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Because we expect to keep shuffling the Pools’ contents to make room for revisions and visitors’ responses, please refer to  Pool_X, refreshing your browser or ‘phone on every visit, then refresh each Pool you visit too: otherwise they may lead you a merry dance.

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15 July 2020

 04/05/2020 / Daphne McCartney / Springtime

Springtime: two great views looking westward, both photographed on May 8th, 2019.

18/04/2020 / S Harrod / Grafted Trees - Timely Alert

New Spring growth in our area usually occurs in April, so check all graft-propagated shrubs and trees for undesirable growths now. The most usual trees we see spoiled by neglect of this task hereabouts are the flowering cherries.

The kind of stock tree used to receive the decorative kind by grafting is strong and vigorous, but the latter, the scion, is valued for its flowers and often is no match when it comes to vigorous growth. So the stock uses its surplus power trying to produce flowering branches of its own.

You have to intervene, or in time you’ll have a mixed-up tree of two kinds, the bigger parts producing inferior flowers. You can’t afford to wait until the stock’s branches are spreading among the scion’s branches. Even if they are successfully cut out, what’s left will have been weakened by the competition for light, probably a scarred, untidy muddle for years.

Before        and         After

the removal of a second long-neglected growth from a top-worked trunk. Note the side-branch that had forced a second way up through the wide-spread zone of branches.

So, inspect the entire visible surface of the stock.  If the graft was bottom-worked (made near ground level) the (scion) trunk grows up from a wider (stock) base near ground level. If the graft was top-worked, then the trunk must all be checked.  Simply find and cut away all young shoots breaking through the bark.

April 17          Same Shoot           June 20

This shoot, new on June 20, shows grafted plants should be checked through the growing season.