You Bet Your Garden
You Bet Your Garden S3 Ep. 7 Pruning Raspberries and Roses
Season 2022 Episode 7 | 27mVideo has Closed Captions
When to Prune Raspberries and Roses
Mike takes your fabulous phone calls in another chemical free horticultural show featuring The Question of the Week; When to Prune Raspberries and Roses.
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Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
You Bet Your Garden is a local public television program presented by PBS39
Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma Company, offering a complete selection of Natural Organic Plant foods and Potting Soils.
You Bet Your Garden
You Bet Your Garden S3 Ep. 7 Pruning Raspberries and Roses
Season 2022 Episode 7 | 27mVideo has Closed Captions
Mike takes your fabulous phone calls in another chemical free horticultural show featuring The Question of the Week; When to Prune Raspberries and Roses.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipFrom the well-proven studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another runaway episode a chemical free horticultural high jinks.
You bet your garden.
I'm your host.
Mike McGrath is your climbing rose.
Climbing to the stars are your raspberry canes taller than wilt the stilt?
On today's show, we'll reveal why this is not the time to cut back overgrown plants and discuss the most fruitful ways to tame these rampant rousers.
Otherwise, it's a fabulous phone call show.
Cats and kittens.
Just potential guests are busy putting down their pruners, so we will take that heaping helping of your telecommunication questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and carbolic consummated, confused confiscations.
So keep your eyes and or ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than you doubling down on your fruits and flowers right after this.
Support for you bet your garden is provided by the Esposa company offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.
More information about Ekpoma and the Esposa natural gardening community can be found at Espe Omah.
Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden.
From the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media right here in Bethlehem p.a.
I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I'm also right here.
What a coincidence.
Anyway, coming up later in the show, we'll explain why.
Even though the weather is so tempting and you feel you have to get out and do something, go ahead, but don't prune your plants.
We'll explain why in the question of the week.
But before that, lots of your fabulous phone calls at eight eight eight four nine two ninety four forty four, Barbara.
Welcome to you.
Bet your garden.
Thank you, Mike.
It's nice to talk to you.
It's nice to talk to you, Barb.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well enough and yourself.
I'm just Ducky.
Thanks for asking.
All right.
Where's Barbra?
Just a bit east of Oklahoma City.
Oh, OK. What can we do for Barb right near OKC?
You might remember that we had that horrible deep freeze back in February.
Right?
You were talking to somebody on the phone, on one of the questions.
And the one thing that you said to them that I can remember very clearly was just don't do anything, don't do anything right because we were assuming that or you were assuming that the leaves would come back on whatever it was that he had.
Ok, let me stop you.
I just don't recall.
Let me stop you right there.
I was not assuming anything.
But over over the years, I have learned that when something like this strikes, it is very important for gardeners to do one of the most important acts in gardening, which is nothing.
Pruning it or feeding it at that time of year would not do any good and could do a lot of harm.
And if the plant doesn't come back in the spring, well, then it was already dead, you know, and you replace it, you know, it's like the Disney circle of life or something.
I believed you.
I didn't do anything at all.
I just left the the I had like, I always called them my two hollies in front of my house on the east side of my house, right?
And I did nothing.
And so finally, I was so excited.
Little tiny leaves and buds started coming out of the little bare twigs, right?
I was thrilled.
I was singing the praises, of course.
Mm.
And I was so happy, and then all of a sudden, within a week or two of that, every single one of the new buds died.
Everyone, every little leaf, every little bud, everything did you, You know how are traditionally very hardy, especially where you live?
Did you do anything, then?
Did you try to feed them, try to mulch them?
Did it get freezing again?
Oh no, it did not freeze after the buds started to appear, and they are usually hurt hardy, but it was like minus 12 degrees that had never happened here before.
And I've had these little hollies, you know, for 20 some years.
Yeah, no, it's a crazy world.
We're all going to be living in domes 10 years from now.
So what's the situation now?
You got two apparently dead plants.
Well, part of the Holly, the actual Holly, not all of it died, just all those limbs that were farther out.
Ok, those that were close into the house were OK that all those that were farther out died.
That makes perfect sense because they were more exposed.
Sure.
Okay.
But I just wasn't sure about these others.
The the little limbs, the little leaves started to come back and then they all died.
I assumed that it was the people just to the north of me spraying or yard because the people around here really believe in pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers and anything they can.
Possibly it's like.
It's like they believe that life is better through chemistry, but not like it was when I was in college.
Yeah.
Oh goodness.
Toxic neighbors are one of the biggest problems if this happens again and you suspect that it is run off or pesticide drift.
First, I would contact your local EPA office.
Every region has a regional EPA office mine in Pennsylvania's number five, but they are not allowed to allow their chemicals to get to your property.
So I would at least report your suspicions.
They might well come out and take soil samples and look for herbicides.
The other thing I'm going to suggest.
Oh, and if you really think it was something like that, the best response is to just soak the soil repeatedly, try to dilute it, try to get it out of the root system.
Now I'm going to predict that next spring, you're going to see good growth.
Do you feed these hollies?
Any anything?
Do you mulch them?
What's going on?
No, no, I don't do anything.
I live in a like it was part of the river floodplain, so I'm one of the few people in Oklahoma that actually has, like nice soil.
Okay.
Good, good.
Um.
You at this point.
Yeah, at this point in time for going into winter, I really don't want you to touch them if you trust me.
What I want you to do for sure is you can put some compost around them if you have it or if it's available.
I know there used to be a great natural products garden centre in this city that was ages ago, so I don't know what its status is now, but I would get some good compost.
Spread it around the base of the plants and I know I hear all of you out there compost.
That's the only answer to this guy has hay.
And I would also get and I know it's foma.
The people who make Holly Tone have been underwriting the show for longer than I can remember.
But Holly Tone, you know, their most famous product is absolutely what's called for in this situation, but not now, because you never want to feed a dormant plant.
But in the spring, you're going to see new growth, I predict, and then I would put the holly tone down.
And as with all granulated fertilizers, you want to cover it with soil or compost.
And then after new growth appears and you see the branches that are really most sincerely dead, you can prune those off.
And in the early spring.
You can prune the plants for shape, you know, once they get their health back.
You can.
Take them down to almost the stump and they will regrow.
They won't look good for a couple of years, but they will regrow.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Yes, not doing anything at all is is probably one of my better things.
Oh, I was going to say for most people, it's incredibly difficult.
I have to save it.
Well, that was my original thought when you said not to do anything and it came back.
No, it's It's like a mother who let's go over child's hand.
The child puts one step into the street and she yanks him back so hard he breaks his arm, you know?
Yeah, that was me.
It is one of the hardest lessons to learn in gardening, but it's almost never wrong.
Ok.
Okay.
All right, thank you so much.
You're always so helpful.
My pleasure.
Good luck to you.
Say how it all my friends in Oklahoma and bye bye.
Eight eight eight four nine two ninety four forty four.
Bruce, welcome.
You bet your garden.
Hi, Mike.
This is Bruce down in, uh, sunny Blacksburg, Virginia.
Oh, I know that area very well.
Yeah.
What's your weather like this time of year?
Right now, it's actually supposed to get up into the, uh, upper seventies.
We've we've had some nights in the 40s, but fall transition.
Hey, let me just interrupt you for a second to remind everybody who wants to try bringing in their pepper plants for the winter or who has houseplants outside.
Don't wait, don't wait.
Don't wait until frost is predicted.
Bring those plants in as soon as your temperatures drop into the 40s because one of my favorite rules of gardening, cowards always win.
All right, Bruce, what can we do you for?
Well, thank you for that reminder because years ago I took your advice about bringing my peppers in and they're sturdy plants after three winters.
Isn't it amazing the day inside?
I got that idea when I saw habanero trees in New Mexico that were 20, 30 years old because if they're protected from frost, hot peppers and sweet peppers are perennial.
So if you treat them right, rinse them down real well because aphids like to hide on them and keep them under bright lights for, you know, like 16 hours, something like that during the day in a warm place.
You know, you don't start out with these tiny little things.
You start out, you know?
And if you want to brag to your neighbors when it's time to take your pepper plants out again in the in the spring?
Ask them, Can you come over and help me move my pepper plants out there?
Huge.
So you get bragging rights?
Yes.
Well, I'm I have a low enough altitude or latitude that I can actually get by with a good deal of just ordinary light through the windows and a little just supplemental lighting indoors.
Well, see, you're talking to somebody who used to raise plants for the Philadelphia Flower Show.
Yeah.
So, you know, I used to have these heavy duty industrial like I think they were mostly plants for grown for plants, marijuana plants, growing marijuana plants indoors.
But I use them for hot peppers, and they were so expensive to run.
And now I use those.
They call them deformable LEDs.
Mm hmm.
They cost almost nothing, and the plants just love it.
Yes.
But anyway, my question had to do with much smaller plants.
Ok.
I have.
Throughout the year, Moss on my asphalt shingle roof, Right, because when the trees leaf out, it gets very shady there And I have most of the trees on and near my property are 60 to 70 feet tall.
Things like Norway spruces big red oaks and other things that will drop nutrient on my roof all the time.
Uh huh..
I usually go up on on the roof about every six weeks to two months on average, with a blower to blast stuff out of my gutters, right?
Uh, but I and even though the roof isn't too steeply pitched, I don't really feel like kneeling down on it to break my Medicare card.
Yeah, no, no, no.
We're all getting too old for that.
I'm actually going to look into gutter guards pretty soon.
So I was just curious what your recommendations would be on eliminating or at least controlling the moss.
I've got clumps of nice, bright green, frilly stuff that spots about the size of quarters that are more of a bronze color.
And for just visual relief, I have a lot of nice flat light gray lichen.
Oh, OK, well, you're probably not liking that lichen now.
How are you?
Well, it's very scenic, but.
Ok, so here's the straight skinny.
I had to have the majority of my roofing replaced, like five 10 years ago.
We came home from my wife's parents house on Christmas night to find a waterfall in the in the kitchen and insurance covered everything, but they made us put on a new roof because the shingles had, you know, past their sell by date.
And so that part of the roof was finished.
But I have a kind of a a hobbit house on the end with a lot of angles and stuff, and they wanted a fortune to re shingle that little part much more than the main roofing.
So.
I never did it and thinking, well, you know, if anything happens over here, I just won't make a claim.
But what has happened is on the front side of the house that you see from the street, it has become a hobbit hole.
The roof over there is completely covered with moss.
And then we get into this big debate, isn't it damaging the roof?
Well, Moss has no roots.
So it is.
It's just there, in my opinion, it's not doing any harm.
And I've had Moss on that part of the house for more than a good twenty five years.
And I like it.
I would like to have it fill in more.
But if you don't like your Mos and there's a divergence of opinion on whether it hurts roofing, I think it looks beautiful.
So if you want to get rid of your Mos, what I would suggest to you gets make sure you get somebody else to hold the ladder and everything.
But don't just quote kill it.
Take it down off the roof and put it on sheets of bark.
You know, like when you cut firewood, the bark eventually falls off.
Lay the moss on top of that.
Put it in a shady spot with water, and you've got the beginnings of an excellent little moss display.
Then it's my understanding that if you put, they make these things for the pitch of a roof that are made of zinc and zinc is a moss repellent.
So every time it rains, these zinc structures keep the moss off your roof.
So it's really up to you, I love mine, like I said, I would like to get it to fill in, and I even I must have let my garden beds get to acidic because we had we had Moss in one of the beds and I did just what I'm saying.
We put it on to tree bark and now it's like, we're just figuring out exactly the best way to display it.
Hmm, that's interesting.
And the zinc has no toxic effect beyond.
Keeping the malls from rejuvenating, I have to I have to do a promised question of the week on zinc, but what I'll tell you right now is in small amounts.
Zinc is an essential nutrient for people and plants, so it's not like you're putting barrels of mercury up there.
I just want to make sure because all my gutters and downspouts are going into to divert hours into my more or less naturalised landscape.
Oh, I don't think the small amounts of zinc that will come off of that will be any problem at all.
But I'll also address that issue when I do this question of the week.
Oh, great.
All right, Bruce.
Okay, so thank you for the idea about the bark.
I no longer have sycamores the way I did growing up in Delaware County, um, to put on, but I'll try to do that.
I know my neighbor is trying to cultivate a a moss patch in her yard.
Oh, well, then take your moss to her.
I I will do that and I will look for the the zinc strips.
I don't.
I'm happy to have some of the color and texture on the roof, but so long as I'm still able to climb on the roof with the the blower, I don't want to have a little bit of extra slipperiness underfoot.
Right, right.
Yeah, the moss.
The downside for me is it holds branches and fallen leaves.
Yeah.
All right, Bruce, we got to go.
Okay, well, thanks a lot, Mike.
Have a great, uh, day and a great fall.
Oh, I love full.
It's my favorite season, man.
All right to you.
Take care.
Thanks again.
Bye, bye bye.
As promised, it is time for the question of the week when to prune raspberries and roses.
Mary and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, writes, I have a lovely but overgrown Constance spry climbing rose that I'd really like to cut back right now.
It's wild and is broken its support.
I want to know if I can cut it back this winter to around 18 inches from the ground and then train it on a much stronger arbor.
What would you suggest?
Thanks.
Hey, thank you for bringing up Constance Spry.
The famed flower arranger had more accomplishments nurse head of the Irish Red Cross World War to Victory Garden expert and domestic science instructor to name a few more than I have fingers and toes.
In fact, her shop flower decoration was the go to place in the UK for unusual and striking floral decorations, and her name was attached to the very first David Austin Rose introduction, thus launching his famous English Rose series.
The Constance Spry Rose is a fragrant, double flowered pink rambler often described as lanky, which is a term that seems to invite pruning.
Luckily, our Mary seems to know that this time of year is the worst time to prune anything as constant spry.
Surely new pruning stimulates growth?
Pruning in the fall stimulates growth just as the plant is trying to go dormant, sucking vital energy out of the root system.
And with winter weather to be expected in any time, that lush new growth could freeze solid, effectively ending the need for further pruning.
And there's always the risk of a cold, windy winter.
Without good snow cover.
Snow is good for plants.
It insulates the crown, protecting the plant against wild temperature swings.
Without the wonderful natural insulation some gardeners call God's mulch, the top of the plant is likely to suffer some winter damage from wind and desiccation.
Plants that are unproved going into winter have a lot of biomass to lose without harming the plant.
Long term plants that have been neatly pruned down to six inches or so are certain to join the choir invisible again, avoiding the need for further pruning.
So put those pruners away and don't listen to so-called experts that urge you to clean up your garden in the fall.
The only cleaning up you need to do is suck and shred your fall leaves for mulch and compost making.
Back to Constance, the dead of winter, the dormant season is a perfectly acceptable time to prune things that are not spring bloomers, but it's not the best time.
Let's say we cut back this wandering rose in January, and one of those freaky winter warm spells arrives, wakes up the rose and is followed by freezing cold.
No snow cover.
The health of this rose is now threatened and half a dozen different ways, so it's better to wait until spring, specifically about two to three weeks after the rose and your other plants have greened up and all chance of a hard frost is in your rearview mirror, and 18 inches seems a bit dramatic to me.
This rose is a Great Dane, and trying to turn it into a dachshund isn't going to make anybody happy.
I'd leave much more of it standing at least four feet.
Why this rose only blooms once a year, and you're going to get the most roses if the plant hits the ground running with a good amount of biomass in the spring.
At least it's only supposed to bloom once a year.
I would dead had the spent flowers promptly and see if we can rewrite that catalog page, then prune it back every other spring and it should be less destructive, but it will always be a rambling rose.
Side note Roses thrive with a mulch of compost.
Wood mulch is invite diseases to attack.
We move on to Lily and Milwaukee, who writes, How and when do I prune my raspberries?
They're growing crazy.
Hey, they're supposed to.
Raspberries are like Labradors and border collies.
They can't sit still.
Prune only dead wooden canes and late spring early summer next year.
Not beforehand.
Canes that appeared to be dead in the winter might just be dormant and may bear a lot more berries in the spring.
For most varieties, that works like this new cane sprout in the spring and grow all season long, six to eight feet of length is perfectly normal.
At the end of the growing season, big, juicy raspberries will appear at the tips of those canes do not prune these first year canes, although it's always a good idea to prune off the spent berry clusters the following spring.
A new run of green canes will sprout from the ground, but the previous year's canes that you have spared will green up and clusters of berries will appear all along the length of those canes.
This second year harvest is always much larger than the previous year.
After harvest, second year canes will start to visibly die off with yellowing leaves and brittle canes evident by mid-summer.
Now you can prune out those canes at ground level, and it gives the raspberry patch a much cleaner look and encourages the growth of new canes.
Another side note Never feed a raspberry patch with potent fertilizers.
The canes provide the best harvest in poor soil, to which a little bit of compost has been added.
Well, that sure was some good information about controlling raucous ramblers now, wasn't it?
Luckily, you can read these important instructions over at your leisure or your leisure, because the question of the week appears in print at the Gardens of Live website.
Just click the link for the question of the week at our web site, which is still and will forever be.
You bet your garden.
Org Gardens Life supports the event, your garden question of the week, and you'll always find the latest question of the week where not the Gardens Alive website.
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Mike McGrath was created when he discovered that matter from an exploded dwarf star gave him the power to shrink in size, which was no help whatsoever.
Yikes.
My producer is threatening to prune my spring bloomers if I don't get out of this studio who we must be out of time.
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You bet your garden, dawg.
I'm your pruning sensitive host Mike McGrath, and I'll see you again next week.
Drop the pruners now.
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You Bet Your Garden is a local public television program presented by PBS39
Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma Company, offering a complete selection of Natural Organic Plant foods and Potting Soils.