Acorns: One of these Things is Not Like the Others

One of my Clients has a “treasured” Oak tree in the open land beside her garden, and last autumn she asked me if it was possible to take cuttings from it. I replied that it was possible, but not very efficient, and would require some fairly intensive management: unlike Dogwood, it's not as simple as “chop off a bit and shove it in the ground”... more of that, at another date.

Easier, I said, to collect some acorns and grow them on: even easier to check under the tree and around the garden for little seedlings which helpful Cyril the Squirrel (as she calls him, although personally I doubt that she has just “one” squirrel) has buried.

So I went in search of acorns, and this is all I could find:

It's fairly obvious that the bottom two are proper acorns, the third one up is a malformed, teeny tiny acorn, which probably won't succeed: the fourth one up is a bit weird, and what the heck is the top one?

It's not an acorn at all, but I brought it home anyway, to show to you....

 

 

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Salix Kilmarnock - it's in trouble, folks!

Last week I had a plea for help from Georgia (waves: “Hi, Georgia!”) who has a small Salix Kilmarnock which is in a lot of trouble.

Regular readers will know that I write about this particular tree quite a lot, because people are always having problems with them: if you are not familiar with this particular ornamental tree, they are grafted, weeping, deciduous trees which are often grown in pots, often they are very small (not always), ideal for small gardens, and when they are in good condition, are very pretty, especially early in the year when the catkins come out:

 

 

...but alas, they are rarely the “light airy waterfall” that they should be.

Usually the problems are to do with them either...

 

 

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How to re-wet a dried-out tree in a pot

I don't normally encounter this problem until the middle of summer... but this year, we've had the driest April since records began - ok, I may be exaggerating slightly, but you know what I mean, no rain for week after week, a lot of wind (which is very drying) and eventually, some actual sunshine, which was lovely, but which then baked the soil in a manner which we don't normally encounter until at least July.

This is what happens, if you have a few weeks with no rain:

 

As you can see with this large terracotta pot, the soil had dried out so much that it had shrunk away from the sides of the pot, to the point where I could get two fingers into the gap.

Aargh!

And, of course, once the soil does this, there is no point pouring water on the top of the soil, as most of it just runs straight down the huge gap all the way round, and runs out the bottom of the pot, all over your feet.

When this happens, there are two options.......

 

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“Life... will find a way...”

So said Dr Malcolm, in Jurassic Park, and last week I found a nice example which bears out the truth of the statement.

(*laughs*)

Here is a stack of compost bags, in one of “my” gardens: they've been there for a while, because Mr Client likes to order them in, ten at a time, and I work my way through them, as I need them. So these bags, which were at the bottom of the pile, have been there for, ooh, a couple of months at least. Maybe longer... any way, I went to get some compost last week, and look what I saw:

 

Huh?

A Penstemon? What's it doing down there on the plastic bags?

A closer look showed......

 

 

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Grafted Weeping Cherry: all is not lost!

I have just received a question (“Hi, Liz!”) about a rather ugly flowering Cherry: she says they recently moved in, and have this poor thing in the front garden:

 

Aargh!

It ticks every item on the Salix Kilmarnock hit list: it's grafted, it's been neglected, it's had the hedgetrimmers run over it to shorten it, and it has not been properly pruned for some time. Liz tells me the house is a little less than 30 years old, so it is entirely possible that this tree is about the same age: and certainly, the size of the trunk - “stout!” - suggests a tree of about that age.

Liz said in her email that she called in three arborists: and she put the word “arborists” in quotes because she wasn't satisfied with their answers:

“One said he’d come until I sent pictures ( of the tree, I mean, haha!) then ….. silence.

Two others came - one said leave it and see what happens and the other said cut it down ‘cos it’ll never grow properly again!"

The first one, who simply didn't respond after seeing photos: well, probably because this is a gardener's question, not an arborist's question, but it was extremely rude and unprofessional of them not to respond at all.

The second one said to leave it: why? Do they think the dead branches will just fall out by themselves? It needs pruning, and a bit of TLC, the sooner the better.

However, this answer is better than the third arborist, who said cut it down because it will never grow properly again, which shows that they have no idea what they are talking about.

OK, so for the benefit of anyone who hasn't scoured my archive blog for mentions of How To Prune Weeping Trees, notably Salix Kilmarnock and Weeping Pears, here's the low-down....

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