Our Rose of Sharon bush has small brown seed pods at the ends of it's branches. Should I just leave them, or should I be trimming those off?
(Not sure its age, but I believe it's around 10 yrs.)
Ok, now I'm going to milk it and ask about my Japanese Red Maple! This may not be the right place to ask, but I thought I'd try here first.
(We bought this house last year and it has incredible gardens & trees/shrubs/bushes, but we're novices, thus the questions.)
The top foot, to foot-and-a-half of our JRM was barren all last year - no leaves! I can see that it looks like the same will happen again this year. These branches are a dead-looking grey-brown colour, whereas the rest of the tress has a nice healthy reddish-brown colour.
Should I cut these branches off at the point where they appear to have died? Or is there some other solution to this problem?
(I may be able to find a photo that shows the tree from last year, but that would take me a while.)
That is a fairly common occurance with most japanese maples. Kind of like mother nature doing a pruning job on your maple. The best thing to (like Grey said) is to prune off the dead tips. The new buds will break below and the tree will go from there.
I think I'll step back from it frequently to get some perspective and try to keep true to the current shape.
It really is a beautiful tree located beside our 2-level pond, which makes it somewhat of a focal point in that part of the yard. I'd hate to butcher the thing and have to wait years until it comes back, so I will take my time with it.
If I make out ok, I'll post some photos once the it's full of leaves.