Tree Tips
It felt nice getting our first big rain of the year. Now let’s hope we get it regularly and it’s not just a one-off. I saved a lot of water from my downspout diverter off of the roof. I store it in 32 gal trash cans to use later after the rains shut down. It’s clean water I can use to hand water my trees. Better than San Jose Water out of the tap!
Conifers
It’s time to style, wire, pluck needles and make big bends on conifers. You can work on practically everything now except black pines — something for next month. Here in the Bay area, continue to fertilize your trees with low power fish emulsion (5-1-1). This will fire up a good energetic spring response in a few months. As the leaves fall after color change on deciduous trees, you can cut back to two buds from now to mid-January, to set up growth in the spring.
The growth that has been coming on since summer should be hardening, and will no longer snap like a bean if you bend it. But try this — exercise the branch before you bend it. By this I mean pre-bend it, using the fleshy part of your fingers and palm, supporting and twisting the branch in the direction you wish to ultimately bend it before actually putting the wire on. Trust your fingers to tell you if you have gone far enough. They are actually more reliable than your eyes. You can get much more acute bends this way. If the branch still resists you may need to use raffia to support it. Spray the bent branches with an anti-transpirant like Anti-Stress 2000® or Cloud Cover® or Wilt-Pruf®. This is an ideal time to fashion those branches before they harden off totally over winter.
You can still style and transplant those junipers (they really love fall transplanting) and early flowering trees, but protect them from frosts if we get some cold weather.
December is usually best, but if pine needles have hardened, clean out the old needles on your trees to let the sunlight in. Leave on more needles on the bottom branches: 10 to 15 pairs vs. 7 to 10 on top. At this point we want to encourage as much sun as we can. Later we’ll thin out even more. But watch that you don’t damage tender needles that haven’t hardened. Use tweezers. Days are getting really short and cooler.
Deciduous Trees
Deciduous trees should be wired when most of the foliage has fallen off but before they become brittle later into the winter dormancy period. Remove the foliage when about 75% of the foliage has turned color. If you wait until December, any cutting may cause some trees to bleed excessively.
Other Pre-Wintering Items
For most trees, now is the time to clean off the top layer of sphagnum moss we had on during the hot summer season. Be sure to also clean the topsoil that has accumulated spent fertilizer and weed seeds and is growing seasonal moss to make sure it doesn’t get up into the bark of your trees. Silver moss that you used for the show can be taken off and put in your landscaping where it will get early morning sun and regular water. You can grow a new crop for next year. Clean off dead leaves and remove weeds. Add some superphosphate to the topsoil and with any transplanting that you do.
Be sure to clean out the foliage in the crotch areas, which allows the sunlight into the interior to stimulate new buds and expose bugs.
Remember to make your first application of dormant spray at Thanksgiving. Ultrafine® oil, Neem Oil or copper and lime sulfur sprays do well. Do not mix them together!
Water your trees when they need it. This means that you should wait until the upper soil has dried and is lighter in color before watering. Then water thoroughly. Don’t keep them too wet, and remember that as they slow down their growth they use less water. If too much water is accumulating in the pot, tip the pot up on one side with a block to help drainage.
Whatever shade cloth you had for your trees can be eliminated at this point. The hours of sunlight and angle of the sun are approaching their minimums so the trees need all they can get. Also, tropicals have to be protected as the temperatures get down below 45º.
A comment from Matt Spadoni:
For those harvesting rainwater (which I think is great) they might want to be aware of something called the 'first foul flush' which we get in California. Since in the Bay Area it does not rain for 6-7 months in the summer, our roofs and other surfaces collect pollutants like wildfire dust, particulate matter from car exhausts, etc.
When we finally get a hard rain, all of those pollutants are flushed down the gutters fairly quickly, probably in the first hour or two of it raining. These are things we probably don't want in the water we use for our trees. There are things you can buy that divert the first bit of rain from entering your collection bins to avoid this, or you can manually close your collection bin for the first hour of rain and then start collecting.
