Plant Talk

Are the Plums Flowering In Japan This Spring?

Purple-leaf plum trees (Prunus cerasifera) are having their finest moment here in the Northwest. Dressed out in gauzy pink, they're so much prettier now than when their dark shadowy cloak of leaves comes on in a week or two. The delicate, pale pink flowers are a stark contrast to the dark branches popping with swells of tiny, deep purple leaf buds.

Cherry blossoms are showier, but plums bloom earliest and after being color-and-blossom deprived all winter, it was glorious to cut branches of flowering plum to bring indoors....

There's an allee of purple leaf plums - maybe 8-10 trees on each side of a narrow road, going into the little town of Langley on Whidbey Island....I walked back and forth beneath the row of trees this weekend, their pink be-decked branches nearly meeting overhead, enjoying the flowers blowing off and fluttering down to the ground. I hope and pray the plum trees are blooming in Japan this spring despite the devastation....

 

 

Yes We Can

As long as we don't get overzealous and clear away all the dead parts protecting plants from future freezes, we can get out there and make the most of this amazingly mild spell of weather. January is on the way to being the warmest on record, with soul-strengthening glimpses of sunshine.

Don't get carried away by those daffodils and precocious crocus pushing up so bravely out of the soil...it's still too wet to tramp around in the dirt and many plants, like hydrangeas, roses and hardy fuchsias are best left alone until mid-March....

But go ahead, clean up your pruners and indulge your garden lust. These chores are best done in the depths of winter, even though it doesn't feel like it out there:

Prune out winter damage and thin out the oldest, largest canes on woody shrubs like forsythia (above), flowering quince, mock orange, and plums. But don't toss the clippings...cut them to a reasonable length for a tall vase, bring them in and submerge the entire branch in lukewarm water for a few hours to jolt it out of dormancy. Then put the bare branches in warm water in a vase to force them to flower indoors for a lovely burst of springtime.

Kiwis, grapes and figs are best pruned when they're fully dormant, so now's the time. Thin out 1/4 to 1/3 of the oldest canes on your blueberries. You can also prune apple, elderberries, gooseberries, white currant and European pears. According to the folks at Raintree Nursery (and they should know) it's best to wait to prune Asian pears until at least April. 

Flowering quince

Beautiful Fruit

If you've ever debated between planting trees that are ornamental or those that are productive, you can put that quandary to rest.  I've never seen such sensual, sumptuous fruit as that growing  in the garden of Linda Morris and Dan Babbit, right down the alley from our garden in Langley.  Really, these pears and plums are so shapely they should be painted by Renoir, so colorful you need a Van Gogh or Cezanne to do them justice. These trees are such beauties, with perfectly healthy leaves and fruit.

This is a semi-dwarf, 'Rescue' pear, with red-orange blushed fruit that matures in September and keeps until December. Both the pear and the plum tree are available from Raintree Nursery in Morton.

As you can see in the photo below, the 'Hollywood' plum tree is so laden that Dan's supported the branches with bamboo canes. It's a Japanese plum with purple leaves that show off the pinkish red fruit, grows about 12 feet high, is disease resistant, and self-fertile.