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I marked my calender in the fall to do some chores this weekend, including fertilization, late winter pruning and cleanup. I had to push the fertilization to next weekend due to weather, but I did prune my maples a little bit along with removing most of an 'Acuba'/gold dust plant which I really dislike. I have been doing some reading up on pruning and realized I had some work to do on a couple of my trees to establish a better central leader on them and to better balance the trees.
I checked the stakes on my JM 'Sango Kaku', and it is doing well. I reduced a couple of the side brances to even them out just a little bit. That tree is still heavy on the lower branches and I am hoping the upper parts begin to fill in this spring.
I went next to JM 'Nishiki Kagiri', which has a central leader that leans to one side. I will be staking it this year to see if I can straighten it up a bit. That is a fairly large tree at about 10 feet, so I will need to get some sturdy stakes for it. I did a couple of reducing cuts on the side branches to balance it a bit and it dripped on me! I thought it was dew, but looked up at the cut and saw it dripping. I had no idea that a tree could push that much water so fast, it dripped on me several more times and trimming even tiny twigs off the trunk beaded up a drop of water or two. I hope it won't be a problem.
Next, I looked over my little crimson queen I showed in the fall, and decided to go ahead and reduce it in width a bit to balance the height. I will be moving it in a couple of weeks and so some of the roots will certainly be cut, so a smaller canopy, while retaining its basic shape, should make it less of a shock. I don't have its new spot ready yet, as I will have to move a large shrubby Snowball Vibernum from that spot and put in some retaining material before I can install the maple, so it will probably have to go into a large container in the meanwhile. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to get both moved if I get some energy next weekend (or get our lawn guy to do the heavy work for me on the Snowball vibernum. I don't let anyone touch my maples, lol! I hope to place it prominently at the corner of my home, with a bit of a retaining wall to drape over as it gets bigger.
I'll have to take an "after" photo of the 'Crimson Queen', it still looks pretty good, and I took off about a third of the length on the longest branches as well as removing a couple of cross-over branches. It is so hard to get a decent photo of a bare tree, especially as I've already removed some surrounding plantings in preparation for putting in new beds on that side of the house, so it is rather barren-looking.
Spring is getting so close, my yellow crocus are blooming, the daffys are up early, and the tulips are starting to push up along with my other bulbs. I put in quite a few last fall.
Laura
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