Sap is running...

I marked my calender in the fall to do some chores this weekend, including fertilization, late winter pruning and cleanup. I had to push the fertilization to next weekend due to weather, but I did prune my maples a little bit along with removing most of an 'Acuba'/gold dust plant which I really dislike. I have been doing some reading up on pruning and realized I had some work to do on a couple of my trees to establish a better central leader on them and to better balance the trees.

I checked the stakes on my JM 'Sango Kaku', and it is doing well. I reduced a couple of the side brances to even them out just a little bit. That tree is still heavy on the lower branches and I am hoping the upper parts begin to fill in this spring.

I went next to JM 'Nishiki Kagiri', which has a central leader that leans to one side. I will be staking it this year to see if I can straighten it up a bit. That is a fairly large tree at about 10 feet, so I will need to get some sturdy stakes for it. I did a couple of reducing cuts on the side branches to balance it a bit and it dripped on me! I thought it was dew, but looked up at the cut and saw it dripping. I had no idea that a tree could push that much water so fast, it dripped on me several more times and trimming even tiny twigs off the trunk beaded up a drop of water or two. I hope it won't be a problem.

Next, I looked over my little crimson queen I showed in the fall, and decided to go ahead and reduce it in width a bit to balance the height. I will be moving it in a couple of weeks and so some of the roots will certainly be cut, so a smaller canopy, while retaining its basic shape, should make it less of a shock. I don't have its new spot ready yet, as I will have to move a large shrubby Snowball Vibernum from that spot and put in some retaining material before I can install the maple, so it will probably have to go into a large container in the meanwhile. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to get both moved if I get some energy next weekend (or get our lawn guy to do the heavy work for me on the Snowball vibernum. I don't let anyone touch my maples, lol! I hope to place it prominently at the corner of my home, with a bit of a retaining wall to drape over as it gets bigger.

I'll have to take an "after" photo of the 'Crimson Queen', it still looks pretty good, and I took off about a third of the length on the longest branches as well as removing a couple of cross-over branches. It is so hard to get a decent photo of a bare tree, especially as I've already removed some surrounding plantings in preparation for putting in new beds on that side of the house, so it is rather barren-looking.

Spring is getting so close, my yellow crocus are blooming, the daffys are up early, and the tulips are starting to push up along with my other bulbs. I put in quite a few last fall.

Laura

Yes I pruned a large JM in early January and the sap ran badly then. From my understanding this is somewhat undesirable, as it invites disease more. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done down south since it is rarely winter for more than a couple of days at a time (I assume that you folks up in VA have similar weather to us down in SC). When it is really cold the sap shouldn't run near as much, if any. But this mild weather we've had has made the cherries and maples bloom, and the other trees are trying to get ready for budding.