Dayton "Dirt" - February 18, 2011

I’ve been very busy studying for my presentation on February 19th about Japanese Maples. I thought I knew a lot already but did I get an eye opener on what is available today as breeders have been very busy ones the past few years.

It used to be that the standard upright Japanese Maple variety ‘Bloodgood’ was the standard along with either the red or green foliaged lace leaf type maple. Now there are those with huge palmate leaves to extra small leaves giving the plant a fine texture and petite stature.

Plant forms from small and upright, large and upright, spreading, weeping shaped and so on provide endless possibilities of using these unique species and cultivars.

I remember my friend and mentor, John Ravenstein showing me his freshly rooted Bloodgood Japanese Maples by pulling a group of them out of the propagation bed filled with sand and telling me to “look at the roots!” I believe that Mr. Ravenstein, now deceased, was so skilled that he could put roots on a piece of firewood! His grafting skills were legendary also in that laceleaf types of Japanese Maples will readily root but they never grow without a graft onto a seedling root stock of acer palmatum.

I’ll discuss the uses of several cultivars in the landscapes as well as a power point program. Although the program will highlight several Japanese Maple cultivars that are suitable for northeast Ohio, it will emphasize only those that are readily or somewhat available on the market today.

Remember February 26th at the nursery is water conservation with Sandy Barbie.

Tom