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Tips to Pruning any Tree (compost bin)

By Jeffry Bullock

 There are two kinds of winter gardening. The first method usually starts in January as the gardening catalogs begin to arrive in the mail. This type of gardening is as easy as sitting in your favorite chair, browsing the catalogs, and either dreaming about what you’re going to do this spring, or actually drawing designs for the gardens you intend to work on.

The second type of winter gardening is to actually get out in the yard and do a little work. Of course if it’s bitter cold, you’d be better off waiting for a good day. Winter is a good time to do some pruning if the temperatures are around 30 degrees or so. I don’t recommend pruning if it’s considerably below freezing because the wood is brittle and will shatter when you make a cut.

One of the advantages of pruning during the winter is that you can see much better what needs to be cut out and what should stay. At least that’s true with deciduous plants. The other advantage is that the plants are dormant, and won’t mind you doing a little work on them.

Ornamental trees should pruned to remove competing branches. Weeping Cherries, Flowering Dogwoods, Flowering Crabapples etc. have a tendency to send branches in many different directions. It is your job to decide how you want the plant to look, and then start pruning to achieve that look.

But first stick your head inside the tree and see what you can eliminate from there. This is like looking under the hood, and when you do you’ll see a lot of small branches that have been starved of sunlight, that certainly don’t add anything to the plant. They are just there, and should be cut out.

Any branch that is growing toward the center of the tree where it will get little sunlight should be cut out. Where there are two branches that are crossing, one of them should be eliminated. Once you get the inside of the plant cleaned up, you can start shaping the outside.

Shaping the outside is actually quite easy. Just picture how you want the plant to look, and picture imaginary lines of the finished outline of the plant. Cut off anything that is outside of these imaginary lines. It is also important to cut the tips of branches that have not yet reached these imaginary lines in order to force the plant to fill out.

For the most part plants have two kinds of growth: Terminal branches and lateral branches. Each branch has one terminal bud at the very end, and many lateral branches along the sides. The terminal buds grow in an outward direction away from the plant. Left uncut they just keep growing in the same direction, and the plant grows tall and very thin. That’s why the trees in the woods are so thin and not very attractive.

When you cut a branch on a plant, the plant sets new buds just below where you cut. When you remove the terminal bud the plant will set multiple buds; this is how you make a plant nice and full. Don’t be afraid to trim your plants, they will be much nicer because of it. The more you trim them, the fuller they become.

Lots of people have a real problem with this. They just can’t bring themselves to prune. Especially when it comes to plants like Japanese Red Maples. It kills them to even think about pruning a plant like this. Just do it! You’ll have a beautiful plant because of it.

Look at the plant objectively. If you see a branch that looks like it’s growing too far in the wrong direction, cut it. If you make a mistake it will grow back. Not pruning is the only mistake you can make. I hope this helps and doesn’t get you in trouble with your significant other. Many a family feud has started over pruning.

Visit the Celosia Flower website to learn about celosia plumosa and celosia plant.

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Six Easy Steps to Start Raised Bed Gardening

By Piper Cox

 By definition, raised bed gardening is to simply have a garden that is built on top of your existing native soil. You can either choose combine native soil in your raised bed garden or you can choose not to - its entirely up to you. You can plant vegetables, herbs and even shrubs in a raised bed garden. Read below for the six easy steps on how to start a raised bed garden for yourself.

1. Choose your planting site properly and carefully. Make sure that you pick a spot that gets at least eight hours of warm sunlight every day. The area must be flat with enough moving room for you to work around in as well as being near a water source.

2. Be definite on the size and shape of your garden. Be sure that you would be able to have enough space to move around in so you would not step on to the plant bed.

3. Make sure that you prepare your planting area according to what you are planning to plant in it.

4. Construct your plant bed carefully. Choose wood planks that are sturdy enough to hold the sides of your garden bed in. Raised bed gardening is not that hard if you have properly set up your garden bed.

5. Make sure that you use level frames in all four directions. This is important because your water will not be evenly distributed if you have un-level soil areas. It would fill one spot and run over another very quickly. Either way, your plants would not get the proper water they would need to grow.

6. The idea behind raised bed gardening is that it allows you the chance to be able to plant your garden by using flat, even soil. Be sure that when you start to fill your raised bed garden that you have appropriate amounts of topsoil, manure and compost and that the bed is raked flat and evenly before you start to put in your seeds.

If you were able to set it up correctly, you will be happy to know that raised bed gardening does not require a lot of maintenance at all. Just keep in mind that it is important to have as much moisture in your soil as possible to make sure that your plants will be able to absorb the minerals and nutrients that are in it quickly and more efficiently, thus giving you a healthier and more bountiful crop harvest.

Piper likes exercise, article writing, and working in her yard. She likes to work in the yard with her Mantis tiller. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends and enjoying her garden. Piper searches out the best garden tools to make her yard work a lot easier.

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Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 1:50 am and is filed under gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.