No right or wrong way to prune bird of paradise
Q: My Mexican bird of paradise was gorgeous this year, the best ever. The flowers are now going to seed pods. Should I cut it back? What is the proper way to care for this plant as it moves into fall and winter? fertilizer in February and lightly water it. If you don’t like the seed pods then remove them. It won’t hurt the plant.
Prune in January or February. Prune it if you don’t like its size, shape or density or prune two or three of the largest stems at the base every three to four years if you love everything about it.
Q: Can you please tell me if it is possible or not to use volcanic rock dust on a Venus fly trap to promote its growth?
A: Rock dust is a marketing term that means a very finely ground powder from different sources that contains dozens of minerals in small quantities. It is thought that soils that are used for a very long time become depleted of some minerals that cannot be replaced with fertilizers. Recently, this term has become a hot topic among gardeners on social media such as on YouTube and some gardening internet blogs.
I became interested in it because I was getting questions regarding its use. I experimented with three different kinds of rock dust and compared them for one growing season in some raised vegetable beds. All of the raised beds were composted, as they would be normally at the start of a growing season.
Perhaps it promotes growth in soils that do not have enough nutrients, but I did not test that. I have not seen any advantages to vegetable growth when it is applied to raised beds and the soil has been composted and amended correctly.
It does not hurt anything to apply it in small quantities, and it can be inexpensive insurance if you want to be sure. You don’t need much.
Venus fly trap grows in very poor soils. It gets its nutrients primarily from the soil when it can get it. Alternatively, it also takes nutrients from small insects that walk or fly into its trap. It evolved this way because of the poor soils. But catching insects and devouring them is an alternative to getting nutrients from the soil or leaves.
Regardless, the soil must drain well when growing these plants. Lava rock, perlite or pumice will help in that regard. They like high humidity so growing them in an enclosed terrarium will help.
Adding rock dust to the soil will not hurt it. But help it? Perhaps if the soil is lacking in any of the plant nutrients found in the rock dust.
Personally, I would use liquid fertilizer sprayed on the foliage much like you would orchids. This plant would like very much compost tea applied this way. They do not like rich, wet soils.
Q: This past November my next door neighbor’s African sumac trees were pruned to a trunk and branches. They were cut back so much I was sure they were being removed but was told they would leaf again. They did and are green and a lovely, smaller shape. I am planning to take the plunge with my tree but was advised to wait until February to avoid freezing damage. What should I do?
A: I will get to the February pruning. There is a right way and wrong way to radically prune large trees to a much smaller size. African sumac trees will survive this kind of pruning and you can get a much smaller tree.
But the resulting growth from this tree will be weakly attached to the main trunk and large branches. This results in a lot of future wind damage to the tree and it will cost more money to have this repaired later.
Radical pruning that dramatically reduces the size of a tree must always be done during the winter months. Winter freezing damage to this tree does not happen very often here so I am not overly concerned about waiting until February. Not a bad idea though if the tree will look ugly until it regrows. MORRIS,