Well it is a sure sign that spring is right around the corner when my birds have come back. Last fall we had a flock of goldfinches with a pair of cardinals that would stop by every day through the summer and fall. Then in early December they just disappeared and, we didn’t see them all winter long even though finches and cardinals are typical winter birds that don’t migrate south for the winter. But this past Sunday they came back and boy were they hungry. I filled my feeders before going to work in the morning and when I got home in the early afternoon, I had to fill the feeders again. Also, I started to hear songbirds in the mornings this week, another sign of spring. But before the plants wake up for spring there is still time for pruning if you didn’t get it done this past fall. I had a customer ask me this week about how big we would have blueberries this year. She was looking for some big ones that could produce right away as she had old field blueberries that were so overgrown she wanted her husband to pull them out. The bushes she had had grown to eight to ten feet tall and were not very productive anymore. I told her she could just cut those blueberries back to about four feet tall. They might not be very productive this year as they would spend a lot of time rebranching, but with about sixty percent of the top gone and still one hundred percent of the roots those blueberries will regrow like they are on steroids. At first she asked me, but won’t that kill them? I told her there is a slim chance but she was going to have her husband pull them out anyway, so why not give it a shot. She said her husband loves to hear he gets to cut something down anyway. I have old twenty foot tall apple trees on the property we bought last year, and they were overgrown and not productive at all. I cut them down to about six feet tall, and I will let them regrow from there. Now these are some extreme pruning examples, but there is a lot of smaller simple projects that can still be done. I usually tell customers that they can prune right up to St. Patricks Day as it is easier for people to remember holidays as opposed to just a date on the calendar. You can still prune later than that, but if you do, you should use pruning sealer on the cuts to prevent sap bleeding. If the sap starts to run it will attract insects and no one wants that. Also having sap run will stress the roots as they will continue pumping sap up to a branch that no longer exists. So get your pruning done before it gets too warm, and you won’t have to worry about sap running. 

Next week we should be starting to plant perennials in our greenhouse so I should have some information about some new perennials next week. And later this week I will be attending a trade show from one of our distributors, so maybe there will be some new products to talk about as well. Either way spring is coming, the days are getting longer and warmer, and soon we can get our hands in the dirt.