Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
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Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Here are some questions and answers from the March 1 show:
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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What pruning should be done this time of year?
A: With the temperatures forecast to warm up this week, you can prune a lot of trees, especially things like Maydays and chokecherries because you can see any black knot. Get out there as soon as you can because it will spread spores at the end of April.
Don’t prune maples and your birches but all the other trees can be pruned right now, up to the first week of April, especially fruit trees. If you have younger plants, trim any suckers coming from the base, you might have to dig some snow out around them.
Thin out trees by taking out branches that are crossing each other in the interior of the tree. You don’t want branches rubbing each other because every time the wind blows, they rub and can cause a wound.
If you’ve topped your fruit trees — cut a branch off the top so you can reach to pick the fruit — the next season you’re going to get two or three branches coming from each cut so trim those. If you want to trim all the branches off leave the straightest one and get yourself a telescoping basket to grab those fruits up higher.
If you like to keep the fruit low, then you trim them all off right now then as those water sprouts come up, trim them back down to one. After you trim, stand back and do a general shaping so you don’t have a lopsided tree.
You will get bigger and more fruit if you give the plants a good pruning because you are stressing the plant a little bit.
Q: Can I tap maple trees in Saskatchewan?
A: Give it a shot and try making syrup out of it — reduce it down and see what you get, if there’s enough sugar content in it to actually turn it into syrup. The problem here is it has to be warm so the sap runs, so you need warm days and cool nights.
It’s tricky in Saskatchewan because it goes from being cold to being warm quickly. We don’t really have that gradual awakening.
Q: Can I start another lemon tree from a trimmed branch?
A: To grow a a hardwood cutting use a number three pot and make a sharp, 40-degree cut. Stick it in some soil and keep it moist until it starts to root.
Q: What do I need to know about starting vegetable seeds?
A: Right now people can start anything that says on the package that it is 10 to 16 weeks before last frost. It is important to note is your seed package will have a number of days on it that’s the days it will be to start fruiting after you put it outside.
Most seeds will take about six to eight weeks to get to that point first so don’t want to start them too early because then you’ll have a giant plant indoors that’s probably going to be a bit weaker.
If you have a plastic dome over top of your seeds, take it off as soon as you see about 80 per cent germination rand you see those little green leaves come out of the soil. Don’t wait any longer, because if you keep the humidity and heat too high for too long the plants will stretch.
You could have some damping off as well, which means then seedlings rot at the soil level. To get to that that 80 per cent germination as quick as possible use bottom heat from a heat mat.
Airflow is important for a few reasons — to help prevent damping off and to make the plant stronger when it goes outside. Indoors we don’t have the natural wind or animals walking by, all those types of things which naturally make a plant stronger.
Make sure that you have enough light by putting a grow light close enough to the plants.
Q: What seeds can I start now?
A: Celery, leeks, onions (seeds not onion sets), snap dragons, and petunias.
Don’t start zinnias, they don’t like their roots being fiddled with a lot. Cosmos grow fast, so don’t start those now. Marigolds need to be started in April if you’re doing them indoors and don’t start sunflowers, they don’t like to be transplanted at all.
