Tree Tips
November 2025
Congratulations, everyone!!
This year’s show went together smoothly and in record time. Thank you all for putting on an exceptional show. It’s always a group effort, and it’s amazing what wonderful trees our members have worked on and shared with us all. Bravo!
Fall is here. Time change (Nov. 2nd), cooler days and nights. Rainy days are in the forecast. Growth is slowing down. On my street, I see lots of color on the Zelkovas—red, orange, yellow and green, sometimes on the same tree!
Watering
Each year I save a lot of water from my down-spout diverter off the roof. I store it in 32 gal trash cans to use later next year after the rains slow down. It’s clean water I can use to hand water specific trees with a 2 gallon can. I also have a water pump in a 50 gal can attached to a hose to make it easier for general watering. Better than San Jose Water out of the tap at this time of year.
Only water your trees when they need it. This means that you should wait until the upper soil has dried and is lighter in color before watering. Then water thoroughly. Don’t keep them too wet and remember that as they slow down their growth they use less water. If too much water is accumulating in the pot, tip the pot up on one side with a block to help drainage.
Wiring and Styling
It’s time to style, wire, pluck needles, and make big bends on conifers—you can work on practically everything now except black pines (next month). As the leaves fall after color change on deciduous trees, you can cut shoots back to two buds from December to mid January to set up growth in the Spring.
The growth that has been coming on since summer should be hardening and will no longer snap like a bean if you bend it. But try this: exercise the branch before you bend it in one direction. By this, I mean pre-bend it before putting the wire on. Using the fleshy part of your fingers and palm, support and twist the branch in the direction you wish to ultimately bend it (not back and forth!). Trust your fingers to tell you if you have gone far enough. They are actually more reliable than your eyes. You can get much more acute bends this way. If it still resists you may need to use raffia to support it.
Spray the bent branches with an anti-transpirant like Anti-Stress 2000® or Cloud Cover® or Wilt-Pruf®. This is an ideal time to fashion those branches before they harden off totally over winter.
Deciduous trees should be wired when most of the foliage has fallen off but before they become brittle later into the winter dormancy period. Remove the foliage when about 75% of the foliage has turned color. If you wait until December, any cutting may cause some trees to bleed excessively.
You can still style those junipers and even transplant early flowering trees like quince, but do protect them from frosts if we get some cold weather.
Be sure to clean out the foliage in the crotch areas and allow the sunlight into the interior to stimulate new buds and expose bugs.
December is usually best but if the pine needles have hardened, clean out the old needles on your trees to let the sunlight in. Leave on more needles on the bottom branches 10 to 15 pairs and 7 to 10 on top. At this point we want to encourage as much sun as we can. Later we’ll thin out even more. But watch that you don’t damage tender needles that haven’t hardened. Use tweezers or use scissors if plucking causes bleeding. Days are getting shorter and cooler.
General seasonal upkeep
Here in the Bay area, continue to fertilize your trees with low power fish emulsion (5-1-1). This will fire up a good energetic Spring response in a few months.
For most trees, now is the time to clean off the top layer sphagnum moss we had on during the hot summer season and the top soil that has accumulated spent fertilizer and weed seeds and is growing seasonal moss now and make sure it doesn’t get up into the bark of your trees. Silver moss that you used for the show can be taken off and put in your landscaping where it will get early morning sun and regular water. You can grow a new crop for next year. Clean off dead leaves and remove weeds. Add some super phosphate to the top soil for any transplanting that you do.
Remember to make your first application of dormant spray at Thanksgiving. Ultrafine® oil, Neem Oil, copper and lime sulfur sprays do well. Do not mix them together!
Whatever shade cloth you had for your trees can be eliminated at this point. The hours of sunlight and angle of the sun are approaching their minimums so the trees need all they can get. Also, tropicals have to be protected as the temperatures get down below 45º.🌳
