Why I Oughta...

One of my kids has started to fly a small, consumer-grade drone around our yard and garden.  They're just getting the hang of the thing - and starting to take a few risks by flying it higher and further away from where they're standing.  And...it has been going well.  We're getting some interesting photos of our garden and yard and even some from our our neighborhood.  They were out flying the drone recently and started to snap a few photos in our front yard.  Everything was going (and looking) good - here's some photos from the drone flight out the front of our house: And then.....this happened: That's static.  The drone got stuck in a large tree in our front yard.  About thirty feet up in the air.  Oh, no.   Once I figured out where it was located, I grabbed a few footballs to try to knock it down.  After about 25 minutes and dozens of tosses (and some stuck footballs), I was able to get the drone down.  And...all the footballs. But...we had one incident:  one of

The last time that I checked in on the pair of Sugar Tyme crabapple trees - that are planted on the southside of our house - was in mid-March when they started to leaf-out on the tips of the branches .   I planted the pair of these trees in September of 2021 , so this was the third FULL growing season. They seemed to do fine in 2022 and 2023. They bloomed each Spring and had fruit in their first Fall , too. I last pruned these in February of this year - February 2024.  When they were dormant .  At that time, the tree on the right was showing some 'upwards' growth and was a bit more 'ahead' of the tree on the left.  But, I pruned them back to be horizontal cordons - four layers with a 'flat' top layer. This growing season, the trees kept-on-going.  But, the tree on the right shot WAY ahead of the one on the left.  Have a look at the trees - as they currently look - at the end of September - in the photo below: The tree on the right has A TON of top growth.  An

One of the conifers that we have in our backyard is *supposed* to be a really lovely columnar evergreen tree:  a Weeping White Spruce.  I planted it in 2019 along the fence on the southside with hopes that it would grow up-up-up and be a sort-of 'exclamation point' in our garden bed.  Here's what it looked like in Fall of 2019 : it was 46" tall from the soil to the top of the leader.   Then, this thing suffered a little bit from drought.  And, I lost the leader .  That was Summer of 2020.   Now...four years later, the tree is...well....ABOUT THE SAME.  See below: I took out the tape measure because my eyes weren't telling me if this thing actually grew.  This tree was 46" to the tip in Fall of 2019.  Five years since planting - and four years since the leader was lost - this tree is NOW 49" tall.  That means....we're up 3".  Just 3".  But, because of pruning of the 'lost leader', I don't think that tells the full story.  I suspec

One not-so-bright-spot in the garden this year is the small London Planetree in our parkway.  I planted it in late 2022 and it has maybe 1/5th the foliage that it had the day it went in the ground .  NOT GOOD.  I did NOT give this tree very much water this year, but once I noticed this thing in decline, I've been watering it daily.  Below is a look at the tree - with a lost leader and some TINY leaves.  Will this pull through?  We need a good Fall season for that to happen:

Last Fall, I planted a couple of small end-of-season conifer sale Weeping Norway Spruces IB2DWs.  The first one was planted in the legacy bed - closer to the house - and the other one was further down closer to the sidewalk.  Fall Planting seemed to be right for these as they have given me *KNOCK ON WOOD* very little trouble this season.    They came out of the gate with some tiny pink cones this Spring .  And, by late May, they had put on some new growth that required me to 'wire-up' a leader .   One of the things that I noted on these trees was that late Fall - after I had planted them - they started to put on little 'knobs' of growth.  What looked like tightly-clustered, stubby limb-starting-points.   When I watched them put on new growth this Spring, it mostly came from these little knobs.  So, I've begun to learn a little bit about the 'buds' of conifers like this Weeping Norway Maple.  They set buds (kind-of) like their deciduous brethren, it seems.  

Both of the small, weeping Norway Spruce trees that we planted last Fall have put on spring growth.  New, bright-green needles and weeping limbs have appeared.  That includes the leaders - especially on the tree closer to the house.  It has seen a bunch of top growth - see below.  I trained these small trees up on poles last Fall and from what I've read, you have to keep training the leader up, or else...it will become a 'spreader' vs a more upright tree.   This leader needed a taller pole, so I grabbed one and wired it up to get the leader more vertical and upright.  See below for the 'after' of this Weeping Norway Spruce: I'll watch the top of this spruce and think about pruning back some of the lateral branches to reduce competition for the top.  

Last month, I planted a small (1.5 gallon) unknown variety Japanese Maple tree from the orange big box store that I couldn't pass up .  I still don't know that variety of the tree, but that doesn't mean I can't keep trying to 'get to know' it a bit in an attempt to figure out what variety it *is* in actuality. Back in this post , I toy'd around with what it could be - ranging from English Lace to Garnet.  And that was based on the idea that it was 'upright' in habit.   But, is it upright?  I don't know.  I *do* know that the way to keep tabs on this is to document the leader and how it grows.    That requires a series of posts, but this one will serve as the kick-off.  Has this put on new growth since I planted it?  I'm not TOTALLY CERTAIN, but I'm pretty sure that this trio of stems that is lighter colored - at the very top - are all new (since being planted).  See below for the current state of the apical meristem on this red, unknown l

Last Spring, I put in a TINY Saratoga Ginkgo tree in amongst the Little Henry Sweetspire out front .  The height of the Ginkgo was *below* the height of the shrub, so I thought the tree would be allowed to sort-of grow-up in the shadow of the shrub.  The Saratoga is a unique Ginkgo that has longer leaves that most normal/traditional Ginkgo trees.  I didn't pay this tree too much attention over the last year, but it was watered with the sprinkler out front that was hitting the front porch beds, so I think it was watered enough to survive.  But, how does it look like one year later?  It has put on about six inches of new height.  See below for a photo showing the current state of the Saratoga Ginkgo tree.  It is now emerged above the full height of the Little Henry Sweetspire - by about eight-to-ten inches.    The American Conifer Society suggests that this tree will get to between 12-to-24-feet tall in ten years.  Lets suggest this is the third growing season and I bought a two-ye

Every year, we go on a little vacation to Wisconsin or somewhere else where we find ourselves away from our house for a number of weeks in a row.  Each year, I try to set up an irrigation system that provides enough water to allow for the plants, shrubs and trees - as well as the grass - to simply survive.  In most years, we usually get a LITTLE lucky and get a rain event once or twice while we're gone and most everything survives.   Last year, we went on vacation in the middle of the Summer and weren't lucky enough to have that rain event.  Couple that with a REALLY dry Spring (Drought) and my sprinkler setup not covering EVERYTHING and we have things die out.   One of the specimens who suffered last year was the Weeping White Spruce columnar tree that is planted on the southside of our beds, near the Lindens that are espalier'd.  By mid-July last year, it was showing a bunch of needle drop - when we came back from vacation .  And by September, it had gotten worse.  Dead b

Earlier this week, I showed off a couple of photos that featured the pair of Sugar Tyme Crabapple trees that were in (what I then called) a pre-espalier form .  These were planted last Fall along the southside of our house, in front of our gate.   Since they had already bloomed, I thought it was time to take out the pruners and remove all the non-necessary limbs to allow the trees to focus growth on the limbs that I cared most about.  I started with a top haircut - pruning off the apical meristem or leader on both.  That usually has a strong impact on the tree where it signals a bunch of NEW growth.  I used the siding boards to get them the same height.  From there, I went two siding boards down and removed all the little, starting limbs in between those two segments.  Then, again two boards down.  And so forth.   I still am not sure what form these will take, but - for now - I'm training them horizontally.  See below for what are (now) four-level horizontal cordon espaliered craba

Back in 2017, we had a large (3" plus caliper) Chanticleer Pear tree planted in our front yard - adjacent to our garage and driveway.  That tree died in year one and was replaced.  The replacement tree suffered the same way, but it took me close to a year to figure out that the problem was water - but not drought.  It was OVERwatering and the tree was drowning.   I worked the hole and tried to break through the clay bowl, but the tree has never been right. In 2018, it flowered in November .  Weird, right?    I last covered this tree in April of last year when it was showing just a couple of flower buds .  It leaf'd out just a little bit last year and I assumed that it was a goner this Spring. So much so, that I planted another , second tree in the shadow of this one with the thinking that I'd get a half-year head start with the new tree when the time came to chop down this pear.  That tree was this very thin Red Fox Katsura tree that I planted "between two driveways&