it an inorganic soil.

It allows water to drain through quickly so the roots aren't sitting in water.

A tree could live in regular garden soil, but not for very long.

The roots will start to rot and the idea is to keep the soil most moist.

But not let the roots sit in water.

Certainly.

And drainage is key.

Okay.

All right.

So you start with that.

And now we've got this guy who is growing in regular potting mix because this is, as you bought it at the garden.

I bought this at Kmart.

It had a big tag on it that said Fruit Tree, and I'm going to use something more in it.

I did This tree had some movement down at the base of its roots.

And and so that's interesting.

When we saw it at your house and most people would walk by it and think, well, it's just a couple of year old stick, but you saw a nice fruit flare.

I saw a root flare and it was small enough that I could put a wire on it to shape it and bend it.

It had flowers which were getting ready to open, and I knew it probably had a lot of fibrous roots, which are essential for good health, optimal health.

It really does have quite a root system.

I can prune off half of these roots on this tree as it is, and it will still it will still live.

And I'm going to demonstrate that.

Okay, So the first you're removing most of the potting soil gently so that you're not damaging the roots.

That's correct.

And then you're going to start your pruning.

I could totally bare root this if I wanted to.

When I met my nursery.

I will have large buckets of water that I'll just dip this in and take off all the old soil.

But this is a young tree and I'm not going to worry about remnants of the original nursery soil on here.

So.

All right.

So when you are doing this and you're keeping a fair amount of root, but you said you can get rid of up to half of it, how often are you then going to have to pop up?

Well, it depends upon how vigorous this is growing.

And I don't want to stop you from.

That's okay.

The question I, I can report this every year.

I wouldn't go more than two years without a repot.

So I bet at home you do this a lot more cautiously and carefully than we're making.

You do it on live television.

Yes.

You just speed through.

So you're removing the roots and then you're going to place it on top of just a small layer of that.

I have a small layer of soil in here and now.

Do you always wire prior to transplanting into a pot, or would you sometimes have put the straight?

It depends upon what you want to do and I will said this you're sort of running the wires through the rest of these wires, through the roots, and this will hold.

I'm going to have wires exposed and I'll use a pair of pliers.

I'm going to tighten it, and then I'm going to put in soil all the way around it.

And you're continuing to use the soil?

Yes, the well drain.

So you never go into a potting mix then?

At this point?

No.

Always staying with that.

This is I'm I'm going to stay with this.

So how often you told me that these are grown outside, How often are you watering containers?

Because if I grow annuals in a pot outside, I sometimes that's a lot of them multiplying multiple times a day.

I in the heat of the summer I can water I will water sometimes twice a day, unless it's very hot.

Generally once a day is sufficient.

But I check them.

I check them twice a day and have about one minute.

Oh, so now I'm really rushing you here.

So you're working that down in work this down into the root.

Oh, so that makes sense.

So you got rid of all of this potting soil so that that could really fill in there and hold it, because otherwise that medium is so soft that it wouldn't hold the plant in place.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Now, since this is television, I am going to take a shortcut.

You can work the soil in a whole lot more.

It's not going to hurt the tree.

I can work on it later.

And then you see there's still exposed fruit.

I will put moss around it.

Oh, it's a little insulator.

And help the later hold moisture and.

And adds to the esthetic, doesn't it?

Now what we just accomplished here in 3 minutes I would spend about half an hour doing at home.

Just to give you an idea.

Well, it really is beautiful.

And I love how you mix.

And we see examples of that and what you've brought other materials, stone sculpture and smaller plants, things like that, to create really beautiful plants.

And we only have a couple of seconds left, but just sort of give us an overview of this is a Chinese elm root expose growing over a piece of rock and a suitable container flat to show off the rock.

The rock.

Actually, the illusion is it becomes the trunk of the tree, but it also shows it's a mountain scape.

The gold is in honor of the year of the goat, but you would see mountain goats up in the mountains.

This is root over dragon.

This is when Z, this is a forsythia.

And when it's in full bloom, it'll just be a ball of fire around the head of the dragon.

I have a small Chinese elm here.

This is an old apple that I collected with permission up on Carter Mountain in their orchards.

And this is a Japanese white pine that was raised in China.

It came from Shanghai, and it's on a traditional Chinese stand.

Todd Really beautiful art.

And like I said before, you have an amazing eye, and I appreciate you sharing it with us.

Certainly.

Thank you.

As we get ready to take your questions, we have a tip from Peggy and they might take a look.

Hello, I'm Peggy Singleman, and here we are at Mammoth Jack's vegetable Garden.

And it's late winter, and it's actually time to get out into the garden and start growing some vegetables.

This time of year is a great time to actually plant your onions.

And onions actually have grown better this time of year, starting with her called onion sets.

These are plants that were grown last year, and so they're very small bulbs and we just want to put them in the ground, oh, about an inch deep.

We want a space of 3 to 4 inches apart because as they grow on, you want to remove every other one.

And then what you can do is enjoy those in your kitchen garden and have the remaining grow on for your summer crop because onions need cool weather to grow green tops, but they also need that warm weather of the summertime to grow those wonderful bulbs that we enjoy in our savory dishes.

Growing onions from seed takes a tremendous amount of time and you'd have to start them indoors a good 8 to 12 weeks prior to setting them out.

So it's easier to pick up the sets at your local garden center.

One plant that you can draw so directly into the garden right now are your peas, and the seeds are all small little green balls and you want to plant them.

So that you put them about at once again a half an inch into the soil.

But you want to set them so that they have also a structure to grow on.

And here we have this wonderful ladder that one of our volunteers made for the Garden.

Having a support for them to grow up allows them to be evil, easily harvested, but also keeps them from growing all over the ground because they are a vine.

Lastly, you want to put your transplants out now for your coal crops or cool season crops.

This is a time to go to your local garden center and purchase your cabbages, your kales, your broccoli, your cauliflower, as well as your brussel sprouts to plant into the garden.

And we'll be doing that later on today.

So you might sit in your chair and think, What can I do outside?

We're going to be out here in the garden working and starting our vegetables, which we'll be able to do in just a few weeks.

So it's time to get growing.

Welcome back.

We're here for our first question and answer segment.

But there are a few things I want to tell you about tonight.

We are lucky enough to have a live studio audience with us.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for joining us.

Those are a lot of our supporters of the community radio stations and we really appreciate all the effort that you put into helping us go.

And the other thing I want to let you know is that if you are on Facebook, you can follow us there and like us and you can ask questions between shows and get those questions answered pretty quickly by any number of gardening experts who chime in.

So it's fun to follow along there.

Peggy and Todd, we have a number of questions.

The first comes from Sean in Chesterfield.

How often do bonsai plants need to be watered and do they need to be fertilized in any way?

They should be looked at daily when the sun is out and the weather is is very warm, probably once a day watering.

It depends on the soil.

The soil I used in the demonstration, that's definitely once a day watering maybe two times a day watering in the summertime.

Yes, fertilizer is very important.

These plants, they may be styled to look like they're worn and beaten, but they need to be fed.

And there are different schools of thought on organic versus inorganic.

It all matters and all depends on what you're looking for and what type of production you have going.

So what's really good information and I found interesting at your house because it was still chilly when we were there and we were all bundled up.

You have to protect these plants in the wintertime.

And so you mulch them with leaves and sort of tuck them under and bark.

I do in this zone seven.

Most of the species will survive by sitting on the ground when is is is the worst thing for them and try to create wind barriers, put them behind buildings, shelves, take shelves off a stands and mulch the pots with mulch or cover the pot.

I don't cover the entire plant, though some species may be a little bit more tender.

You can keep them in a garage, but you make sure they don't dry out and of course, if it's semi tropical or tropical, you keep them indoors or in a greenhouse.

Okay, Good information.

Stacey.

And our studio audience has a question about black spot packing.

How can I remove the tiny black spots created by artillery mold on my home and windows?

Oh, yes.

That's a fun one.

Yes.

You've actually got them on the glass.

You can take a little razor blade and literally scrape them all off if you've got them on the plant, a little soap and water to wash them away would do a lot of good in doing that as well.

So a little bit of diligence on there.

It'll come off sometimes.

On siding.

It's difficult because it still leaves the spot when you leave it, when you take it, But the power scrubbing, scrubbing a little elbow grease will go a long way with this issue.

Yeah, I'm suspecting that we're going to get a lot of these questions this year because I see that it's a very moist spring.

Oh, yeah.

So I think it's like last year and the year before and the next question is another one that I think we'll probably see a lot of.

And this is Mac in our studio audience who says, More color.

Have you heard anything about the CO2 mall killer?

No, I haven't.

I really have not.

Yeah, that one I'm not familiar with either.

No, I'm not at all familiar with that.

But we can find out.

Would be happy to share with you.

Absolutely.

And then we have a question.

Mary Ann from the studio audience has a question on perennials.

Do you have any suggestions for types of perennials, including winter bloomers?

Oh, winter bloomers, of course, hellebore.

So the first thing that come to mind for winter blooming perennials, it's a favorite for everyone and you can get different cultivars that start blooming earlier on in December and they roll on into you.

I want to say early spring and perennials to me also means bulbs and you can get very early blooming daffodils that actually start blooming in January and February.

And there's nothing better than seeing those little heads peek above the snow and start blooming.

Oh, oh yes.

And also some other perennials that you can put in the, in the ground is again some more bulbs which are ramp this which are tiny little yellow flowers that typically bloom in January.

And I'm going to throw a tree at you.

It's called Prunus Mommy.

Peggy Clarke And it blooms typically in January, although this year it's just starting to bloom in the Japanese garden.

It May month.

But there's a lot of winter interest out there.

You've got your winter blooming.

You know, some of the camellias are very early blooming as well.

Made a lot of choices out there.

We're really very lucky in Virginia to have so many of those.

Yeah, Peggy and I both came from more northern climates where when you move to Virginia, you get to see things blooming between January and March.

You get really excited.

Well, my biggest suggestion though, is go to your local public garden, take a walk and see what's blooming, and then go buy it and put it in your garden.

I have a girlfriend who now lives in Portland, but she was out here with us and she and I say that you can always tell the quality of a public garden or a garden in general by what it looks like in the winter.

Because if you can make a garden worth visiting.

Yes.

In the wintertime, then you've got something there, you know, May much has succeeded in that.

Thank you.

And Lewis Ginter certainly has.

We're very lucky to have those here.

Marianne also had a question about Groundcover.

She says, What is the best hardiest groundcover you would recommend?

Oh, gracious, I'm going to go with wet and dry spots because there's a ground cover.

A Aruba's the type of raspberry that turns this beautiful burgundy color in the fall, and it just is spectacular.

I'm not a Vink, a minor fan, and I'm not definitely not an English Ivy fan.

Some of your true geraniums like by a cover, which is not a pillar going in, which is those red flowers that are not my favorite I'll be honest.

But those beautiful true geraniums from the species drain mutual genus Geranium, usually the sanguine names and also a number of other species.

But they have a wonderful evergreen presence that make a nice groundcover as well.

And a lot of the hyper combs and a lot of the upper mediums.

And I think I've given you enough to go, Wow, there's a lot out there.

Well, back to the perennial that's taller, but I love hellebore and naturalize.

And this weekend I was raking out all the leaves and looking at all the little hellebore babies.

And they're so fun and evergreen and yes, really a beautiful choice.

And the deer don't eat them.

No favorite native plant.

Pat wants to know what your favorite native Virginia plant is and why.

Oh, gosh.

Do you have a favorite you use to?

I do persimmon.

I love.

I love them.

Yeah.

Persimmons are beautiful.

Beautiful.

I'm going to go with I'm going to say too sorry, I've got a shrub.

I love it here in Virginia because it's got this lovely dark red coloration and it has beautiful flowers in June here, and it can take a really hot, dry spot.

And then I'm going to go with a fringe tree, you know, coming at this Virginia kiss, because this is beautiful, soft white flowers.

And I have learned that you can plant that in an old parking lot and it looks spectacular and it takes part shade or it can take a full sun.

So those are my two answers.

I support you in both of those.

I think they're very fond of both.

And the nice thing is they're so easy, low maintenance.

And again, the deer aren't going to bother your idea.

So another nice choice.

Jim in our studio audience says that he wants to know how you can eliminate mosquitoes without killing off beneficial insects.

Now, this is an issue that you have because waters water basins are important in the esthetic of bonsai.

The tadpoles that grow in the water basins help take care of it.

I don't spray and I just live with them.

But I take care that any pots or, you know, litter that's that can collect water.

I try to eliminate the standard, eliminate the standing water.

And we had a conversation.

We were there that koi you know if you have if you have standing water that can support fish, it's very helpful and increasing beneficial.

The other thing is we use dunks, you know, because I've got a few small pools and we've got fish in them, but I use the mosquito dunks a lot.

And there they're, of course, you know, a natural, you know, bacteria.

And that works very well for us.

And we encourage the bats.

We have bats living in the stars against our house and they come out every night and and help with the insect bats and frogs and toads and, you know, just make a nice habitat that they want to come to.

And I do know that Henrico County has a mosquito squad that you can if you live in that county, you can call them and they will come to your home and give you suggestions to reduce the mosquito issue in your home.

So we have time for one more question before our next segment.

Leslie, from Verona wants to know what is when is the latest that she can cut her roses back?

Oh, gosh.

It's a matter of timing and I hate giving a date, but what I'm going to do is tell you when they really start, those birds are swelling.

And right now they've started to break and they're about a quarter, two and a half inch long, at least in my roses.

They are.

And when they start to get a little longer, you've hit it too late.

You really want to get them before those birds break and get too long.

And I would do it this weekend, I'll be honest.

Get them out and get going Now to have nice weather.

This is these are the kinds of things that you do.

Don't rush off to the garden center and buy perennials and annuals yet do your pruning.

And I have, I'll admit, aimed my car lights at the bushes and pruned them.

Okay and dedicate.

All right.

Very good information.

We have a ton more questions.

We're going to get to those.

But Peggy had an opportunity to meet with the Richmond City arborist to get some great tips on pruning, which is very important this time of year.

This is what we need to be working on.

So take a look and we'll be back this time of year as the weather starts to get nice.

We all want to get outside into our gardens and start working many times we reach for the pruning shears to start to do some pruning throughout our property.

I'm here with Mike Mather, the city arborist, and he's going to show us the proper way to prune as well as some improper ways to do that.

Mike, thank you for being on the show.

We're very excited to learn more about how to do some proper pruning techniques.

What do you have there?

I have an example of well, hopefully I'm going to have an example of how not to prune a tree right here.

Okay.

So we're going to pretend this is a tree.

Yeah, we're going to pretend this is a tree.

And that this is that beautiful Saturday.

I'm getting out.

My wife kicked me out of the house.

I just have a new pair of Falco's that I bought, and I'm going to use them.

I'm going to prune this tree.

That's fantastic.

Go for it.

All right.

Well, I come up here and basically I seen it before.

I'm just going to start clipping the inside out because you want to clean out your tree.

Yeah, I want to thin out the tree.

I've heard thinning is good for the trees, so I'm just going to take all the little branches on the inside of the tree out and clean the inside.

I think that's thinning.

Oh.

Oh, I can Really.

Yeah.

Open.

I hear it's good to open up a tree, let the wind blow through.

And that's what I've done right here.

I want to cry.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, basically, I, I came up to my my tree right here, and I didn't really have a good objective in mind of what I wanted to do with this tree.

Yes.

And I probably over pruned the interior.

And although I might think this is physically pleasing right now, it can have some ill repercussions when the spring growth comes out.

Yes, it can.

Yes, it can know.

Basically, it can frequently lead to something like this.

If I if I print a tree in the next year, it looks like this.

Chances are I've done something dramatically wrong.

Dramatically wrong.

You've definitely over pruned.

Yes, I've over pruned in some way, shape or form and come up with a lot of water sprouts.

And what are sprouts?

What's another term and technical term for water sprouts?

Have a common branching and easy way to think of it as a stress response.

I've just taken off too much of the green material of the tree.

I have exposed parts of this tree to light that we're not exposed to light.

And this is the tree's response because all of that energy in that root has to go somewhere.

Exactly.

And basically, I've done harm to the tree.

I've done harm to the esthetics of my yard as well, because this is not an esthetic branch.

So how do we not do that when I go and I start to prune a tree, I should have an objective of what I want to do with this.

Why am I pruning the tree and think about not taking too much from the tree?

Those are some of the just starting basics.

Well, how much is too much?

How much is too much?

A ballpark would be about 25% would be the absolute upper limits.

I tend to be much more conservative than that.

And I know people say, how do I judge that?

I don't know about you, but I personally look at the tree, I cut it in half, I cut that in half.

And that gives me a visual mass of what not to exceed.

As I'm gathering clippings on the ground, I go, Ooh, time to stop.

I always like to tell people if they're going to prune a tree, if it only takes one cut, that's how many cuts you should make.

Well, that's good.

But many of us want to do more.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But as with many art, sometimes going too far, the only time you know you've gone too far is after you've gone too far from the results.

Yes.

Yes.

Mike, you do have some examples right here on the city streets to show us how to properly prune.

So why don't we go do that?

Okay?

Absolutely.

Okay.

All right, Mike.

Cherry trees are beautiful trees.

And I'm so glad you plant some throughout the city.

But they do have their challenges.

So it's a great example for pruning.

What are the steps that a homeowner should take in pruning their trees?

The steps starting off with the objectives.

Like I said, one of the first objectives that's easy to start with is Deadwood.

We have a few dead branches right here.

These are some of the things that I'm always a good spot to start with.

When you're pruning a tree is what for the deadwood and have that removed.

Okay as you go further out.

The reason I came out to this tree in the first place is a little bit of crown elevation.

So when these leaf out, they tend to weigh down some.

And we do have some problems in the intersection here with visibility.

So I'm going to do just a little bit of pruning to try and raise the branch.

How do you make the decision where to make that cut?

Excellent at a lot of people.

If this is their branch that is too low.

Some people think that this is the branch that I have to cut or that's the branch that I have to cut.

Or sometimes this is the branch that I have to cut when really a lot of times way out at the end of the liver, a little bit of this at the end is going to be enough to spring it up.

So you're basically just doing a little weight off of it and it pops the branch up.

Yes, Yes.

People have to think they're living organisms.

They do lose.

They feel there's not a steel arm out there.

Yeah.

So I'm I'm going to hit the deadwood.

I'm going to do some parallel elevation.

And then after that, I'm probably just going to do a little bit of thinning of some of the adventitious shoots that are in the tree here.

Well, little bit.

Just a little bit.

And why would you do that For esthetics as much as anything else?

A lot of times if you do a little bit of a thinning, it shows off the interior of the tree for the people.

Many times that sort of offending is actually not for the health of the tree like people think it is, but it does have some pleasing things to the eye.

I guess the hardest question that people always say is how much to take off?

When do they stop?

When do they start?

That's a great question.

And regulation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In a situation like this, less is better.

Also where you're taking it off this branch, for instance, a lot of people think I'm going to start at the center and I'm going to clean everything out as I go.

That's not proper thinning.

Yes, the most common thinning, but it's not proper thinning.

I'm going to want to try and take a little bit outside, a little bit in the center of this branch and a little bit in the interior.

And a little bit is the word.

A little bit is the word.

Well, Mike, this has been wonderful information and I really appreciate you coming out and sharing your expertise with us, because I think we all have the tendency to want to make that one more cut when we need to not do so.

And hopefully you've given us some good guidelines that cause us to pull back and walk away.

So thank you.

Absolutely.

That was a great segment by Mike Mather, the Richmond of City Arborist, and we're lucky to have the other part of the team, Luke McCall here, who's also Richmond of City Arborist, to talk more about pruning, which is a topic people have many many questions on.

But look, before we get going, I want to remind people that we still have our phones open and you can call in or even email your gardening questions for us to answer.

And if we don't get to them now, we'll be sure to get back with you.

So look, welcome to Virginia, home grown.

And I see we've got some interesting crape myrtle branches right here.

This is Richmond's favorite tree.

Yes, it is Britain's favorite tree.

And like I mentioned that earlier when we talked about it's time to get out and prune your grape myrtle.

So many people may be thinking about that right now.

So hopefully we've got some people that are tuning in.

Yes.

So that they can learn what to do and what not to do with pruning itself.

Right.

So the first thing you have to do is you have to think about what is your objective, what do you want to do with this plant?

And most of the time you want to do probably something about safety, remove dead, dying, crossing branches, things like that.

So if you look at this piece here, there was a crossing branch where it was rubbing up against it.

So you can see how there's actually a scar that's developed on the stem.

And that definitely and I know where I made this cut.

And on the other stem, there was an equally bad scar, which, as you know, opens up issues for insects and disease.

All right.

So you really want to think about that.

You want to think about your objective first before you start cutting anything.

Most people just want to get out there.

And as Mike pointed out, let's just cut something and kind of see.

So it pays to take a take a moment and think about what you're doing it well.

What are some of our objectives for pruning so many of your objectives?

You might think about maybe the plants too big, but mostly it's going to be cleaning.

So you're, as I said, thinning.

You may need to reduce some of the live growth.

What's the raising?

So you want to have some elevation, You want to make sure traffic, visibility, clearance, things like that, and reduction.

So if a plant's getting too big, you may want to take it down, but take it inside.

Yes.

Not just lacquer off.

That's right.

Not just cut it off.

Yes.

Well, some of the points of having all those objectives, how can we go about fulfilling those to be able to make proper cuts or do we just grab the pruners and get going or.

Right.

So what you want to do is you want to look at the plant and you want to kind of identify where it is that you need to cut.

So when you look at this plant here, for example, this crape myrtle, you can see that there was an old dead branch there.

And so what happened was it was cut off right here at the top.

And then you can see that there's actually a color that's beginning to develop along the edge of the branch.

There's a pretty distinct line there where the dead tissue stops and a lot of tissue begins.

And this actually isn't that bad because in some cases, if you cut down too far, you can injure the remaining stem.

So it could have been worse, although if you turn it around and you look, you can see that what happens when you don't cut it off cleanly at the collar, then a new sprout will emerge.

And sometimes you don't want that to happen.

Yes.

No, you don't.

You want to have your cuts cleaned, but you also don't want to do the old fashioned flush cut.

Right.

Those straight cuts right down the trunk to make the trunk nice and straight are now improper right.

Many of that many of the pruning techniques that we're talking about are the reasons for pruning is you're you're causing an injury.

I mean, you are damaging the tree.

You are taking away energy, the tree.

So you have to try to cut precisely so that you don't remove any unnecessary energy.

And I noticed with this one right here that the cut was made.

If they'd made it a lot closer, that would have been more proper.

That's correct.

And I think there's I think you had one of the sections where it showed a piece that had healed up pretty well right here.

If you look here, this is probably an example of an older cut that has its sealed over.

Trees don't heal, they seal.

So if you look at this one as compared to here, then this this piece has actually sealed a pretty well and the tree is closed off.

So it's no longer a vector for insects or diseases to get into the tree and caused caused it.

So it's sealed that cut.

It's sealed the cut, which is correct.

Yes.

And what about when you're going approaching a tree?

You know, what type of tools should you be using to make these cuts with.

Well, I've got some tools over here.

So I have a variety of things.

And important thing about tools is trying to choose the right tool for the job.

You want to try to size your tools appropriately for however big of a cut you're going to make, you don't want to try to force it too much because you could end up damaging or crushing the tissues.

So here I've flip our branch around this side.

I'm going to cut something well, if you want to, but I was just going to let you demonstrate.

So you can see that here.

There's a couple of improper places.

Earlier we talked about that.

And you can what we want to try to do is we want to try to cut back to the stem so that we have a lateral branch to take over.

Generally, the rule is about one third.

So if you see here, then this.

I'm sorry I picked it up.

Yeah, that's going to be that's going to be pretty close.

But we probably want to we probably want to go ahead, see if I can do that.

And then so we've made that cut.

We've we've allowed we've allowed a little bit of space there for that branch to take over and begin growing in there.

So we would probably do the same thing here if we're going to make good cuts.

Would that be a good thickness to use your hand pruners on or should I say that's probably going to get a little big there.

So that's probably where you'd want to size up and move to a lapper.

Mm hmm.

Which you can see my my tools are pretty well worn there.

Well, what I try to you try to keep the blade sharp.

It's it used to be called tree surgery.

So we want to have our tool sharp so that they.

So we also make good, clean cuts.

All right.

If was too big for the looper, what's the next step in our tool?

That was too big?

And we'd go over here to this handsaw, got a pruning saw here.

Now tell me when you get ready to prune.

Do you, like, just grab one tool or do you take all three with you?

Well, you can see I've got a Caribbean around here, so I'll I'll clip this to my belt.

This has a nice.

Sorry I didn't wait long enough.

This has a nice little belt clip, so I'll have that on my belt.

And so, yes, try to carry an assortment of tools many people use.

Like you can use a five gallon bucket.

You know, there's a little tool bag, so there's a lot of you can come fully equipped.

People can really get into it.

They really going to come with their whole array or assortment of tools, as it were.

But I'd rather have that than trying to take a tool and make it cut something that's not properly sized for the for that power, you know, Right tool, right tool, right place, Absolutely.

Good tools, good investment.

It's a very good invest.

Your trees are priceless.

You can't you can't put it back.

No, no they don't glue back on when you're through.

People always ask you that's a pretty funny joke.

Yes.

I want to ask you about the crape myrtles that are being pruned right now throughout town.

It seems some people are very committed to reducing their crape myrtles and create murder.

It's a it's a popular topic that some people like to do that they think that we want to control our own.

They think that they should be a certain size.

And the way to do that is to cut it back down.

Often it makes these cuts here look fairly mild.

I would say most of the cuts are probably more along this size or even larger or want to reduce that.

And that's really bad.

What you're going to do is you can end up introducing decay into the tree.

You're going to end up causing more and more of these sprouts.

You're really depleting the energy of the plant, so you're doing bad things to it in a lot of different ways.

Well, we're back to right plant, right place.

And if you want a shorter creek myrtle by a shorter.

Kramer By dwarf variety.

Absolutely.

Or by a different type of tree.

Sure.

Well, look, this has been very educational.

I know we had to be quick about it.

So, you know, tree stewards teach pruning and I know various you know, the public gardens in our community teach in show pruning as well.

So help is out there, too.

There are many, many good resources this year, right, to teach you hands on how to do this.

Yes.

People stop just going out and hitting away with it.

But yes, I thank you.

And we're going to have time for some questions, but I want us to go to yes, I want us to go to the plant of the month.

We're going to learn about our common milkweed, which is becoming a very popular plant for many gardeners.

I'm here at Pleasant Grove Park here in Blue Van and County to talk about my chosen plant of the month, which this month is the common milkweed.

There's an example of it behind me.

I know it's not much to look at, but if you if you're looking to see the larger stalks with the pods on them.

But that plant's done its thing, its life cycles finished for the year, the seed pods have opened in the sea to floated away.

You can see that the feathery stuff on these seeds that help carry them through, through the wind.

So they're finished.

But the reason I thought this plant was important and valuable to talk about this month is if we're going to propagate this plant, this is a great time to be starting those seeds.

So we would have done some collection through the winter, have to keep them cold.

They need to be stratified so that the seeds with germinate and you can look that up if you'd like for more detail on stratifying milkweed seeds.

But cold is very important to that.

And then we can propagate them, plant them indoors, get them started.

So in the spring we can move them out to our gardens and enjoy that plant through the coming year.

Of course, there's a lot of national attention right now regarding monarch butterflies and common milkweed is one of the plants for monarchs, and as that population declines due to habitat loss, we need to step in and do what we can to provide that habitat.

And of course, common milkweed is a great way for us to do that.

It gives you a great opportunity to see the caterpillars if they find your your plants.

And so you can see them eating the the milkweed plant throughout the year, not to mention that the plant itself is attractive.

It's beautiful.

Big green leaves.

It has a great bloom, and then the seed pods are beautiful themselves.

So there's a lot of benefits to the milkweed plant and that's why I've chosen it for the plant of the moth.

We're back for the second question and answer segment tonight.

I want to thank John Thompson for doing Plant of the Month there.

Many of you who watch the show know that Ian Robertson, a totally different accent usually at our plant of the month.

And unfortunately we lost Ian last fall.

And so we're very sad about that, but very happy to have John join us.

Yes, welcome.

I also want to let everyone know that if you have questions between our shows and you're not on Facebook and don't communicate with us that way, you can always write to the Times, dispatch.

And Richard Nunley, our retired host, will answer your questions.

He usually gets back to you pretty quickly and you may even see your question appear in one of his future columns.

So the email address is there, and we encourage you to stay in contact with Richard.

So we have many questions, folks.

Marie in Chesterfield says that she has azaleas that seem to have more and more dead branches each year.

And she's wondering, should you just keep pruning at the dead or is there something else you should be doing?

Hmm.

I would probably talk to an arborist or a certified horticulture, someone who can really assess the health of the plant.

If you have a plant that's continually generating dead branches, something something is probably going on with You probably needs a closer look and extension.

Who John works for is a great resource for that too, and they can sort of send you in the right direction.

Robert in our studio audience had a question about.

Myrtle He says he has to create Myrtle that have weather damage and need pruning.

Should he cut them straight across or in a dome?

And now he knows that we call it Cape murder.

So he heard the answer.

But what would you actually do?

Interestingly enough, I actually had communicated with Mr. Wheatley earlier through email, actually through the job, and then we actually introduced ourselves and met all over again tonight.

So it was nice.

And I did talk to him about the proper way to prune Myrtles and try to work with the form of the plant is really the best thing that you can do.

And I explained that to actually going to go take a look at the trees sometime soon.

Very good.

And they have a beautiful form.

They do.

And so if we can work with that, you're going to enjoy them far more than if we would do the straight cuts.

I agree.

And then with respect to John's segment on Milkweed, Carolyn, our studio audience was asking, is it correct that they attract butterfly?

And the answer is yes.

And then the real question is, where do you get it?

Milkweed, you can purchase some.

Mostly we've gotten very popular and most seed catalogs and like Seed Savers Exchange, which is in the Charlottesville area.

And I know we're going to have some.

I gotcha with you.

Yes.

You will have a flower.

We're going to have some seeds available at Herbs Galore and more at the end of April.

But if you wanted to start them early, like John suggests right now, you can look online and there are many, I want to say native plant seed sources and some of your I want to say more home.

I'm sorry, not home, but smaller seed companies are carrying them because it's such a popular pollinator plant right now and that we're seeing it more and more in the market and people encourage more.

And I know as we go forward in this season of Virginia Homegrown, we're doing a lot on pollinators.

Yes, we are.

And so you're going to see that reoccurring because it is just such a hot topic these days.

So keep keep watching and we'll have lots lots to.

Jamie in Chesterfield, she is ready for summer because she wants to know how she can avoid having the bottoms rot on her tomatoes this summer.

I want a real tomato out of the garden to hire the grocery store tomatoes.

So what's the secret?

Those are blossoming, right?

It's happening.

And lime is your answer.

So you've got to get some a raise the age of your soil so it's closer to neutral and be, you know, just get some lime and you can actually pouf it on to the plant itself.

It starts actually with the blossom itself.

So it's so it's good to be aware of it, do it early.

But the one thing is we are all really excited to get in our garden.

Oh, yes, it's still a little early to plant the tomatoes out so you can wait on those.

As my segment said, it's time to get those transplant sets and seeds such as peas and radishes and lettuce is out there, right.

Beets to.

And that takes us to Henry's question.

He's in Dinwiddie and he wants to know, is it a good time to plant cabbage and lettuce?

Oh, yes, it is.

Yeah.

We planted it last week and put it in the ground and we had we really looking forward to just a few weeks from now we'll start having some greenery and again, I use transplants for that.

It's too late to plant broccoli by seed before it gets too hot and starts to bolt.

They are cool season crops, so go to your local garden center and get transplants.

Is it too late to prune a fig tree soon?

Richman would like to know.

I don't think so.

Depends on if you see it starting to bloom or if the buds are beginning to open up.

Really, the best time to prune deciduous trees is in the dormant season.

So you really do want to do that when you can see the structure of the plant when it's got all the energy still inside of the plant.

So all that energy is going to be directed into that new grass.

So if you're going to do it, I would do it soon.

And now's a good time because you know what survived winter?

Because sometimes the.

Sure, yeah.

You can see the dead.

You can you can see a lot.

So yeah, now it's a good time.

But don't wait too don't wait too long, Barbara.

And then Lothian, you and everybody else with Fox would have this problem this year.

Her boxes have turned yellow.

Some have dead leaves on the top due to the weather.

Should she turn them off and how can she prevent the yellowing?

Well, the most important thing is to know that we've just had a really rough, rough season and that the box would have kind of taken the brunt of it.

And what I would do is suggest to you is boxwood is are a very dense wooded plants because they grow so slowly.

So there's a lot of life in there.

It's just the leaves that have been affected right now.

Please don't prune it.

They're not brown, they're not dead.

They're just turning yellow and they're going to be coming out of the season and warming up and turning some green.

But the most important thing is to check your patch of your boxwood soil and make sure that it's as close to neutral as you can get it.

Believe it or not, lime is important for boxwood.

If you're here in the central Virginia area, in the valley, they've got it.

Okay.

But here in central Virginia, you need to take a soil sample, have it tested, and find out that patch.

And then once you get the right, you'll have you'll find your soil nutrients will be able to be assimilated by that plant because it's a chemical field down there as well as a biological one.

And It really will right itself.

Just got to give it time.

Very good.

Karen in Richmond says she needs printers bypass so that what you pass bypass.

Yes.

We didn't cover that my apologies for so what's the other as opposed to Anvil style planters where the blade actually comes down in context a flat surface which can crush plant tissues and things like that.

So you want to have the bypass where it cuts cleanly like a pair of scissors.

I'm sure that as I use bypass and so important, my body uses bypass.

I'm always surprised when I see that there's anything else available because I thought that we had accepted that this was a given.

I think an angel printer has has some certain applications to it, but that's one of those ones that is sort of good on the bigger hardware is can dead.

Yeah.

I mean better for on parallel offers or is it better to go with a bigger, bigger bypass.

We don't have a lot of time.

John in Richmond says English Ivy is growing up his tulip poplar tree.

Should he use Roundup on the ground at the tree roots and around the trunk?

The first thing I would do is try to actually mechanically prune the ivy, to cut to cut the ivy from from the the trunk of the tree.

And usually, if you provide a space, a gap between where you cut it and between where it's going on the tree, it'll die off.

And eventually fall off the tree.

So that's that's probably what I would do.

You run the risk when you spray something like glyphosate at the base of getting into surface roots of the tree that you're trying to protect, right?

Yeah.

If you really if you want to do that, I would do something where you could actually physically apply it to the cut stems afterwards.

And that way you're sure that it's going to, you know, translocate down into to the roots?

Yes, but I wouldn't just spray.

Well, guys, we are out of time.

It goes by quickly that we are so happy to have had you join us for our season premiere.

Yes.

Next month, Peggy is going to be going to Colonial Williamsburg to visit the gardens and I am going to meet with Department of Conservation and Recreation about the rare plant inventory, which should be really interesting.

So that's all next month here on your community radio stations.

Thank you.

Audience.

Yes.

Thank you for watching.

Virginia Homegrown.

For information on how to become a financial partner.

Please contact Melanie Fields at 8045608226 or L fields at idea stations dot org.