Q Our city recently removed the Bradford pear trees that had been planted in sidewalk openings in the downtown area. The trees outgrew the space and damaged store canopies, and the fruit made a mess. Do you have any suggestions for good street trees that won't break up the sidewalk, cause minimal mess and don't grow so big they damage buildings and store canopies?
A I think many people erroneously thought that Bradford pears were small trees. They are anything but small. They also have a tendency to snap in storms, so it is probably for the best that they were removed. Some good choices include male ginkgoes (females have messy, smelly fruit), Chinese pistache, little leaf linden and zelkova. A new trend is fastigiate trees -- or those that grow tall and narrow. Slender silhouette sweetgum (it unfortunately does produce sweetgum balls)and fastigiate European hornbeam, tulip tree and English oak are just a few of the choices.
Q Can I thin my crape myrtle now? It's supposed to get cold again here in Little Rock. And is it time to cut back my liriope?
A All parts of the state use late February as the time to prune roses, cut back liriope, figs, fruit trees and other summer-blooming plants. Since winter has returned with a vengeance at the end of February, it will not hurt in the least to wait until milder weather returns. The key is to wait until the bulk of winter has passed and before new growth is in full swing. Prior to the recent ice/snow/sleet and unseasonably low temperatures, many of our roses, perennials and other plants thought spring was on the horizon and so started to grow. Crape myrtles are usually one of the last plants to break dormancy, so waiting even until mid-March is not going to hurt anything. For the liriope, before you cut, pull back the old growth to see how much new growth is emerging so you don't cut the tips off this year's foliage.
Q We have a dwarf peach and Elberta peach. When is the best time to plant them? We just bought them. They are in the large buckets that they came in and in our garage with fluorescent lighting. We live in Beebe.
A I would plant them as soon as the ground is workable. Container plants can be planted year-round as long as you can dig in the soil and the ground is not saturated. I would assume you bought them dormant, and thus they could go in the ground outside. You don't want them in the garage for too long, or they could break dormancy and not be ready for outside conditions.
Q I have successfully grown azaleas in Northwest Arkansas for more than 20 years (other than the Easter freeze of 2007). But my Kurume azalea variety "Snow" have gotten tall (almost 5 feet tall) and the lower branches are completely bare of leaves, looking more like crape myrtles, with all the foliage on the upper two-thirds of the bushes. After blooming this spring, should they be cut back hard to encourage lower branch growth?
A What is happening is that the upper part of the azalea is shading out the base, thus preventing foliage. When pruning, do selective thinning and try to keep the tops of the shrubs a little more narrow than the base to encourage foliage from top to bottom. Avoid the shearing look. Prune as soon after flowering as possible, and try not to remove more than a third to one half of the plant. Follow that up with an application of azalea fertilizer. In a normal year we don't want to remove more than a third, but occasionally more than that needs to be done. The sooner you prune after flowering, the better.
DEAR READERS: Want to learn more about growing vegetables? The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute is hosting my Grow Your Own Groceries workshop March 21-22. More information, including a link for online registration, can be found at rockefellerinstitute.org/gardening. The institute's phone number is (501) 727-5435.
Janet B. Carson is a horticulture specialist for the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. Write to her at 2301 S. University Ave., Little Rock, Ark. 72204 or email her at
HomeStyle on 02/28/2015