Dear Neil: My hydrangeas have been beautiful this year. I did not cut them back last year. When, and by how much, can I cut them back this year? A: Well done! Those are lovely.
Frankly, as beautiful as they are, I’m not sure I’d feel compelled to prune them much at all. I would trim off the brown heads after they have finished blooming. If you have a branch or two that extend out beyond all the others, they could be cut, too, just to even things up, but otherwise just leave them alone.
I wouldn’t mess with success like this. Dear Neil: I’m attaching a couple of photos of a tree in my front yard. The bark is coming off, and I’m not sure if it has a disease or if something else is killing it.
Any advice you can give me will be appreciated. A: I’m guessing that you’re showing me the west side of the trunk of your tree. This is sun scald, and sadly, I see it scores of times every year.
Its prime victims are Shumard red oaks, Chinese pistachios and red maples like yours. These are all trees that have notoriously thin bark when they’re young. While they’re growing pot-to-pot in the nursery they shade one another.
It’s not until we buy them and plant them out in the open in full sun that their trunks are exposed. The problem doesn’t show up for a couple of years. That’s how long it takes for the sunscald to crack the outer bark tissues and penetrate down to the xylem (the “wood” of the trunk).
Next it starts to peel, and then borers usually move in. The s.