Winter Japanese Maple Gardening Checklist: February – Signs of spring!

The Japanese Maple Gardening year: February signs of spring

A revisit of my Japanese maples to see how they have done over winter. Die back / feeding are discussed as well as the seedlings and young grafted trees bought last year. There is also an update on the new grafted maples I did a month or so ago to review their progress.

Thanks again to the folk at www.barthelemymaples.co.uk for their advice!

Ideal for beginners or more experienced Japanese Maple growers, in these videos I will show what practical steps I take to keep my Acer trees healthy during a year of gardening!

I hope you will follow me in my adventures with these wonderful trees

This video will help you grow better trees and for those with more experience, who want to improve the autumn colour, health and general quality of their Maples. Colour can also be improved all year by giving trees the right amount of sun.

This video is about:
Fall colors, Japanese acer, Japanese acer care, Japanese acer in pots, Japanese acer leaves curling, Japanese acer maple tree, Japanese acer scorched leaves, Japanese acer tree, Japanese acer uk, Japanese maple, Japanese maples care, Japanese maples in containers, Japanese maples in pots, Japanese maples varieties, Maples, acer, autumn, fall colors, fall foliage, garden, garden answer, garden tour, gardening, maple, shrubs, Japanese maple care, autumn ambience

Hi there Maple fans and in this series of videos I’ll be sharing what I do throughout an entire year on a monthly basis please note that these months are based on UK timings but of course can easily be adapted to anywhere else in the world so today in this video I’ll be

Sharing how to manage your Aces into the spring months particularly with relevance to them leafing out and possible Frost damage I’ll also be discussing just hints and tips really about thinking about the spring and how we can plan ahead as well of course having an update on the grass I did last

Month and just seeing if they’re surviving so here we have one of my trees Co nto these tend to hang on to a few of last year’s leaves that’s absolutely fine we can trim those off or they’ll sort of come off quite naturally really but uh looking at that and also

This TW red Sentinel and the tree next to it really pleased to say there is absolutely minimal um Frost damage die back um there’s a bit of a white Branch there but that’s definitely from last year so avoiding dieback is very part part of the equation with feeding so

Next month I’ll be looking at feeding them with a sort of nice AC of feed that takes about six months for to disappear out of the soil and that’s really beneficial so it doesn’t overgrow into winter so I’m quite pleased that I didn’t feed them late on last season so

That’s really helped and here we are just looking at some nice Garden Center plants as well and just notice the fact that this is perhaps a really good time to get into the garden centers the new stocks are in um I do prefer to use sort of specialist um Maple places now

Largely because I probably got most of these um I’ve really had so many that uh the more specialist places offer some interesting Alternatives that aren’t so mass-produced so to speak but lovely nonetheless um and here we can see that also these places can sort of maybe

Train them up like this and they they get staked up and tied together so if you got a small patio or a small area it’s maybe a good time to have a think about planning and a tree like that would actually fit into a much smaller

Space um this little fell as I’m showing you there is a Jerry Swartz so it looks very different to my Jerry Swartz um that I will show you later on in the video but as you can see the it does offer these kind of Alternatives and in

A weird way when without any leaves on them you can kind of see the shape of the form of them well and it might be a great time to do that uh and take part of that planning stage really I think it’s really worth noting as well that uh

The AC Growers like the one bot tell is where I bought the grass from at this time of year will ship really small trees whereas later on the year they just get too big really and it’s just not feasible to ship them so it’s a really really good idea to check the

Websites out wherever you are in the world and see what’s available because availability is probably going to be really really good and either make that order or a pre-order while while we can and just to note again particularly for the people new to the channel um these

Are all named cultivars so they’re sort of they’ve been grafted um you can see on the bottom left there the sort of where one tree meets another as they been grafted together but you will sort of have a really good appreciation of using grafted trees of how they’re going

To look and won’t sort of see the leaves and stuff yet which is really important but of course quick Google and a search and you can do a bit of research great time as well to have a look at uh what other accessories you might add to the

Garden um again the garden sensors aren’t too full of people at the moment you can have a good uh slow walk around but if you’re going for that Japanese theme there’s lots of ornaments and bits and pieces that you could uh think and it’s all part of the planning really um

To give it that lovely sort of nice theme and give it some sort of hard landscaping and stuff like that as well to kind of give it structure might be nice to look at some conifers or uh other Japanese varieties of plants really Chamas aelas all that sort of

Thing and sort of start to to plan things out ready for the the next season so back here to one of my own trees and here we see something interesting because this one is much more advanced than some of them and is starting to sort of leaf out so it’s gone beyond the

Point where the the the the little buds to actually sort of it’s ready to start producing its leaves which is which is really quite exciting but also to note that this is a kind of a dangerous time for these plants I think it’s interesting that a lots of people tend

To worry about the winter and will my plants survive will be massive dieback but I’m actually more concerned at this stage in the UK here because if this leaks out and there’s a a frost or certainly a hard Frost many of the leavs could be damaged and then

I’m stuck with a a damage plant for the season really so just worth bearing in mind here we have Jerry Schwartz as I said very different to the sort of group together and state a plant that we saw in the garden center I personally love this sort of upturn V structure to it

And absolutely packed with loads and loads of tiny little buds all sort of not quite there yet but but ready to to to Leaf out and produce a myriad of little leaves really which is a particularly nice feature of this cultivar to be honest with you and again just thinking about structure because

That fits in the corner really nicely because of its shape where other trees are good in different areas so never mind cultivos what about the seedlings I planted last year and here we can see even though they’re tiny little sticks really uh doing well nice little buds there all ready to

Go so another little view of my trees here um this is Katura and is very very renowned for being a really early one to Lea out um some of the some of the branches of this tree look kind of damaged or very white Etc um it’s not Frost damaged they’re absolutely fine

Actually it’s probably more the fact that it was in too much sun last year to be honest but as you can see that’s in the very early stages but almost on a daily basis it’s worth keeping an eye on these things because uh as they Lea out

Really quite quickly um you know we need to take note of it the problem is of course if if you’ve got fully grown trees you you can’t move them or if they’re in the ground but in pots here I might select a more shady position for them or more shelter position should I

Say um if they’ve leafed out a bit early or certainly the little fellas will come on to really easy to maybe put that into a very shelter position in inside a conservatory but be careful because if sun gets on it temperatures may rise but just a bit of protection from the frost

Would would maybe go a long way um here we have a red Flamingo which again is T to Leaf out really early lovely bark actually on this one too it’s it’s a kind of hybrid um but looking really really good ready to go and just sort of

Bod well for the new season but again just keeping an eye on those weather reports Frost Frost levels just to make sure they’re okay and again just a bit of an update on these trees I didn’t plant out in a pot I left them in their technical pots as bought by a garden

Center and I do believe I’ve done the right thing here so in some Pebbles plenty of drainage and this one’s doing fabulously well what a won’t do is make the M mistake I’ve made last year which is to try and put these out too early I’ll let it get into into full bloom

Actually up to full speed because I don’t want to give it a load of new nutrients in the compost and a load of extra water retaining uh material as well that might sort of drown it if we have a wet March and just for a bit of variety we’ve got a flowering cherry

Here this is Cojo n um which is in loads and loads of garden centers absolutely beautiful tree and again loads of buds just ready to go really so what about those uh trees in the ground does it make a lot of difference well not in my

Case so this is an orange dream I’m really looking forward to see how this does this year because it’s absolutely come on Leaps and Bounds it’s it’s planted in the ground it’s got unlimited nutrients and it’s fairly well established there it’s it’s been there a couple of years now and it’s really come

On Leaps and Bounds relative to its uh brother or sister I suppose um which is in a pot so we’ll we’ll keep a close eye on that but I say it’s in about the same sort of State as some of the other trees and less advanced than some of those

Really but again should be quite an impressive tree to have a look at in in a few weeks time so just that update I promise you on grafting and in case you missed the previous video this is sort of taking a bit of known cultivar tree

Here on the left and sort of splicing it into a existing root stock um of a generic cultivar called Pala palum palmatum and that just makes for a really good root system but a tree on the top that kind of is the same as the parent so attaching it together you can

Watch all of this in January’s video if you want to but just a little quick recap really just to see what we’re on about and again that will give me a tree that’s really really close to the parent tree so as you can see I’m really pleased with that we’ve got some buds

There of green and they’re swelling and maturing and that’s not just on the root stock tree it’s actually on the grafted part as well so quite exciting to see that because that’s what we’re aiming for of course the the grafted trees as well because it’s been kept indoors and

It’s fairly warm have started to mature and and grow but in the end we you know we’re not terribly interested in that side of things it’s the root system of that tree we’re looking for but as they get more established then we can cut that away and be left with a nice gry

Grafty cultivar there really the same on smuki Arma here um that’s doing really well as well been advised by the uh bolies where I I bought them from to leave the top off during the day and pop it on in the nighttime at the moment and the reason is there’s a real Balancing

Act here between getting the the graph to dry out which would potentially ruin it and makes make it not take or continue to sort of do so well um but also if it was too wet in there we going to get some mold and condensation forming and that’s going to

Be a problem so we just keep a close eye on of those and of course we’ll give you a nice update on those uh next month