Q: Do rose bushes need to be trimmed down every year? If not, how often and what time of year? – Lane County A: Roses ( ) are grown for their beautiful and fragrant flowers. The flowers come in white and a colorful pallet of warm colors. They come in a variety of sizes, hybrid tea, floribunda, climbers and miniature roses, which dictates how each is pruned. Roses should be pruned annually in the spring after the last hard frost. Start by removing any canes that appear to be dead, diseased or dying. Then choose the best three to six canes (stems coming up from the bottom) from last year’s growth to keep and remove any other canes. The canes you choose to keep will now need to be pruned. How you prune them depends on your what type of rose you have. The best way to prune what remains can be best found and explained in the publication, . – Jan Gano, OSU Exension Master Gardener Q: Landscapers installed a daily drip irrigation system that seems to have damaged or killed our smallish (6-foot) madrone that had been healthy. The leaves all browned and dropped off and the tips of branches have blackened and shriveled. Lower down the trunk looks healthy. Do I prune back? Is the tree dead? – Jackson County A: Over watering is the most common cause of death of a lot of plants. Madrone ( ) is a native plant and does not need daily watering. There is also a disease that sets in, root rot, that is caused by over-watering. This disease is marked by dying leaves and limbs, much as you have described. I don’t think pruning will help at this point. You can try it, but the tree is badly damaged and unless the ground can be “de-saturated” it will not survive. I think you will find that most of us do overwater, not meaning to, but not really aware of how much we are putting into the ground. Especially with native plants, we need to let our natural rainfall be the source of most of the water and we can step in only when drought threatens to harm the plant. – Marjorie Neal, OSU Extension Master Gardener Q: On February 10 we sprayed our two espaliered apple trees with copper (the first spray of fall/winter). What product do you recommend for the next spray – or two – and how long should we wait before we do the next spray? The trees are about 5 years old. – Multnomah County A: The concerns most common for home garden apples are a fungus called apple scab and two insects, the codling moth and the apple maggot, both of which lay eggs with larva that munch through the apple flesh. Scab is largely cosmetic (a gnarly skin) but doesn’t keep you from peeling and eating the apple. Some varieties are quite resistant, some mildly resistant and some quite susceptible. Since it is a disease accelerated by extensive wet weather in the spring, it will be worse some years and not a problem in others. Sulfur-based sprays or some synthetic fungicides used before bloom and after fruit is set will help. Follow the mixing and time of use instructions on the labels. Codling moth females emerge in waves starting generally a month after full bloom (she wants an apple there to lay her eggs and make her offspring happy) with emergence starting about mid-May through early September. The biological material, spinosad, is quite effective on both the codling moth and the apple maggot (which shows up in late June). So, sprays with the spinosad (there are several trade names in the garden centers – look at the “active ingredient portion of the label) about every three weeks will decrease the damage but probably won’t eliminate it completely. If you have a low fruit set like many had last spring, more of the apples will be infested since there are fewer choices for the female to pick from. Again, read and follow all use directions on the label. An alternative to spinosad is a clay powder sold as . It works fairly well and is easily washed off. But spray coverage on the fruit needs to be pretty good. – Chip Bubl, OSU Extension horticulturist Q: Do you have advice and recommendations on dividing and moving a tree peony that is 20-30 years old, 5-6 feet tall by 3-4 feet in diameter and starting to bud. – Clackamas County A: Now is definitely not the time and in fact, if you can wait until late fall you will have a better chance of success. Peonies don’t like to be transplanted, so I’m assuming you have a pretty strong reason for needing to move it. Tree peonies are more like shrubs than herbaceous plants, so I’ll send you a explaining the basics of transplanting. In short, in October or November dig a hole where you want the plant to go and make sure it is 12-18 inches deep and half again as wide as the root ball you take up with the peony. Put water in the hole and let it absorb away before you transplant. The graft, or place where the stem comes out of the tuberous roots, should be 6 inches below the soil level or try to match the depth where you are taking it out of the soil. Don’t add soil or fertilize but tamp the soil you took out of the hole back down around the plant. If the stem is tall, you might want a stake to support the plant until it gets re-established. – Rhonda Frick-Wright, OSU Extension Master Gardener Q: We found a ton of little seeds on our deck under a tree where birds like to perch. The seeds didn’t come from the tree, and in the over 20 years we’ve lived in our house, we’ve never seen them. They’re small and pearlescent, with a papery coating. They range in size from pea to grain of rice and are in shades of white and pink. I’ve searched and asked everyone I can think of, and no one can identify them. I cut one open and they’re dry and have the texture of the inside of a nut. – Lane County A: They are most likely seeds of , or English ivy, which is a very common invasive weed here and, unfortunately, still a common landscape plant. They could possibly be from a different type of ivy, but is the most common. When the plant matures and flowers, birds eat the fruits, then sit in trees and poop out the seeds. This is what spreads them into wild areas (and your deck). After going through the bird’s digestive system, the seeds come out looking like pink and white pearls. Here’s an that shows this clearly. – Signe Danler, OSU Extension online horticulture instructor.