Slugs and Salal: Vines

WISTERIA

There's something powerfully -- dare I say it -- lusty about gardening. This intimate contact with Mother Earth, source of life, implants itself in mind and spirit as a sense of overflowing vitality. I never feel more alive, more fully grounded and at peace with myself and the world than when I'm grubbing about in the garden, feeling the soil in my hands and nurturing plants.

There are certain plants that mirror the feeling of accelerated vitality that gardening brings. We can all probably think of lively specimens that appear to be chasing after life itself -- stretching, moving at an awesome pace so that one can almost hear cells multiplying with elongating shoots and unfurling new leaves. Ivy, anyone?

Then there is the wisteria, a fleet-footed vine that given a chance will stretch heavenward to challenge the blue of the sky, or open its woody arms to embrace an entire house.

The wisteria in the Japanese calendar represents the month of April, an apt time for celebrating this beautiful vine as we anticipate the first pendant, sweet-scented blooms in May.

April or early May is also a fine vine to consider planting, if you have a good spot for it.

Wisteria vines need a strong support structure.

Varieties

Japanese wisteria (W. floribunda) bears long, slender racemes of violet-blue flowers that open gradually from base to tip. There are white, pink, lavender and purple forms of this wisteria. Most commonly grown is Chinese wisteria (W. sinensis), with shorter flower clusters that open all at once. The usual color is violet-blue, though there is a white and a pink form. When shopping for a wisteria, beware of cheap plants. They may be seedlings, which take forever to bloom. Grafted or cutting-grown wisteria plants are the ones to buy for really good bloom as early as possible.

Choose planting location wisely

It's wise to give a little thought to the placing of a wisteria in the home landscape, for these are long-lived plants of great size. Though they can be trained as big shrubs, or single or multi-stemmed small weeping trees, by far the most common use for the wisteria is to grow it as a vine on a support such as a sturdy fence, arbor or trellis.

The idea of growing wisteria on a house wall is appealing. But unless you would consider it amusing to take up residence atop a ladder in an ongoing battle to extricate strong, twining shoots from roof shingles and drainpipes, I would discourage the idea.

An ideal wisteria site will be in full sun, where the ground drains speedily of excess moisture and the soil is deep and reasonably fertile. Since wisterias do best in slightly acidic soils, don't lime the area unless you know the soil there is highly acidic. An ideal companion for wisteria is laburnum (golden chain tree), a small tree that blooms at the same time as wisteria, with long clusters of yellow flowers.

Training the vine

To grow a wisteria as a vine is simply a matter first of training shoots while they are young to form the permanent branch framework to cover whatever support you have provided. This might be two or three parallel tiers of branches to cloth a fence, or it might be three main branches heading upwards in a fan shape to clothe the side and top of an arbor.

Once you have your framework establishing itself, regular pruning of side growth will hasten and encourage excellent flowering as it keeps the vine from becoming a tangle of coiling growth. Two pruning operations a year will do it. Both are simple. In July, shorten new growth on side shoots so that just four or five leaf stems remain. In February, reduce these same shoots to two or three buds. This system of regularly cutting back new growth builds flowering spurs for good bloom.

If you wish to train a plant as a tree, remove all but one main stem and secure it to a stake. Trim out the trunk's growing tip once it reaches the height where you want the tree's head to form. Rub off shoots that appear along the trunk below the head, and keep the branches shortened to maintain a compact spreading top.

Culture and flowering

It is normal for a wisteria to take a few years to flower. As the plants develop, feed and water them well. But once they begin to bloom reduce both fertilizer and water and grow the plants on the lean side. I give my wisteria a scant handful of a balanced, natural-source fertilizer topped with a compost mulch layer after pruning in late winter.

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