Time for some high pruning and maintenance for the trees at my Bedford, New York farm.
Yesterday, my longtime arborists at SavATree came with a crew to do some upkeep on various trees including a grove of old sugar maples located outside my Summer House. These trees are original to the farm and provide dappled shade over a collection of tree peonies and azaleas. The arborists from SavATree are well-trained and use different climbing methods to reach some of the high dead branches that needed to be removed.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
This day was perfect for some maintenance tree work – mild temperatures and very little wind. While my own outdoor grounds crew can tackle many of the smaller tree jobs, I occasionally call in a crew from SavATree to do the larger tasks, like cutting the dead wood out of these tall sugar maples.
This is a view of the maples from last fall. Acer saccharum, the sugar maple, is a species of flowering plant in the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It is native to the hardwood forests of eastern Canada and eastern United States. Sugar maple is best known for being the primary source of maple syrup and for its brightly colored fall foliage.
SavATree has been caring for my trees since I purchased the property. The crews include well trained arborists with all the necessary equipment for safely and efficiently maintaining all kinds of trees. The safety belts with all the carabiners and ropes can easily weigh about 25-pounds.
Ricardo prepares his double line with what is called a “Blake Hitch Knot” which is a friction, or slide and grip hitch. It is often used by arborists for ascending and descending.
Ricardo uses a traditional method for climbing this tree. First he assesses his route and ensures his lines are all secure.
Ricardo starts carefully by finding a clear spot on the tree to ascend. The crew is very careful not to disturb any of the plantings below or the climbing hydrangea vines on the trunk of the tree.
Ricardo uses both legs of the line to climb up the side of the tree. He uses his body to bring himself up. This technique is one of the first climbers must learn, and one of the safest to use.
This technique is also one of the quickest and most effective ways of ascending a tree. It took only minutes for Ricardo to reach the necessary point.
He also uses two lines tied in two places in the tree. The climbing line is tied at the higher point, while the climber moves the lower tie to where he is on the tree.
Once Ricardo is at the right spot, he carefully cuts down the needed branch that is already tied to another line. When the branch is severed, it goes down slowly to the ground instead of dropping.
On another tree, Alejandro prepares himself for a single line rope wrench technique. Alex helps him at the base. This method incorporates a rope wrench with tether, foot locks, and a chest harness.
All the climbers are trained in tying a variety of safety arbor knots.
Alejandro uses his feet to grip the rope and advance up the climbing line. Climbers who use this technique must already be very experienced in using the traditional double line method.
Here, one can see how Alejandro climbs the rope using his arms to pull him up and his feet to grip the single line.
Once he is at the needed height, he positions himself at a sturdy crotch of the tree.
Then he secures himself with the proper arbor tie.
And cuts the dead wood.
The crew from SavATree also uses STIHL equipment. These arbor saws are lightweight and easy to transport when climbing.
The branches that are taken down are brought over to the SavATree chipper nearby.
After all the wood is chipped, it is dumped in my compost yard and used later for wood chip dressing.
The crew then carefully puts all their equipment – ropes, harnesses, and belts away, so they’re all ready for the next job.
Proper, regular pruning removes dead, diseased or damaged branches. Maintaining the tree’s structure also helps to enhance the tree’s natural shape, ensures enough sunlight, air, and moisture get through the branches, and mitigates the risk of broken limbs and falling branches. I look forward to seeing these beautiful mature trees with all their bold green foliage later this season.
Although we're expecting partly cloudy skies and some showers this week at my Bedford, New York farm, the gardens are still showing off lots of springtime blooms.
The garden beds are changing every single day. Trees are beginning to leaf out and various flowers are bursting with color and energy - muscari, Chionodoxa, corydalis, Cornus mas the cornelian cherry tree, and of course the daffodils.
Enjoy these photos.
More and more daffodils are opening every day. I plant early, mid and late-season blooming varieties so that sections of beautiful flowers can be seen throughout the season.
The classic yellow-and-white daffodil is a welcome sign of spring. With more than 25-thousand named varieties, daffodils are one of the most hybridized flowers in the world. The blossoms come in many combinations of yellow, orange, white, red, pink and even green.
Here’s another daffodil in its gorgeous splendor. Daffodils are some of the easiest spring flowering bulbs to grow, and are perennial, so they reliably come back year after year.
Look at the foliage – so green and plentiful. I cannot wait to share photos of the swaths of daffodil flowers blooming along the border that stretches down one side of my farm.
Many of the crocus flowers are still blooming beautifully. These are beneath my allee of pin oaks.
Hello my blue boy! Here is one of my mature blue peacocks enjoying the mild weather and flowers outside his pen.
Chionodoxa, known as glory-of-the-snow, is a small genus of bulbous perennial flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae, often included in Scilla.
They also come in dainty pink. The flowers have up to 10 star-shaped, six-petaled clustered pale flowers with white centers atop dark stems and sparse, narrow foliage.
Puschkinia is a genus of three known species of bulbous perennials in the family Asparagaceae. It is native to the Caucasus and the Middle East. Puschkinia grows so beautifully in clumps – I have several areas filled with these delicate small flowers.
Remember the hellebores? The hellebores continue to show beautifully at the farm. Hellebores are members of the Eurasian genus Helleborus – about 20 species of evergreen perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. They blossom during late winter and early spring for up to three months. Hellebores come in a variety of colors and have rose-like blossoms.
Muscari is a genus of perennial bulbous plants native to Eurasia that produce spikes of dense, most commonly blue, urn-shaped flowers that look like bunches of grapes in spring. Muscari is also known by its common name for the genus – grape hyacinth.
Bright colorful flowers rising above neat mounds of delicate foliage make corydalis perfect for shady borders. Of the 300 or so species of corydalis with differing colors, these are dark pink flowers growing outside my studio.
Here is one of the many peonies just waking up from its winter slumber. This one is in my Summer House garden.
Outside my Summer House is this Cornus mas, commonly known as cornelian cherry – a deciduous shrub or small tree that is native to central and southern Europe into western Asia. It typically grows over time to 15 to 25 feet tall with a spread to 12 to 20 feet wide. Yellow flowers on short stalks bloom in early spring before the leaves emerge in dense, showy, rounded clusters.
These are the buds of a weeping cherry tree with its cascading branches. I have two outside my stable. They only bloom for a short while. These trees are big eye-catchers when guests are lucky enough to see them filled with white flowers.
Some of the magnolia trees are also blooming. Magnolia is a large genus of about 210 flowering plant species in the subfamily Magnolioideae. It is named after French botanist Pierre Magnol. Growing as large shrubs or trees, they produce showy, fragrant flowers that are white, pink, red, purple or yellow.
From the carriage road looking up above the pinetum, one can see the gorgeous golden yellow of the weeping willows.
The trees’ long, tube-shaped flower clusters called catkins make their appearance just before weeping willow leaves reappear on the branches. The flower clusters are filled with nectar, which insects carry for pollination.
The darker blue flowers are Siberian squill. Native to Russia, these plants grow to about four to eight inches tall and spread out and bloom profusely.
Just off the carriage road leading to my run-in horse paddock are several red Japanese barberry shrubs. Most striking are the deep reddish purple inch-long leaves that stand out this time of year.
And look at all the growth erupting in front of my greenhouse. The bed is filled with white lilies, which will be in bloom later this summer.
The gardens are coming alive – it’s a gorgeous time of year. What spring blooms do you see around your home? Share them with me in the comments section below.
Potting and planting hundreds of trees at the farm is a huge, yet exciting undertaking.
I love trees, and every year I plant hundreds, sometimes thousands. Trees are crucial to the environment. They provide food, protection, and homes to scores of birds and mammals. They also help combat climate change and release oxygen for all of us to live. This week, we received a shipment of bare-root cuttings from Musser Forests, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company specializing in conifer and hardwood seedlings and transplants. Bare-root trees are so named because the plants are dug from the ground while dormant, and stored without any soil surrounding their roots. Once the young specimens arrived, my gardeners and outdoor grounds crew placed them in tubs to soak overnight and then hurried to pot them the next day in nutrient-filled composted soil made right here at the farm.
Here are some photos - enjoy.
Here is the area behind my stable where I keep my potted tree saplings. I like this spot, so they can be closely monitored and well-watered when needed.
Since I plant so many trees, I get most of them in the form of bare-root cuttings. Bare-root plants should not have any mold or mildew. The cuttings should also feel heavy. If they feel light and dried out then the plant probably will not grow.
We always pot bare-root cuttings in individual containers. The trees will only remain in these pots temporarily – eventually, they will be transplanted in various locations around the farm. We save pots whenever we can – they always come in handy for projects like this, and I always encourage the crew to reuse supplies whenever possible.
We use composted manure and top soil for potting our cuttings. Composting manure above 131-degrees Fahrenheit for at least a couple weeks kill harmful pathogens, dilute ammonia, stabilize nitrogen, kill weed seeds and reduce any objectionable odors. I am so proud of the nutrient-rich soil we make. Chhiring brings loads of it from the back compost field using our Kubota M4-071 tractor. It’s designed to use auxiliary equipment such as the L1154 front loader that helps us transport so many things around the farm.
Once a good mound of compost is unloaded, it is amended with some good fertilizer and then mixed well.
Each bare-root cutting is placed into an appropriately sized pot. The root section should fit into the pot without bing crowded at the bottom. Healthy bare-root trees get off to a more vigorous start because their abundant, roots have already had a chance to develop unrestricted.
Each pot is prepared with a small layer of soil ready for the tree and backfill. Pasang plants each specimen carefully, so it is straight and centered in the container.
Here he tamps down lightly after the pot is backfilled so there is good contact between the tree roots and the surrounding soil. Each tree is placed at the same level it was grown by the nursery – where the roots start and the top shoots begin.
As each tree is potted, it is placed in a row with all like specimens.
In order to get all the seedlings potted as quickly as possible, it was “all hands on deck.” The crew created a very productive assembly line. While Pasang prepares the bare-root cutting, Domi fills the pot, and then Chhiring, in the back, moves groups of bare-root trees to their designated spot.
Some of the trees we’re potting include Picea omorika, also known by the common name Serbian spruce – a species of coniferous tree endemic to the Drina River valley in western Serbia, and eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Black Hills spruce is a naturally symmetrical cone-shaped conifer with a dense, compact habit, and bright blue-green foliage when mature.
Gold Thread Cypress is an evergreen shrub with striking yellow foliage. It holds its stunning golden color all throughout the year.
Golden barberry has bright solid yellow foliage year-round and is compact, adaptable, and very hardy. I have golden barberry growing on my terrace parterre.
These are the roots of Shumard Oak trees. The Shumard Oak, Quercus shumardii, is a stately tree with beautiful fall color. It is one of the largest of the oak species in the red oak group and can grow 50 to 90 feet tall.
Weed cloth is placed under the pots to keep everything neat and tidy. Most of these bare-root cuttings do not have leaves, so they are difficult to identify. It is important to keep them separated by cultivar and always properly marked. Buttonbush is a shrub with glossy green leaves and fragrant, round flower clusters during mid-summer. Native to the Chicago area and the eastern United States, buttonbush attracts many species of birds and butterflies.
These evergreens will do so nicely in these pots until they are ready to be transplanted in their permanent locations.
Chhiring adds a top-dressing of mulch to the pots.
And then pats it down neatly.
On the other side of this area, Phurba checks on the existing bare-root trees already in pots and growing well. He cleans the aisles and makes sure each plant has enough soil.
Our trusted STIHL battery-powered blower is nearby and used to blow any leaves and debris in between the pots. The crew uses this blower every day – it’s great for blowing leaves and other debris off the terraces and footpaths around my home.
By late afternoon, hundreds of bare-root cuttings are potted and carefully arranged. I am confident these trees will thrive in these pots and be in excellent condition when it is time to plant them in their more permanent locations around the farm. April 22nd is Earth Day – I hope you’ll consider planting a tree to celebrate. This year, the theme is “invest in our planet.”
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
