Pruning the Overgrown: Dappled Willow

(Perspective makes it appear as if the dappled willow is half the size of my hobbit home. Not the case, it is a mere five feet by five feet in this picture. In the location in my garden, a more manageable 3 1/2' by 3 1/2' feet is more to my liking.)



I've yet to see a mass planting of dappled willows. I rarely see them in botanical gardens, either. However, for about 2-3 months of each year, visitors to my yard are bowled over upon viewing mine. Even my neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps (who should know better!), has succumbed to the allure of the dappled willow, planting a rooted cutting of mine in his front yard.

I attempt to keep mine "in check", meaning it seems like I am checking/pruning it all the time.

I'll also be the first to admit that at times I've let my dappled willow get to be too much of a good thing. Like the commercial when the grade-schooler attempts to define less and more, we gardeners tend to always want more. A word of advice, more in the case of the dappled willow rapidly becomes unruly and overgrown.

This constant gardener thing is probably why botanical gardens fail to plant this lovely. It needs a one on one relationship with a pruner.

At this point I would love to have some cohesive pictures of the pruning of a dappled willow. I do not. Photojournalist have not applied to document this aspect of my on-going pruning war. (Come back in late July, maybe I'll take the time to document in pictures then.)

I will admit, like the gardener with the hedgers locked under glass, preferring to hand-prune, I have broken out the hedger. This approach is a bit like using a wrecking ball to kill a housefly, and not recommended. I've used this approach a couple times. The result is much less than satisfactory, with frayed cuts when nice clean ones are preferred. Willows, because of their stringy bark which does endear them to basket makers, and hedgers are not simpaticos.

Once you have established the best size for your willow and regularly cut it to that height, over time it becomes an easier and easier task to see where you need to make your cuts. The new growth will be thin pencil-straight and the hard-pruned areas of your shrub will take on a branching appearance. Often by the time pruning time comes around your willow will put on 10" to 18" of new growth. It is this new growth, after the color changes from the white to pink and into the green of chlorophyll producing foliage, which needs to be removed to keep your willow looking its best. For me, here in central Wisconsin this tends to be in the beginning of July. Additional pruning for size and shape can be done up until about eight weeks before your frost date in fall. You want to allow sufficient time for any new growth to harden off. I have found I prefer a ovid shape (like an egg laying on its side), and given the location of my shrub, this works very well for me. This is not the shape I recommend for the pruning of box or privet (or even dare you prune them, conifers).


Last year this color change for my dappled willow came about eight weeks into one of the hottest, blistering droughts I have ever seen in central Wisconsin. One cool evening, as I was starting my pruning process, I noticed that typically where there are lots of leaves to provide sugars to the roots growing in the branched areas of my shrub, this year there were none. For those of you not aware, willows need/love moisture. There is a reason for the iconic image of the graceful weeping willow draped over the shoreline of a creek or pond. They are wetland lovers. Once established, willows have no problem sourcing their moisture needs as their fibrous roots will travel far and wide to obtain the moisture they need (Do not plant these beauties near septic, or sewer lines!) Even in my well-watered and mulched garden, my willow was having a hard time of it. (I believe due to the heat. Its chlorophyll production was totally being produced by the new growth. Prune this off all at once, I would run the risk of pushing this plant beyond its levels of endurance, even as well-established as mine appeared to be.

I devised a plan to remove the new growth in stages, approximately a 1/8-section of the plant down to the branching area at two-week intervals. This I felt would encourage growth on the inner branching areas of the shrub where the mature branches would produce primarily green foliage.

I took this picture today and it shows this structure more clearly.




(The above picture is from the same perspective as the second picture in this post.)

Only the foliage growth on new wood seems to have the intense coloration for which I grow this shrub. I also increased the watering of this shrub throughout the rest of the summer. For any of you thinking of taking your 8' to 10' willow down to a 3' to 4' more manageable size; this might be a good plan for you as well.

Part of your pruning program should also allow for the entire shrub to be cut to the ground every 3-5 years. Choose a couple of the oldest branches and cut them off at ground level each year.




Snow Report- Comparison




Last year on this day my PJM rhododendron was in full bloom. This year, I can't find it under the snow bank.

However, the 4" deep "lake" that covered my parking space in my yard suddenly disappeared, meaning the ground has finally unfrozen in at least one spot in my yard!

In other on-going snow news, the snow-loading of my yard by a neighbor has me more and more concerned. THIS shoving of his snow away from his garage (and into my spruce) so the melt would not run into his garage was not "okay." (How is it I can spot non-gardeners by observing their other actions?) I can see already there may be damage. Just in case he can not "remember" all his snow pushed up on my trees and shrubs and cannot imagine how all those branches got broken and shrubs scraped off and up-rooted...











...a little chat will be forthcoming once the snow melts. I want to be VERY clear. Not "okay."


POSTSCRIPT: My dappled willow seems to have its own fan club. I wanted to publish some recent pictures of my shrub which is now over ten years and has almost died once after a drought, but is in all its glory at the moment, June, 9, 2016.

Currently about 3' tall by 4' wide

The Woodpeckers

It is snowing here in central Wisconsin. I suppose it beats tornadoes.

This is my Austrian black pine. It seems to be on attack from all sides. When little (about 4-foot tall), and pre-fence which makes for better neighbors, an ice scanty was dragged across it. Two years ago, it seems to have had some sort of insect infestation drawing woodpeckers. The horror!

I have since contemplated cutting it down while I could still manage the job myself.

This morning, while walking the boxer, the woodpeckers have returned. A quick pound-pound and a flurry of wings. Then a fluttering settling of wings and the peeking around the neighbor's boxelder, "Is she gone?"

I didn't capture them myself. The obvious answer was, "No, here she comes with that soul-stealing thingee! Fly!!"

Mugshot of perpetrator, dragged down from the internet. Shout-out to this birding blog by Cristina Arno.)

(Photo by Gina Mikel.)

So I saw a pair of these pileated woodpeckers. As much as I like to see these guys, I do hope they don't totally destroy the cambrium layer of my pine!

Wet, Heavy Snow

Boughs bend deep with snow
Branches burdened, bowed, but alive
Limbs creak, groan, then give.

"Little Snow, Big Snow"

This picture of snow is not taken by me. It was taken by a snow researcher with an electron microscope. It is not what we think of as a snow flake. There are snowflakes, typically the larger ones that fall during warmer temperatures, that actually look like what we think of when we think of snow flakes. I'm pretty sure, though that this is what snow looks like when we are getting the "little snow, big snow" sort of snow.


Right now, I am watching the teeny, tiniest snowflakes fall out my dining room window. My ancestors were big journal keepers. Being English, one thing they liked to talk about in their journals was the weather. So a lot of the family stores tend to center around the weather and can be reinforced with these journals. Take the entry made over 150 years by my dad's grandfather, "March 23, ...snow is three feet deep on the flat. It is snowing again today..."

My great grandfather, AO, was worrying about planting early potatoes, many times planted here on Good Friday. I am assuming the March 23rd date to be coming up on that day for him. Here in present day central Wisconsin, it hit 55 degrees Fahrenheit here yesterday, on January 11. I have to wonder what AO would have thought about that!

AO's wife, Sarah, carried a rifle with her everywhere she went. Rumor has it she even took it to the outhouse with her, reportedly to shoot at crows, reading material like a Sear and Roebuck catalogue no doubt being put to a different task. Fact is though, they settled in central Wisconsin just a couple years or so after the land treaty with Chief Oshkosh was signed clearing the last of the Menominee Indians from this area. Most likely they still saw some migrating Indians passing through to summer hunting grounds, as this is an area with lots of these trails, one being what is now State Highway 22 which runs very near their homestead.

For all that, the house in which I now live has a "hidey hole" in the floor under the dining room carpet, where a whole family could hide from these "savages".

My forebears no doubt had opportunities to bore the natives with talk about the weather. However, the natives being connected to the climate more than we are today, could hold up their own in the limited way conversation can happen between non-fluent speakers. In my mind's eye, I can see the Indian standing in the dooryard with a blanket draped across his shoulders grunting out "little snow, big snow; big snow little snow," as the first tiny snowflakes hit his brow.

Everyone would nod and smile, and then maybe AO would respond with something like, "It sure is cold today." And again everyone would nod and smile. Accordingly, no one got shot or there would be family stories about that as well. What does come down is that the Indians said this, "little snow, big snow; big snow little snow."

What we are only now coming to understand is snowfall accumulation tends to be larger when the temperature and humidity are right for it; and those condition favor snowflakes of a smaller size. The natives, keen observers which they were, were passing along important meteorological information in those simple halting words and AO's response that it sure was cold seemed to indicate understanding on his part.

I'm not sure he wasn't just polite and talking about the weather. Since moving back to central Wisconsin, I have been keeping track. When we get "little snow", we get more than four inches. Big flakes? Less.

Right now those flakes are so fine and tiny, I'm thinking six inches. With only 6.3" this winter from an average of around 21" at this point, I have to say, "Let it snow!"

First Snow Day: Winter 2011-2012

View out my front door this morning

Astrolabe in my front garden. What you can't see are the two large limbs from my white pine lying in my yard or the one pushing against my telephone line.

Yesterday, we got walloped with a huge snow storm of wet, heavy, drifting even, snow. Mixed in with rain. It rained heavily for a good hour or so before in a space of a mere ten minutes or so switched over to snow. I expect the short window of time between rain and snow was to our benefit, little ice was laid down on roadways, which could have been worse than they were. As it was, there were a couple bad crashes around the state including the one near Shawano where a van carrying six souls became a fiery inferno. Local school let out here at 1 PM.

I was spending the day with my nephews out at the Pipe House. We often looked out the windows and uttered the word, "snow". Not in wonder or in awe, but more in a sigh of inevitability, that even the twins seemed to grasp. We read about snow, but we played with trains, and read some more, and ate broccoli harvested just this Sunday from the family garden, which nearly filled a 3-gallon pail.

My mother called me apologizing to me that I was out at the Pipe with the boys rather than herself in such weather. I told her not to worry, I'd rather be there than have my 76-year old mother (with not the best eyesight) navigating Hwy.10 where fools all drive like they are in a parking lot traveling at 70+ mph.

It rained pretty much the entire day before, too.

After an incredibly short growing season of a bare 103 frost-free days, the sweet potatoes were covered and we eked out a bare 120 days before I dug them fearing the ground would get wetter or colder, leading to rot; it now seems we are in winter mode. People around here are already dreading winter and its possible length. I have not yet spoken with the local Snow Witch to ask her opinion on the number of snow falls (which she always seems to have an incredibly knowledgeably accurate grasp. I do know fall was merely a too short respite for our winter-weary souls here.

I have not planted my garlic for next year yet. Garlic is a staple in much of the canning I do, and definitely a key component in pizzas and Italian sauces around here. This weekend, the weatherman promises us temps in the upper 40s to mid-50s and a bit of sun. I hope he is right. I had thought this storm over, but winter is still sending down some big fluffy, happy flakes. Hopefully, it will count as a second snowfall on the Snow Witch's winter tally.

My brother showed me the last of the harvest he had gleaned from his wife and my gardening experiment. We did deem it a success. We intend to continue our efforts next year, tweaking our plans a bit. His wife will be giving birth to their third child at the beginning of next spring. Her efforts in the garden will be minimal, and transient. My brother has expressed a desire for a "more weed-free look," although he does confess the volume of our harvest given weeds impressed him.

He confessed that from July through October he ate at least one meal every day solely from the garden in addition to what I harvested and took home, and veggies I took my mother, the meals the twins and I foraged (they loved the raspberries, strawberries, and ground cherries). Seeing the potatoes pop out of the ground, was very exciting for them.

More sweet corn, less cabbage. Fall plantings only of broccoli and peas, were some of his suggestions. Pears. Plant pears, he said. The boys and he all love pears. I did plant four sweet Lapin cherry trees this fall. And although we planted 19 blueberry bushes, he thinks we need more. And endive, if I can sort that out of the mesclun mixes he would appreciate it.

As I was busy bringing the sound of music to the Austrian Alps and garbing the von Trapp children in play clothes sewn from curtains the seasons have inexorably ground down into winter. I hope for just a handful of snow-free days, before all my gardening turns inward.

April 19, 2011: The Weather Outside is...

...FRIGHTFUL!

Outside.



Inside under lights...
Cayenne peppers




Dinosaur kale


Carrots 'Danvers' for transplant


Cabbage 'Wakefield'


Tomatillos


Onion 'Ringmaster'


Basil


Italian Flat-leaved Parsley


Celery "Tango'


Tomatoes 'Siberian'
With our weather pattern this year hopefully it will have no trouble living up to its name!

I had a nice assortment of coleus that I managed to get to live over. I have been able to start quite a few cuttings.




This last is plecanthus 'Troy's Gold'.

More Snow in the Forecast for Wisconsin

More snow is in the forecast for Wisconsin gardeners, particularly in the northern (Sorry, Debi-o! See her pictures of "'Springtime' in the North Woods") and central parts of Wisconsin, possibly as much as six inches! Snow is in the forecast for overnight tonight and overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.

Two snowfalls will once again cement the leadership and knowledge of all things weather of our village Snow Witch, giving her smug bragging rights. She would never come right out and say, " I told you so..."

Gardening in Wisconsin is starting to look a bit more like a Greek tragedy than anything else. The snow also give weight to weather as an externalization of internal mood of one of my life's leading characters, my teenage son. Having recently dissolved things with his girlfriend of a year; he says his heart just feels cold.

I used to tell him he was always so very funny, although not a good joke teller, more of a "life comic" along the lines of Adam Sandler. Nowadays, it seems like total Greek Tragedy at this Wisconsin gardener's house.

His history teacher has assigned him a "This Day in History..." paper to be written in front page newspaper style. My son, being as one with his "Cut and Paste" generation, went to the Internet to pull up everything that happened on his birthday in recorded time in one fell swoop. While he was in the shower, I snooped.

"You could title your front page 'On This Day in History...: Son Born, Comedy Dies-- Last episode of Monty Python Aired' Sub-headings include: 'So Many Football Players, University of Pittsburgh Takes to Numbering their Jerseys' and 'Electric Car Goes 15 Miles Between Rechargings-- in 1893'," I say.

1893???

"What's Monty Python, Mom?" the apple of my obviously ancient eye queries.

"Before there was Saturday Night Live, and William Sandler, Rob Schneider and that crew, there was the Three Stooges and Monty Python," I reply.

"ADAM Sandler, Mom!"

"Musta crossed a circuit with Adam and William Shakespeare," I mumble.

Comedy has decidedly evolved.

Unfortunately, weather in Wisconsin seems to be moving toward Spring at the same rate we are moving toward having a viable electric car-- way too slowly for me.

As for the garden?

I moved one more of my cole crop type trays of starter plants into my cold frame, which is now full with five flats. Even though the temperatures have been in the freezing range for most of the day and night here, and the seal where the bricks and storm window meet is far from perfect; the plantlings are soaking up any sunshine with which we are blessed.

I walked through a Big Box store the other day and noticed a lot of herbicides and pesticides for sale, far out numbering any growing things. One other thing caught my eye, though. I first noticed this on a NYC gardener's blog, "66 Square Feet". She is a rooftop gardener, or "farmer" as her zoning requires her to be; and seemingly a fairly good one, not having farm roots. She started her peas in fiber pots!

What? Peas pre-started in fiber pots. Now here is the same thing, a six-cell of peas about 3"-4" tall for $1.93 in the Big Box store. Peas germinate in about 3-4 days. If soaked overnight, it improves the consistency of germination. In the spring, you can almost always count on a least one of those four days including a shower. Keeping the seeds/planting area from drying out in for 3-4 days is not much of a struggle. Translate that into a NYC rooftop with a city's heat sink and winds, that's a different story, transplants for everything has to be the way to go.

So how does this apply to gardening in the central part of Wisconsin? Well, I planted my soaked peas 10 days ago today. As of yesterday, nada, zip, zilch. The weather is making everything so slow here. On the flip side when this weather pattern exits the state, we are more prone to having the temperature shoot up to 90 degrees while the rest of the state settles into a balmy 70 degrees. Those 3-4 hours when the sun is at its peak and temperatures that high are killer for young peas. I talked with some gardeners a few days back, who spoke of planting their peas through the snow, because of those central Wisconsin temperature spikes.

As I mentioned before, peas are problematic here. Might planting them as transplants make sense for us just as it does with the NYC gardener and her unsual micro-climate? Are pre-started peas a "Best Practice" for central Wisconsin gardeners who want to ensure their spring pea harvest?

For all you non-gardeners, happy sledding and may you have a Wonderful White Easter!