The last two evenings we’ve had nice weather here in NE Indiana. With temperatures in the mid 50’s F, not wanting to waste this unseasonably fine weather, I spent some time caring for the maples, arborvitaes, and flowering cherry trees.
It felt so good to get my hands in the soil again; breaking up the crust of last year’s wood chip mulch, loosening the soil, pulling clumps of grass that have grown up through the mulch and laying a fresh layer of cypress wood chip mulch.
Not only am I making the beds look nice, I’ve preparing them for the nitrogen fixers I’ll be planting in the months to come. It looks like these poor trees have been neglected for years.
Maples-
Some of the maples still had the original landscape fabric that’s probably been in place for twelve years now. The mulched tree ring around the trees are still the same size they would have been when these trees were originally planted.
I’ve been removing all of the landscape fabric or (worse yet) heavy plastic the previous owner used throughout the landscape. I’m also expanding the tree rings to be more in scale with the tree’s size.
Two of the maples (which both had landscape fabric) had very bad scars from sun-scorch on their trunks. They were pretty well healed, but on the advice of the tree trimmer who helped with the willows, I wrapped both trunks with a paper tree-wrap. He told me this would help them finish healing.
Arborvitaes-
The five new arborvitaes have wintered over very well. They were planted in the heat of late July last year and shed quite a bit in the fall. I was concerned about their surviving winter, but all five are doing great. They already appear to be growing this year. They each got a cardboard ring (to suppress the grass) and a fresh layer of mulch. I’ve seen the bunnies under these trees a lot this winter. After close inspection, they didn’t appear to do any damage. I wonder if they were just enjoying the tiny pine cones or just using them for cover.
Flowering Cherry-
The flowering cherry has issues. It has a bad case of bacterial canker. I’m still researching this problem and am trying to save the cherry, if possible. To give it a fighting chance I’ve worked in a 1/2 bag of Miracle Grow garden soil into the heavy clay soil to help loosen and aerate it, mixed in some coffee grounds for my worm friends, and provided a protective layer of cypress mulch. While prepping the soil I noticed that the tree was also planted too deep. I dug around the root crown, with the hopes this will help the tree breath better. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this tree this year. I would prefer to treat it through environmental changes rather than chemically, but if a copper treatment is required, so be it.
Hopefully it will make it through.
Great Tips for the care of these specific trees, thanks for the informative post.