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DRAMATIC PRUNING & NOT-TOO-BIG ONIONS

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Henry IV Method of Pruning

   Deb get’s a little nervous every time a go into the garage for some pruning tools this time of year. Not because she’s afraid I might hurt myself but for what I might do to the plants. Today it was so-called “renovative pruning” of the St. Johnswort ‘Sunny Boulevard’ shrubs that line the western edge of the brick terrace. I approached the shrub with some unconventional pruning tools.
    Let’s first backtrack and put everyone at ease. A shrub is a shrub because it’s shrubby; that is, it’s always growing new shoots at or near ground level rather than developing a permanent, upright trunk off which permanent limbs and new shoots grow. Some shrubs — most shrubs, in fact — get congested with too many new and older shoots rising from their base and too many old shoots that no longer perform well, in this case performance meaning a good show of flowers. An old stem can put on a good show for only so many years before becoming decrepit.

St. Johnswort, pruned

St. Johnswort, pruned

    The obvious solution to the above two problems with shrubs is to, first, limit the number of new shoots arising low in or around the plant. It’s a matter of judgement for how many to leave. (Pruning is art and science, and my book, The Pruning Book, attempts to make readers better artists and scientists, when pruning, at least.) As far as those old stems, they should be cut down near ground level once they’ve overstayed their welcome.
    So much for maintenance pruning. Sometimes a shrub has gotten too out of hand for all this detail work. Enter renovative pruning. It’s very easy: You just lop everything down to the ground, which is what I did to ‘Sunny Boulevard.’ I started out using a chain saw, my Stihl pole chain saw. This saw has a smaller blade and a long reach, which allowed me to get to the base of the plant without battling all the arching stems. After that, I sawed back stems arching over the hypertufa wall edge of the terrace with a Porter Cable sawzall powered by a 20 volt battery. Final cleanup was with my Fiskars Powergear lopper and Felco pruning shears. (That’s a lot of product recommendations, but I highly recommend all of them.)

All’s Well That Ends Well (in Pruning)

    So what was I left with when I was done pruning? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Well, not really; the roots were still alive and in the ground. And I’m banking on those roots sending up new sprouts. And because ‘Sunny Boulevard’ is slated to start blossoming in July on buds that form on new shoots, I’m also banking on blossoms on those new shoots. Because they’re beginning growth way down at ground level, blossoming might begin a bit later than usual.
    Shrubs that blossom early in the season, such as forsythia, lilac, and mockorange, form their flower buds a year before they actually open. Hence, the best time to prune these shrubs, if you want a full show of blossoms, is right after the blossoms fade. Prune them before blossoming and you cut off potential blooms.
    Still, having a clean slate after a dramatic renovative pruning is appealing, sometimes even with a sacrifice of blooms. Deb is now nervous about the lilac bush, which also needs some renovation. I’m planning to do a less dramatic renovative pruning on it, and I’ll probably wait until after it blossoms.

Onions’ Size Matters

    Big onions or medium-sized onions or small onions, what to grow? The choice is mine (and yours). Much depends on planting distances.
    I’m opting for medium-sized onions, about 3 inches in diameter. Yesterday I set out about 250 transplants grown from seed I sowed in early February in a tub of potting soil: Three varieties: Ailsa Craig, an heirloom from 1887, for sweet, mild onions that need to be used early because they don’t store well; New York Early, a nonhybrid variety selected over the years by New York onion growers, for medium term storage; and Copra, a rock-hard, hybrid onion that stores very well, all the while maintaining some sweetness.  In a 3-foot-wide bed, I planted 5 rows of onions, with about 4 inches between rows and about 4 inches between onions in each row.
Onions, planted    Planting distances are not the end-all for onion size. Variety also figures in; given enough space, In northern areas, such as around here, long-day varieties, which form bulbs when daylength is 14 hours or more, get largest because they grow the most leaves before bulbing begins. More leaves means bigger bulbs, which also a reason to plant as early as possible. (Note to myself: Plant onions earlier next year, in mid-April.)
    Even among northern varieties of onions, potential sizes vary. Ailsa Craig onions have the potential grow quite large, which is why they’re grown for exhibition at state fairs and the like. I’m banking on the close spacing keeping them from growing too big, 5 pounds or more by some accounts.
    Of course, good growing conditions also make for more leaves sooner. Got that. I spread compost an inch deep over the already mellow soil and drip irrigation lines are poised to quench the plants’ thirst.

Pruning Begins

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Just because I wrote The Pruning Book doesn’t mean that I always go forth boldly, pruning shears in hand, to prune with speed and with total confidence. This realization hit me right between the eyes as I was staring at and trying to figure out what to do with a row of St. Johnswort shrubs billowing like a wave over the edge of my terrace. Any more billowing and that mass of stems would become a tsunami; the hedge had to be reduced — attractively.
The problem is that the plants are a bit big for the site. I have excuses. There are 400 species of St. Johnswort, varying in stature, and I lost the tag to my original plant from which I propagated all the others in the hedge. The soil in the planting strip used to be weedy and poor. After enclosing the strip in a wall of hypertufa (a mix of cement, peat, and perlite that ends up like volcanic rock) and topping the bed with compost, plants grew better than expected. And the St. Johnsworts were supposed to mingle and compete with potentilla plants in the bed, each showing off its sunny, yellow flowers at various times through summer and keeping the other in check. The St. Johnsworts overgrew and snuffed out the potentillas, so, lacking competition from weeds or potentilla, grew too well.
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Lopping all St. Johnswort stems back by half or more would not be a good idea. For the rest of winter, the hedge would look hacked back (which it would have been). Hardly the graceful, if oversized, tapering, arching branches presented now. Come spring, new shoots would burst forth mostly near the pruning cuts, the ungainly result, year after year, being wild, new growth sitting atop increasingly, fat stems.
After some chin scratching, I chose a different tack. First, I shortened everything to about 18 inches. Then I shortened some of those already shortened stems to various lengths, some to as short as a couple of inches long. Simple.
For now, largish wounds do stare out from the hedge, but next year, and in years to come, such wounds will be less plentiful and less evident. This pruning’s most dramatically shortened stems will sprout just a few, lanky shoots. A greater number, but each less vigorous, shoots will sprout from stems I shorten least severely. Moderately shortened stems will sprout a moderate number of new shoots of moderate vigor, how many and how vigorous related to how much the stem was shortened.
The end result — I’m hoping — will be a hedge with shoots of various size and vigor originating at various heights within each shrub. Just like a naturally growing plant. Pruning in subsequent years should be easier.
Although this pruning sounds formulaic, it was fraught with decision-making: whether or not to cut and how much to cut, both to achieve aesthetic results now and for the future. Shrubs readily sprout new shoots naturally and following pruning, so I at least am consoled that pruning rarely harms the plant and that mistakes are soon overgrown.
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In contrast to pruning St. Johnswort, pruning red raspberries is a no-brainer. All you have to do is follow a 3 step recipe.
Step 1: Cut to the ground any stem that bore last summer. These stems look old, with peeling bark, and still hang on to a few remnants of fruit stalks.
Step 2: Cut down selected remaining canes. If the swathe of plants is wider than 1 foot, berries are harder to pick and, because of congestion, disease is more likely. I cut down any stems attempting escape beyond that swathe and then, within the swathe, remove enough canes so that none are closer than about 6 inches apart. Sturdiest stems are those most worth saving.
Step 3: Shorten remaining canes to about 5 feet in height. This pruning is just to keep stems from flopping around. The height could be more or less, depending on how and if plants are trellised. I leave mine longer and weave the canes together onto a trellis wire about 4 feet from the ground.