For Immediate Release:

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

It’s Pruning Time!
Now is the perfect time of year here in Malibu and Southern California to prune your Roses and Fruit trees as well as preparing the soil.
So what is the very first thing you should do now? Clean your pruner! Folks do not realize that if you do not sterilize your pruning tool that you will spread diseases to other plants especially if you know that it had a disease last year. Many gardeners who do the pruning do not know that, and they spread diseases between similar plants. Rose diseases only spread to roses, and fruit tree diseases just spread to fruit trees. However, many diseases have evolved to affect many different types of plants, and this is becoming a huge problem. They affect the different varieties of plants differently, but all have the same causes in common. Remember the disease is only the effect and not the cause. So if your plants have diseases, there are many causes why and I have covered these over the past years.
Today I will just cover pruning and soil prep.
Roses
Pruning is essential to roses. They need to be pruned back once a year for roses to have beautiful new growth from which beautiful flowers bloom. If you do not prune then, the rose will be weak and susceptible to pest and diseases. Always prune back to last years old growth is the general rule. Different types of roses require different pruning methods so do a little research as to what types of roses you have and what kind of pruning expected of them.
You should prune any dead branches. You should prune any new growth that comes from the main stock. The rose needs to be airy and to breathe. Be careful not to over prune, or you will not have many rose blooms.
The timing of when to prune is important. Prune at the wrong time will increase whiteflies and other pests as they come out in early spring or as soon as the weather permits. I expect that winter is going to be really mellow this year so expect the pests to arrive early. So best to prune now.
Prepare the soil by adding rock dust blended with microbes, organic rose fertilizer and then use a gentle acid mulch (our soil is too alkaline ) like azalea/gardenia mix. Only Malibu Garden Center sells the azalea/gardenia mix or tries Green Thumb in Ventura. All the others aren’t any good, trust me on that. Make sure your roses are getting watered through a drip system and not near any overhead water sources. Start to spray your roses with compost tea now and then switch over to a liquid organic rose fertilizer. I love spraying coffee, cream, and sugar to help the roses get started. One gallon coffee, 1 cup cream and 1/2 oz Granny Smiths Molasses, should get make the roses happy.
Fruit Trees
Perfect time to prune your fruit trees is February. The same rule applies to pricing fruit trees as roses clean your tools in-between fruit trees.
How to start?
Many folks including gardeners haven’t the faintest idea how to prune their fruit trees! You first start by running and new growth that comes from the trunk. You have your main branches, keep those clean from new growth also. What this does is to allow light to enter more in-depth into the fruit trees as well as air circulation.
Once you have done that, prune any dead branches. Prune down to what is alive and not more. Prune your fruit tree not to be so tall, so prune the tips of any high branches. Prune any new branches which will have fruit. Prune every other branch to allow the fruit space to grow as fruit develops and starts to grow, prune out every other fruit to give more space to grow. This allows for few but larger fruit instead of a lot of small ones.
Never over prune! I would not prune my fruit trees every year either. I would only prune as needed and prune for fruit not for shape. Make sure your fruit trees are not planted too close together as they all need lots of light to grow properly. This is also the time to treat the fruit trees for any diseases and pests. Again, I have talked about the law of cause and effect so remember that diseases and pests are only the effects and not the cause.
All disease starts with the soil.
So it makes sense to have the healthy soil you can have. You do this by applying a live compost that is rich in microbial life and to which rock dust has been added. You should use now an organic fruit tree fertilizer and then apply a thin layer of an acid mulch (hint -azalea/gardenia mix) to protect the soil and to hold water. Make sure your fruit trees are on a drip or use subsurface irrigation.
Most folks and gardeners are overwatering their roses and fruit trees. This is of course very bad so take a good look at your watering and only water your fruit trees not more than once a week during winter and not more than twice a week during hot times. Same for roses, they require a lot less waterhen you think. Best to under-water than over-water. This is also an excellent time to be spraying your fruit trees and roses with any type of compost tea. Make sure you aerate overnight too increase microbial activity. It is this activity that will protect and feed your roses and fruit trees.
I would like to add:
I am betting folks are not getting and using rain barrels? If you start catching what little rains we have, your water supply for the garden will last longer.
Thanks for reading!
Any questions? Use the Comment box or email me.
andy Lopez
Invisible Gardener
andylopez@invisiblegardener.com