Garden Basics 171 Fruit Tree Planting in Pulp Pots; Forcing Flowering Branches; Ornamental Fruit Trees
Farmer Fred 0:00
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Deciduous fruit trees are starting to wake from their winter slumber in warmer areas of the United States, with the rest soon to follow. Why not bring some of that flower show indoors? Today, we get tips on how to get fruit tree branches and other spring flowering plants to bloom on your dining room table. Also stirring to life are gardeners heading to nurseries, shopping for deciduous fruit trees to plant. Many of those trees now come, not as bare root plants, but already planted in pulp pots. Can you just plunge that pulp pot, tree and all, into the ground? Or do you need to remove it from the pot first? We get tips to do it via either method. Yes, it’s pulp pot pointers (trying saying that rapidly three times). We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots. And we will do it all in under 30 minutes. Let’s go!
Have you ever thought about snipping a branch off a plant that's about to bud out, and bringing it inside to have an indoor bloom? Maybe your fruit trees, maybe some of your flowering shrubs? We're coming up to that season when it's going to happen all around us, in late winter and early spring. Are there some secrets to forcing those blooms indoors? Let's find out. We have the bloomin' horticulture teacher here with us, retired garden Professor Debbie Flower. Debbie, forcing blooms. It's not as simple as just cutting off a branch of a peach tree or forsythia that has buds on it that are about to open and sticking it in water indoors.
Debbie Flower 2:15
It can be.
Farmer Fred 2:17
Okay, then let's move on to something else.
Debbie Flower 2:19
But it has to be done at the right time. The plants that are typically forced are fruit trees, flowering fruit trees, forsythia, and quince. And they are just what you said: take a cutting, bring it in the house in winter. So the plant is apparently dormant, put it in a vase of water, and the warmth of being indoors will open it up. But as I said it has to be done at the right time. Dormancy is a process where the plants shut down, and it protects them from bad conditions, in this case, winter cold and low light levels. And so they won't grow. There are actually two types of dormancy. One is interior dormancy, and that's when they won't grow, even if conditions are ripe for growth. And it's brought on by the changes in day lengths and changes in temperatures. And the other is exterior dormancy. And once the interior dormancy has been satisfied, the plant sits around and waits for the proper growing conditions. Interior dormancy is satisfied by cold, and that cold is measured in the buds of the plant. So in order for a plant to successfully force the interior dormancy, it has to be satisfied. Meaning the plant has to have had enough cold. Once that's satisfied, you can take the cutting, bring it in, and the warmth of being indoors will open up those flowers and you can have a beautiful arrangement. My mother used to do it in a big vase right beside the fireplace every winter. And it was just cheerful to have in the dead of winter a bunch of flowers growing.
Farmer Fred 3:50
What was she taking cuttings of?
Debbie Flower 3:53
Ornamental crab apple, I believe and cherry. I don't think we had forsythia in that yard.
Farmer Fred 4:00
How do you know if the plant has received enough cold to satisfy its interior dormancy?
Debbie Flower 4:04
You can be all technical about it, research the plant find out how much cold it needs. And we often check that information when we're planting a new let's say, an apple tree. Or is is it going to get enough dormancy to actually grow in our environment, get enough cold to satisfy its dormancy so it will grow in our environment or not? If not, then you don't want to plant it, because it won't be successful in your garden. So you see those chill hour numbers, often on tags of fruit trees. Things like quince and forsythia and ornamental fruit trees often don't have those numbers next to them. So you really don't know there are places you can go and check it out. The easier way is to check the buds, the flower buds on the plant, and if they are really quite full, maybe pushing almost, then they probably have received enough dormancy and those plump buds will likely open when you bring them indoors.
Farmer Fred 5:03
Even though they're fully closed? Or should there be some white showing?
Debbie Flower 5:06
No, even though they're fully closed, they're waiting for the warmth to open that bud. Flowers are very sensitive to cold. So this interior dormancy prevents them from opening on a warm day in midwinter, and then exposing the flowers to cold, which would then mean, in a fruit tree, you're not going to get a fruit or in any other plant, you're not going to get a fruit that will produce seed, which is part of the goal of the plant. There is a gentleman, I believe it was in Michigan, who suggested that people go out weekly once they think the plants have received enough interior dormancy, that they go out weekly and take a stem and put it in water and give it seven to 10 days and see if it opens up. And if not, then go out again and get another cutting and see if it opens up. And once you get them to open, then for ornamental purposes, obviously, you can take a whole bunch of those branches and bring them in and have a nice arrangement indoors. His purpose of doing it, and he was talking to orchardists, was to alleviate any worries that your orchard has received enough interior dormancy. As climate changes, different places are warming up and not experiencing as much of the cold, which needs to be between about 35 degrees and 50 degrees, and it's counted by hours. And if temperatures get above 60, then you start subtracting hours from your already accumulated chill or cold hours. So as places warm up, the amount of chill hours is changing. And you might have a whole orchard that's not going to produce flowers and fruit, if its interior dormancy is not satisfied.
Farmer Fred 6:40
And that's a very complicated mathematical formula, too, for subtracting the number of hours, I think it's above 60 or 65 degrees. And that is a whole other classification called either chill portions or chill units. It's throwing us all for a loop, right? It's basically you just can't just look at the number of hours between say 32 and 45 degrees and run with that. You got to consider the heat we're getting in January and February. Now here in California, for example, right?
Debbie Flower 7:07
I was seeing on the news yesterday that Texas people were sunbathing and swimming.
Farmer Fred 7:10
Yeah, there's been stories like that even in New England, too.
Debbie Flower 7:15
It's warm enough that it could be subtracting from that. Some states have a climate system that has stations and that keeps track of this information. And somewhere, someone is calculating their chill hours that are accumulating. You can find a place in your state where you can get online and look at what hours, chill hours, and also later on, heat hours your plants are potentially receiving. Of course, all gardening is local, as someone I know says, and so it may not be exactly the same at where you are located but it will give you a good idea.
Farmer Fred 7:53
What are the easiest flowering shrubs or trees to force?
Debbie Flower 7:58
The ones we're going to look at to force will be those that bloom in spring, and the easiest are Forsythia, Quince, flowering quince, not edible quince although edible, Quince might work as well. And then the flowering fruit trees, not necessarily the ones that produce fruit, right, but the ornamental flowering fruit trees.
Farmer Fred 8:16
Well, that's my big worry. If I went crazy and want to force all these stems indoors as I'm not gonna have any fruit left on the tree. So maybe, in your yard, plant some flowering cherry or flowering peach trees.
Debbie Flower 8:31
Right. And you can even keep them short. If you follow that short pruning technique.
Farmer Fred 8:37
Yeah, the reason is to keep your feet on the ground.
Debbie Flower 8:42
When you're going to take cuttings in winter when it's cold and uncomfortable outside. If you're going to take those branches, it's nice not to have to climb a ladder.
Farmer Fred 8:49
So basically, it's as far as fruit trees go, it would be probably anything that begins with the word Prunus. Right? If the genus is Prunus, and that includes almonds.
Debbie Flower 8:58
They're a very early bloomer. If you can grow them in your location, they would be a good choice, yes.
Farmer Fred 9:03
Prunus will work fabulous. What should be the size of the stem you cut?
Debbie Flower 9:09
They're the newest growth so they're going to be pencil diameter or even narrower.
Farmer Fred 9:14
All right, and about pencil length?
Debbie Flower 9:16
Seven inches, eight inches. The ones my mom collected were 30 inches. I was young enough that I was aware she was doing it, but I didn't watch the process.
Farmer Fred 9:26
Were these vases that were 18 inches tall?
Debbie Flower 9:28
Yeah, they were tall, on the ground next to the fireplace. I prefer when forsythia is pruned in what's called renewal pruning, which means you take out whole stems to the ground. 1/3 all the stems that come out of the ground, take 1/3 of them to the ground every year. You can wait on your forsythia pruning until you want to force those flowers. Then you go out and do your renewal pruning, which is taking 1/3 of the oldest branches all the way to the ground.
Farmer Fred 9:31
So it's the oldest branches, the oldest, right, so they're going to be the thickest.
Debbie Flower 9:59
Yeah, but they're gonna have newer growth on the tips and bring those in, force them. And you can just put the fat stems in water, that would work too. Or you can cut them down to size and use them in a more artful arrangement potentially, and just use the tips, and they will bloom in the house. So you've pruned the plant correctly, and you have gotten a bloom in the house out of it.
Farmer Fred 10:20
And so from that one, say, 30 inch long forsythia stem, that you removed at the base, could you chop that into three or four different stems?
Sure, something would bloom.
Yes. So forsythia, quince, and I like the flowering cherries myself.
Debbie Flower 10:32
Yes, especially if they have a colorful bark, red, maybe that red should hold when you bring it indoors. Sometimes colorful stems change back to green when they warm up, but not in the case of those cherries.
Farmer Fred 10:52
How long will they last in the house?
Debbie Flower 10:54
It's not super long. Depends how warm your house is. Yeah, you're gonna want to put it in a place that's cool. You want to change the water you want to use if you can floral preservative to keep them healthy. So a week to 10 days maybe. Okay.
Farmer Fred 11:07
And you mentioned floral preservative. So something like Seven-Up in there?
Debbie Flower 11:13
Right. I have actually taken to purchasing the powdered preservative and mixing it and it works very well.
Farmer Fred 11:19
All right, so why not have cut flowers indoors?
Debbie Flower 11:23
It's such a beautiful, cheerful thing. I love it.
Farmer Fred 11:27
Alright, so just keep your eye on your flowering fruit trees and your flowering shrubs. How about a word of warning about quince? They have thorns.
Debbie Flower 11:33
They have thorns. Yeah, they do. They're armed, armed and dangerous.
Farmer Fred 11:37
Yeah. So I imagine there are some flowering trees that aren't fruit trees that might do well for forcing.
Debbie Flower 11:44
Mm hmm. Yeah, a plant that is beautiful and blooms in spring is dogwood, if it's dormancy has been satisfied. It will open when you bring a cutting indoors.
Farmer Fred 11:54
All right, bring those cuttings inside. Debbie Flower good tips. Thank you.
Debbie Flower 11:57
You're welcome.
Farmer Fred 12:02
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As the weather warms up back east in the Midwest, you're going to see more and more fruit trees, berries, nuts, vines, plenty of edible crops for you to be planting in your garden. What's in? What's good? Let's find out. We're talking with Phil Pursel from Dave Wilson Nursery. Phil, I was at the nursery the other day and I noticed a lot of Dave Wilson product had just arrived. There were blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. I think I saw kiwi, there were all kinds. There were pomegranates. There's a lot coming in.
Phil Pursel 14:31
Yeah, so what we do is we have two basic programs, we have a small fruit program that we put into four by nine inch columns, liner sleeves. And then we have our traditional bare root program, which is our standard fruit trees. So we ship the farmer's market program early so that it kind of gets the nurseries in the mood, then you know, get the edibles out to the consumer. At the same time. They tend to make nice little early Christmas gifts for people to pick up. And that kind of is the intro to you know, our big bare fruit season where we send all of our fruit trees for the year.
Farmer Fred 15:08
There has been a big change in the way that the product is being delivered. Now, when you said bare root, old timers might think, 'oh yeah, the trees are plunged into a bed of sawdust in the back of the nursery'. Well, not so much anymore. It seems like most berry plants and others are coming already in containers.
Phil Pursel 15:30
Yeah, you know, we've done market studies and the demographic has just changed where the younger consumer is more comfortable with trees and berries and set in pots. These feel a little bit more safer to them. We still grow our fruit trees as a basic bare root. And to give you a little background is that we field-grow our trees. We have just finished harvesting our trees with a digger that excavates these trees. We planted trees about four or five inches on center. And when these trees come out of the ground, it's just a dormant top, in bare root. We grade everything out and then we bundle them then we ship them to our retailers, the retailers now instead of just popping that tree into the sawdust bin, and some of them still do that, and sell them. But a lot of them have gotten into just going ahead and potting them up. A very popular way of doing it is putting them into a pulp pot which is biodegradable. It's it's just a way to get the plants out for the newer gardener who is not quite comfortable with just seen a tree, a stick and bare root and not knowing what to do with that. Farmer Fred
Farmer Fred 16:44
What do they do with the pulp pot when they get at home?
Phil Pursel 16:47
So what they do Is the nice thing about the pulp pot, as opposed to a bare root tree,. If you get a bare route tree, you need to plant it that day. With a pulp pot, it allows you to go ahead and prepare the soil. And you can plant it right now or you can plant it in the spring, but you plant the tree in the pulp pot. It's made out of a paper product, press paper. So you can plant that tree in this pot, like you would a normal plant. And after about six months, the whole pot itself would disintegrate and the roots will keep on growing into the soil. So it just gives you more options of when to plant that tree.
Farmer Fred 17:27
Can you help out that pulp pot to break down by perhaps soaking it before planting?
Phil Pursel 17:33
Yeah, there's different ways of doing it. Actually, if you were to get a tree right now that is in a pulp pot, you can just pop it right out of the the pulp pot and plant it in the ground as a regular bare root. But it's like I said, if you want to hold on to it, different ways of doing it is like you said, soaking the whole pot. We always suggest scoring the sides of the pulp pot in the bottom with a utility knife to kind of help open things up a little bit, to help the process of breaking down.
Farmer Fred 18:04
And so why is it that it would be advisable to plant it in the pulp pot if you've been holding on to it for weeks or months? Is there something about the root structure inside?
Phil Pursel 18:15
Yes. So what happens with the pulp pot is that it acts almost like a plastic container. If you don't have time to plant the tree right away. As the weather starts warming up. Let's say you wait, you know, from the time you get the tree and you can't plant it for a month. If you just get it out of the sawdust, it's already starting to send out feeder roots, that can be damaged if you try planting it as a traditional bare root. By planting it in the pulp pot, you’re not disturbing the roots. It minimizes the chances of that tree failing.
Farmer Fred 18:57
The pulp pot acts as insulation. And then and then as the winter rains come or you're irrigating that pulp pot breaks down and the roots go out and you've got yourself a healthy tree. How deep do you plant that tree?
Phil Pursel 19:15
Generally speaking, when you will buy a plant in a pulp pot, the nursery will have it planted at the level where we took it out of the ground. You'll see where the soil is, when you plant that tree into the ground. You want to make sure that you do not plant the tree and the pulp pot deeper than the soil level that is in that pulp pot. In fact, we always like people to kind of elevate the pulp pot a little bit so that it's you know, half an inch inch above your your normal ground level. So any type of settling you'll pretty much be pulp pot-level soil and your ground level will be about even.
Farmer Fred 19:56
How do you get water inside that pulp pot then if you just planted it all into the garden is there a lip around that pulp pot that you can cut off to perhaps make it easier for the water to flow into that area?
Phil Pursel 20:10
Yes. So what I like to do there's different methods is that when you plant the Pulp pot I like leaving the pulp pot lid exposed, you know for the first few months and when you water your water inside the pulp pot just like wiring in a pot but then you also water on the outside of the pulp pot equally. And what that will do is it helps the water transpire from one to the other so you don't get a stuck type of plant by water inside the pulp pot and then water outside of pulp pot and this actually helps speed up the breakdown of that lip. By the summertime that lip is just going to pop right off. it's going to you know it will have disintegrated.
Farmer Fred 20:54
Now for those nurseries that still have true bare root. They do have their fruit trees, their bare root fruit trees, plunged into a bit of sawdust. Now one strategy we used to employ when we got those home would be to immediately plunge it into either a bucket of water, a big bucket of water or if you've got a blank garden space, what's called healing it in. basically just sort of digging a shallow hole and getting the root zone buried in the garden soil temporarily until you decide to move it.
Phil Pursel 21:25
Yes, the water part is we always suggest when you get ready to plant the true bare root tree is that you want to really soak the roots so you hydrate everything. Let's say you bring it back from the nursery, and you know they'll wrap it in, you know some plastic a little bit of sawdust. If you let it sit there, odds are it's gonna dry out a little bit. The one thing you don't want to do with the true bare root tree is the have the roots dry out. So soaking it, hydrating the roots are, you know, something that's recommended. Now, if you have a true bare root tree, and let's say you buy it on a Friday and you really can't get to it till Sunday. Then healing in is a process where you just cover the roots with soil, even if it's you know from soil that you're going to be planting the tree with. Or if you have like a little planting bed that you can just go ahead and dig, you know, dig the tree into but you want to make sure that it has some sort of type of soil covering until you're ready to plant it and then at that point, we still recommend soaking in water before you go ahead and plant in the hole.
Farmer Fred 22:28
Farmer Fred If you want a good Encyclopedia of growing fruit trees, I would direct you to Dave wilson.com, their website. Not only is there a lot of written information there, but their series of videos, they call them the fruit tube videos, can take you from planting to harvest and caring for the tree throughout the growing season. It's also available on YouTube as well. But visit Dave wilson.com for a whole host of very good, accurate information about growing fruits, vines, and nuts. No matter where you live wherever Dave Wilson product can be found, which is most of the United States, Phil Pursel, we learned a lot today.
Phil Pursel 23:10
Thank you so much.
Farmer Fred 23:16
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We're at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, we're in the orchard section, but perhaps instead of talking about good fruiting fruit trees, which we've talked about a lot before, how about some ornamental fruit trees that are mainly planted for the show of flowers? You can be planting them for the flowers any place in the country, really. The timing just will be different. Here we are at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in mid February and we've had a very unusual heatwave here. So many of the fruiting trees are already putting out flowers, which is even early for here. We're talking with Master Gardener Quentyn Young. He's also the manager of Fair Oaks Boulevard nursery. Is there much interest in ornamental fruit trees grown for their flowers during late winter, early spring?
Quentyn Young 25:30
Sure, that's a big selling point for a lot of them, is that they also look good in the landscape when they're flowering.
Farmer Fred 25:36
So they can actually do double duty. There are some that are flowering now that will produce edible fruit and then there are others that are not known for their edible fruit but really have beautiful flowers.
Quentyn Young 25:47
Exactly. Yeah. So right now if you're allergy sufferer, you're going to be noticing the acacias are in bloom, but that's a beautiful yellow flower. And then probably the earliest blooming ones are going to be your saucer magnolias as well.
Farmer Fred 26:00
Of course, you wouldn't be eating acacias or saucer magnolias. I guess you could make tea out of the Magnolia flowers, but like here's the Eva's pride peach tree here, that's already in full bloom. It looks absolutely gorgeous. And now if you can just stave off peach leaf curl, you'll be okay.
Quentyn Young 26:16
Yeah, unfortunately, the good thing about not having as much rain this month is that I think peach leaf curl won't be as bad this year, but the downside is that we need the rain. The Eva's Pride peach, it's a very early flowering peach. And often the problem is that it leafs out usually, according to our regular climate, whenever it's pouring rain. This year it didn't happen, though.
Farmer Fred 26:40
What about some good examples of ornamental fruit trees that are produced for flowers? What are some of the varieties that really do produce a standout show? You think of Washington DC and the cherry blossoms?
Quentyn Young 26:51
Yeah, so all the cherries, all are flowering cherries, we're lucky. On the west coast we have our native redbuds, those show you a really beautiful display of color and then we're going to get into even though they're not a tree, they can be quite large. The Ceanothus, also called California lilacs, even though they're not a true lilac. We've already talked about the saucer magnolias don't forget the purple leaf, non fruiting plums. So there's quite a few really nice spring flowering trees that won't produce fruit if you don't want them to.
Farmer Fred 27:20
Is there a general rule of thumb because I get this question a lot from people who are driving around and they see a row of fruit trees in bloom. And they really liked the color. And they were wondering, Well, is it a peach? Is it a cherry? Is it a plum? Do particular varieties have particular colors?
Quentyn Young 27:37
I think so. So most of the plums are going to be either a pale pink, I'm going into white, but most of the peaches and nectarines are going to be to me a very dark pink with a darker center. Wild almonds are usually white. And then like I said with the acacia, as those are almost always yellow.
Farmer Fred 27:53
So if you just want some fruit trees for their show, and maybe not necessarily outstanding fruit, you might try some of these ornamental fruit trees. They will produce fruit though, and you might find a use for it.
Quentyn Young 28:05
Yeah, and like I said, just grow something that you'd like to eat and then go from there.
Farmer Fred 28:09
There you go. Quentyn Young, Master Gardener, manager of Fair Oaks Boulevard nursery as well. Thanks for showing us the pretty flowers.
Quentyn Young 28:15
Thanks for having me, Fred.
Farmer Fred 28:22
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