I was hoping some of you might have some wisdom for me. I've had a
white wisteria for about 3 years now, it's always been a good bloomer.
We've lived a year in Washington State now (I've been told we're still
zone 8 even though we're not on the Oly Pen anymore.), we used to live
in Calif. The wisteria came with us, and bloomed fine in both places.
Anyway, I've never pruned it because the fellow who gave it to me said
not to. Now I'm noticing that it has a lot more dead branches than it
used to and very little indication of buds/new growth. I'm wondering
if should I prune it? I'm a little worried now and I'm just not too
sure what I should do. Thanks for any ideas...
~Lilly

Hello Lilly,

I guess the one to answer here is Paghat, since she is likely to know
about this quasi "climate" question, but when it gets cold some
of our wisterias (two) die here and there, as they do need renewal.
I guess this is the way yours is letting you know that she is trying
to get into the Washington climate and perhaps - since some of
it appears to be dead - it wouldn't do any harm to cut it back to
where it looks green and sacrifice perhaps some bloom in order
to give it a chance to restore itself? I doubt anything would
have grown anyway from the area of dieback, but if Paghat doesn't
chime in, a good nursery around your area maybe the best
answer. What kind of wisteria are you growing?

Allegra
in Portland Oregon
Lilly wrote in message news

I was hoping some of you might have some wisdom for me. I've had a
white wisteria for about 3 years now, it's always been a good bloomer.
We've lived a year in Washington State now (I've been told we're still
zone 8 even though we're not on the Oly Pen anymore.), we used to live
in Calif. The wisteria came with us, and bloomed fine in both places.
Anyway, I've never pruned it because the fellow who gave it to me said
not to. Now I'm noticing that it has a lot more dead branches than it
used to and very little indication of buds/new growth. I'm wondering
if should I prune it? I'm a little worried now and I'm just not too
sure what I should do. Thanks for any ideas...
~Lilly

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 17:12:36 GMT, "Allegra"
wrote:

Hello Lilly,

Hey Lady! How you be?


I guess the one to answer here is Paghat, since she is likely to know
about this quasi "climate" question, but when it gets cold some
of our wisterias (two) die here and there, as they do need renewal.

Paggers usually knows, good point.


I guess this is the way yours is letting you know that she is trying
to get into the Washington climate and perhaps - since some of
it appears to be dead - it wouldn't do any harm to cut it back to
where it looks green and sacrifice perhaps some bloom in order
to give it a chance to restore itself?


That's what I was hoping it was. Pruning is an art I'm just very good
at yet. The guy who gave it to me, said the worse I treat it, the
better it will bloom. That's been true so far, but I think it is
adapting to Washington weather.

I doubt anything would
have grown anyway from the area of dieback, but if Paghat doesn't
chime in, a good nursery around your area maybe the best
answer. What kind of wisteria are you growing?

Actually, I think I'll do that. I have no idea what kind it is.
There's more than one kind, lol? Um, the white kind? }
Someone shoot me... please.

~Lilly

Lilly wrote:

I was hoping some of you might have some wisdom for me. I've had a
white wisteria for about 3 years now, it's always been a good bloomer.
We've lived a year in Washington State now (I've been told we're still
zone 8 even though we're not on the Oly Pen anymore.), we used to live
in Calif. The wisteria came with us, and bloomed fine in both places.
Anyway, I've never pruned it because the fellow who gave it to me said
not to. Now I'm noticing that it has a lot more dead branches than it
used to and very little indication of buds/new growth. I'm wondering
if should I prune it? I'm a little worried now and I'm just not too
sure what I should do. Thanks for any ideas...
~Lilly

Wisteria need heavy and frequent pruning to produce lots of flowers.
Similar to many fruit trees, flowers are produces on spurs. PlantAmnesty
has some of the best pruning information available for this area - this
link should be a big help.
http://www.plantamnesty.org/pruning_...t_wisteria.htm
Right now is an ideal time to prune wisteria, but you will need to do
again several times during the summer - as Cass Turnbull said, "wisteria
is Latin for 'work'."

your climate zone - the majority of western WA is zone 8, specially
anywhere within 30 minutes of the Sound. Higher elevations (Issaquah
plateau, Cascade & Olympic foothills) are probably closer to a 7.

pam - gardengal

In article , Lilly wrote:

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 17:12:36 GMT, "Allegra"
wrote:

Hello Lilly,

Hey Lady! How you be?


I guess the one to answer here is Paghat, since she is likely to know
about this quasi "climate" question, but when it gets cold some
of our wisterias (two) die here and there, as they do need renewal.

Paggers usually knows, good point.

Thanks for the double dose of faith in me, but my own wisteria is still
relatively young ten foot fountaining thing, so I've done only a little
pruning of it to date, & have too little expertise to do more than repeat
what I've gathered more from books than from experience. I think I'm
training my correctly but it's not yet large enough or often enough pruned
to reveal any fault if I've made any mistakes; eventually I want mine to
be growing downward from the top of the garage so I don't yet have the
effect I've planned in the long run. Lilly's transplanted one will
certainly need any sickly bits trimmed off, & one would expect the shock
of being dug up & transported to a new environment to result in some bits
dying. The chap who advised never to prune it sounds wacky, but there may
be conditions where it's proper to let them go wild, I dunno. What follows
below reposts my thoughts on this subject from several months back, & my
thinking so far hasn't changed:

If you do autumn or winter pruning, the wisteria will grow rampantly in
spring. But if you prune in summer, you can really control its size &
direction of growth. The longest rangiest new vines should be removed in
summer, plus any that seem to be "tired" from age or showing signs of
sickliness, take those out entirely or back to the point of healthy plant. A
lesser autumn pruning would be to cut back young scraggly shoots no less
than to half their length, to as short as only a half dozen leaf points,
as this will induce strong spur growth where the next year's flowers will
occur. Twice-a-year pruning is typical for wisteria which will otherwise
take over everything.

If you don't prune at all it'll still bloom all right next year, but each
year you fail to prune, it will bloom less & less, & be harder to train
when it reaches emergency status. You can also grotequely over-prune to
create standing shrubs instead of vines, or even to shape them into
tree-wisteria, but I'd prefer a slightly more rampant natural look. If
they can be trained up a wall they look best hanging down from above, & if it
seems aesthetic in the location, you can prune the lower portions
dramatically to keep an area clear nearer the ground for other flowers.

-paghat the ratgirl

I guess this is the way yours is letting you know that she is trying
to get into the Washington climate and perhaps - since some of
it appears to be dead - it wouldn't do any harm to cut it back to
where it looks green and sacrifice perhaps some bloom in order
to give it a chance to restore itself?


That's what I was hoping it was. Pruning is an art I'm just very good
at yet. The guy who gave it to me, said the worse I treat it, the
better it will bloom. That's been true so far, but I think it is
adapting to Washington weather.

I doubt anything would
have grown anyway from the area of dieback, but if Paghat doesn't
chime in, a good nursery around your area maybe the best
answer. What kind of wisteria are you growing?

Actually, I think I'll do that. I have no idea what kind it is.
There's more than one kind, lol? Um, the white kind? }
Someone shoot me... please.

~Lilly

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 18:29:18 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:


Thanks for the double dose of faith in me, but my own wisteria is still
relatively young ten foot fountaining thing, so I've done only a little
pruning of it to date, & have too little expertise to do more than repeat
what I've gathered more from books than from experience. I think I'm
training my correctly but it's not yet large enough or often enough pruned
to reveal any fault if I've made any mistakes; eventually I want mine to
be growing downward from the top of the garage so I don't yet have the
effect I've planned in the long run. Lilly's transplanted one will
certainly need any sickly bits trimmed off, & one would expect the shock
of being dug up & transported to a new environment to result in some bits
dying. The chap who advised never to prune it sounds wacky, but there may
be conditions where it's proper to let them go wild, I dunno. What follows
below reposts my thoughts on this subject from several months back, & my
thinking so far hasn't changed:

If you do autumn or winter pruning, the wisteria will grow rampantly in
spring. But if you prune in summer, you can really control its size &
direction of growth. The longest rangiest new vines should be removed in
summer, plus any that seem to be "tired" from age or showing signs of
sickliness, take those out entirely or back to the point of healthy plant. A
lesser autumn pruning would be to cut back young scraggly shoots no less
than to half their length, to as short as only a half dozen leaf points,
as this will induce strong spur growth where the next year's flowers will
occur. Twice-a-year pruning is typical for wisteria which will otherwise
take over everything.

If you don't prune at all it'll still bloom all right next year, but each
year you fail to prune, it will bloom less & less, & be harder to train
when it reaches emergency status. You can also grotequely over-prune to
create standing shrubs instead of vines, or even to shape them into
tree-wisteria, but I'd prefer a slightly more rampant natural look. If
they can be trained up a wall they look best hanging down from above, & if it
seems aesthetic in the location, you can prune the lower portions
dramatically to keep an area clear nearer the ground for other flowers.


Thanks Paggers, this is basically what Pam's link said as well. I
transported mine in a giant pot, the same pot it was in when the guy,
the whacky guy gave it to me, heh. I'm thinking of planting it in the
ground after I prune the beejeezuz out of it. Hopefully that will give
it some new life, even if it doesn't bloom for a year or 2 after.

(On a completely unrelated topic, did you catch the NGEO special, part
of the Taboo series, about sworn virgins in Albania? Amazing!)
~Lilly
Last night you were, unhinged.
You were like some desperate, howling demon.
You frightened me. .......... Do it again.

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 00:50:47 GMT, Pam wrote:


Wisteria need heavy and frequent pruning to produce lots of flowers.
Similar to many fruit trees, flowers are produces on spurs. PlantAmnesty
has some of the best pruning information available for this area - this
link should be a big help.
http://www.plantamnesty.org/pruning_...t_wisteria.htm
Right now is an ideal time to prune wisteria, but you will need to do
again several times during the summer - as Cass Turnbull said, "wisteria
is Latin for 'work'."

your climate zone - the majority of western WA is zone 8, specially
anywhere within 30 minutes of the Sound. Higher elevations (Issaquah
plateau, Cascade & Olympic foothills) are probably closer to a 7.


Damn! Thanks gal! We're in Snohomish, near Lake Stevens. A local
nursery said zone 8, but sometimes those folks give different
information according to which one of em you ask. }

Hey, by the way, I was reading something you wrote a while back about
blackberry canes... well they abound here as well, all the way down to
the creek. The husband says a goat will take care of that nicely, lol!

~Lilly


Last night you were, unhinged.
You were like some desperate, howling demon.
You frightened me. .......... Do it again.

Lilly wrote:

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 00:50:47 GMT, Pam wrote:

Wisteria need heavy and frequent pruning to produce lots of flowers.
Similar to many fruit trees, flowers are produces on spurs. PlantAmnesty
has some of the best pruning information available for this area - this
link should be a big help.
http://www.plantamnesty.org/pruning_...t_wisteria.htm
Right now is an ideal time to prune wisteria, but you will need to do
again several times during the summer - as Cass Turnbull said, "wisteria
is Latin for 'work'."

your climate zone - the majority of western WA is zone 8, specially
anywhere within 30 minutes of the Sound. Higher elevations (Issaquah
plateau, Cascade & Olympic foothills) are probably closer to a 7.

Damn! Thanks gal! We're in Snohomish, near Lake Stevens. A local
nursery said zone 8, but sometimes those folks give different
information according to which one of em you ask. }

Hey, by the way, I was reading something you wrote a while back about
blackberry canes... well they abound here as well, all the way down to
the creek. The husband says a goat will take care of that nicely, lol!

I'd love to have a goat - not for the blackberries, which are a pernicious,
if tasty menace - but they frown on that in the Shoreline area. Can't imagine
why......:-)

pam - gardengal

And since no one of us have mentioned this yet,
here is a story about the not-so-secret power
of wisteria;

When I was a little girl, about one hundred years
ago, my grandparent's house (btw Paghat, I truly
enjoyed reading about your grandparent's and your
aunt's garden but didn't want to ruin it by adding
even a comment) was one of those old Spanish houses,
with a central patio that had a wishing well in the
middle and the rooms were built all around the first
and the second floor around that central square.

From the second floor balcony that went all around
the perimeter hung from what to my memory now
seem were hundreds of pots-what I know now were
beautiful white, soft blue, pale pinks and lavender
true pelargoniums, with long streams of variegated
tiny leaf ivy, and I remember looking up as child and
always wondering why all those "butterflies" didn't fly
away. It just never occurred to me that those"butterflies"
had roots.

The entire second floor balcony was supported by this
gigantic, at least to a child's eyes, ornate and very elaborate
black iron pillars that extended from one column to the
next in very beautiful arches. In each of the four corners,
a wisteria grew.

And grew.

And grew.

One morning we got up to a horrible sound. One side
of the balcony, and I mean probably all 50 feet of it had
been literally pulled away by the wisteria and the iron
was found to be completely twisted under the weight of
the beast. The base of three out of the four supporting
columns were no longer under the big terra-cotta tiles
that were now shattered six deep. It was totally
incomprehensible to me then that just that beautiful plant
could had -literally- uprooted raw iron that had been there,
almost 2 feet deep for over 60 years! But it did, and all
those beautiful Talavera de la Reina pots that had been
so carefully kept for as many years, laid in shards among
the ruins.

Still, I plant wisterias. We have a very young, approximately
5 years old that I am training as an umbrella. She and I are
locked in a battle of wills. For the present, and I guess she
does it to give me the confidence to make a fool of myself
later on, I am winning. I have braided the three original
stems and like Paghat said, I have no idea why they don't
strangle each other. I guess if they wait long enough, they
always find better fish to fry, as in very old raw iron columns,
for instance.

I have planted ours next to the steps that go into the
upper deck, by the beautiful roses that grace that area,
tiny beauties such as Anne Marie de Montravel that grows
somehow blissfully ignorant of the bully next to her.
The roots of the wisteria seem to avoid finding the way to
the roses, as I found out this year, when I practiced something
an old Japanese gardener taught me a long time ago: every
two to three years take a spade and cut a circle about two
or three feet away from the trunk of your plant, particularly
if you plan on achieving what I am trying to achieve: plenty
of blooms and little branches. When I cut through, all there
was there were some real narrow roots, barely the size of
my ring finger (size 5) -

I know however that in the end she will prevail. Long after
I am gone from this planet she will carefully and silently pick
up the pylons that support the structure that is the big deck
and the future owners will wake up one morning to find
the beautiful finished stairs in a mess of broken cedar and
distorted steps, the rebar that holds the stone bed by the
wisteria twisted into Chinese sticks and I am sure I know
even now who is going to have the last laugh.

Until then, I will feed her More Bloom, give her all the
haircuts she dares me to, and hope to get up one fine
May morning to the delightful fragrance of our Wisteria
floribunda 'Violacea Plena' and pat myself on the back for
whatever foolish thought made me buy her in the first place,
knowing as much as I unhappily have found about her
rapacious tendencies.

Would I do it again? in a New York minute!

Allegra

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:52:37 GMT, Pam wrote:


I'd love to have a goat - not for the blackberries, which are a pernicious,
if tasty menace - but they frown on that in the Shoreline area. Can't imagine
why......:-)


LOL!
~Lilly
The most beautiful women in the world have a cat-like quality.
They slink, they purr; claws sheathed in silken fur. In the
privacy of their summer gardens, in the green depths of
forests, I believe they shed themselves of their attire, even to
their human flesh, and stretch their bodies to the sun and
their secret deity.
Storm Constantine, 'My Lady of the Hearth'

On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 08:46:18 GMT, "Allegra"
wrote:

And since no one of us have mentioned this yet,
here is a story about the not-so-secret power
of wisteria;

When I was a little girl, about one hundred years
ago, my grandparent's house (btw Paghat, I truly
enjoyed reading about your grandparent's and your
aunt's garden but didn't want to ruin it by adding
even a comment) was one of those old Spanish houses,
with a central patio that had a wishing well in the
middle and the rooms were built all around the first
and the second floor around that central square.

From the second floor balcony that went all around
the perimeter hung from what to my memory now
seem were hundreds of pots-what I know now were
beautiful white, soft blue, pale pinks and lavender
true pelargoniums, with long streams of variegated
tiny leaf ivy, and I remember looking up as child and
always wondering why all those "butterflies" didn't fly
away. It just never occurred to me that those"butterflies"
had roots.

The entire second floor balcony was supported by this
gigantic, at least to a child's eyes, ornate and very elaborate
black iron pillars that extended from one column to the
next in very beautiful arches. In each of the four corners,
a wisteria grew.

And grew.

And grew.

One morning we got up to a horrible sound. One side
of the balcony, and I mean probably all 50 feet of it had
been literally pulled away by the wisteria and the iron
was found to be completely twisted under the weight of
the beast. The base of three out of the four supporting
columns were no longer under the big terra-cotta tiles
that were now shattered six deep. It was totally
incomprehensible to me then that just that beautiful plant
could had -literally- uprooted raw iron that had been there,
almost 2 feet deep for over 60 years! But it did, and all
those beautiful Talavera de la Reina pots that had been
so carefully kept for as many years, laid in shards among
the ruins.

Still, I plant wisterias. We have a very young, approximately
5 years old that I am training as an umbrella. She and I are
locked in a battle of wills. For the present, and I guess she
does it to give me the confidence to make a fool of myself
later on, I am winning. I have braided the three original
stems and like Paghat said, I have no idea why they don't
strangle each other. I guess if they wait long enough, they
always find better fish to fry, as in very old raw iron columns,
for instance.

I have planted ours next to the steps that go into the
upper deck, by the beautiful roses that grace that area,
tiny beauties such as Anne Marie de Montravel that grows
somehow blissfully ignorant of the bully next to her.
The roots of the wisteria seem to avoid finding the way to
the roses, as I found out this year, when I practiced something
an old Japanese gardener taught me a long time ago: every
two to three years take a spade and cut a circle about two
or three feet away from the trunk of your plant, particularly
if you plan on achieving what I am trying to achieve: plenty
of blooms and little branches. When I cut through, all there
was there were some real narrow roots, barely the size of
my ring finger (size 5) -

I know however that in the end she will prevail. Long after
I am gone from this planet she will carefully and silently pick
up the pylons that support the structure that is the big deck
and the future owners will wake up one morning to find
the beautiful finished stairs in a mess of broken cedar and
distorted steps, the rebar that holds the stone bed by the
wisteria twisted into Chinese sticks and I am sure I know
even now who is going to have the last laugh.

Until then, I will feed her More Bloom, give her all the
haircuts she dares me to, and hope to get up one fine
May morning to the delightful fragrance of our Wisteria
floribunda 'Violacea Plena' and pat myself on the back for
whatever foolish thought made me buy her in the first place,
knowing as much as I unhappily have found about her
rapacious tendencies.

Would I do it again? in a New York minute!

What a wonderful story! I was thinking of planting mine at the base of
an arbor my husband wants to build me. Don't think he could build one
strong enough though, after reading your story. Maybe the upstairs
balcony railings would be a better bet. They'd at least last my
lifetime, I figgers. }
~Lilly
The most beautiful women in the world have a cat-like quality.
They slink, they purr; claws sheathed in silken fur. In the
privacy of their summer gardens, in the green depths of
forests, I believe they shed themselves of their attire, even to
their human flesh, and stretch their bodies to the sun and
their secret deity.
Storm Constantine, 'My Lady of the Hearth'