Week of January 9, 2022

Winter at both the Florida Garden and TAProots Vineyard is the time for PRUNING while the plants are dormant and before the spring buds appear. However, pruning can wait until February or March in Upstate New York, whereas buds start to emerge in Florida even before all of last year’s leaves have fallen from the trees. We wait to prune camellias and citrus until blooming and fruiting has finished, usually later in the spring. Florida blueberries, even if pruned after fruiting, need additional shaping now, especially the Rabbiteye varieties which push shoots up 6-8 feet above the ground. These are pruned back to the height of the bush to encourage branching and leave nourishment for the rest of the bush, now blooming or even with small green berries already set. The Muscadine grapes are heavily pruned to reduce the number of buds per vine and to open up the leaf canopy to allow airflow. The peach and plum trees have also put up long shoots well above the reach of a step ladder, so these are pruned back to a foot or less, and the remaining branches are pruned to form a vase, with no center leaders but a ring of branches extending out from the trunk. They too are blooming now, just after the pruning was completed. Finally, the persimmon trees have kept their vase shape, so pruning them entails removing the “water sprouts”, branches emerging vertically which would shade the rest of the tree and not provide blossoms or fruit. Pruning often creates second thoughts about removing too much. The nicely spaced foliage and hearty flowers and fruit almost always removes these doubts as the Florida spring unfolds.