WAYS WITH CHOCOLATE
The Horticultural Way
The classic gift for your sweetie on Valentine’s Day is, of course, chocolate.
Chocolate plant pods
But plain old chocolate won’t do, not even rich Theo or Equal Exchange chocolates (my two favorites). The gift is going to be a chocolate plant — this is about gardening, after all.
Plant a Hershey’s Kiss and it’ll never sprout to become a chocolate tree. Read more
TO EACH HIS OR HER OWN
Full Disclosure: I Like It
You either like the look of a pollarded tree, or you don’t. A tree pruned by this technique surely doesn’t have a natural look. In winter, the pollarded tree is a clubbed head capping a clear trunk, or clubbed heads each capping a few short, thick side branches atop a clear trunk. In summer, a mass of vigorous shoots wildly burst forth from that club-like head or heads.
Pollarded catalpa
Pollarding has both an aesthetic and a practical side. Read more
RENOVATION: NOT A KITCHEN
(The following is adapted from my book THE PRUNING BOOK, available from the usual sources or directly from me, signed, on this website.)
Renovation Instead of Despair
How many of us have inherited neglected, overgrown, old apple trees with our property? Yes, such trees do have charm, their gnarled, elbowed branches seemingly ready to reach out to offer a hug. Their fruits, however, usually leave much to be desired. More often than not they’re too small, too high in the tree, and too pest-ridden. These problems are largely the result of unfettered growth, the tree growing so large and dense with branches that it has shaded itself into nonproductivity and disease-inducing dankness.
No need for despair: such a tree can be returned to its former glory by “renovation,” as corrective pruning of an old tree is called. Read more
