Midwinter Fire Dogwood

After back filling and lightly compacting the 50/50 mix of existing soil and compost give the Cornus Midwinter Dogwood a good, deep watering. This is not to be rushed. Most of the water you put on the plant at first will run away from the plant until the soil is soaked. A general rule of thumb is to count to 5 for every one gallon of pot size. For example, a one gallon pot would be watered until you count to 5; a three gallon pot would be 15; and so on. Check the plant daily for the first week or so and then every other day there after. Water using the counting method for the first few weeks. Gator bag Jr. can be used to help aid in this process and also provide plants with a good soaking due to the slow release of the water into the root-zone of the plant. Soaker Hoses can also be used to water when planting a long hedge.

Feeding your plants is probably the single most forgotten part of growing healthy long lasting plants. We recommend feeding your Red-Twig Midwinter Fire Dogwood flowering shrub in the very early spring and again in mid fall after all new growth has hardened off. Bio-tone starter fertilizer is the best product to use at the time of planting. Midwinter Fire Red-Twig Dogwoods tend to use more nitrogen than some other plant families. Our ideal fertilizer schedule for you to use is as follows.

Do an early spring fertilizer with a product such as Espoma Tree-tone or Plant-tone at the recommended rate to give the plant a boost of nitrogen that will be needed for healthy, abundant foliage. Follow this up with an early summer application of Espoma Holly-Tone to provide the necessary nutrients and raise the acid level in the soil, which Midwinter Fire Dogwoods favor. Espoma products are easy to use. Just sprinkle around the base of the plant and water it in. Be careful with products such as miracle-grow as these products can burn newly planted plants when not used at the recommended rates. Slow-release fertilizer can help prevent rapid sucker growth that is vulnerable to diseases and insects.

We highly recommend that you mulch your Midwinter Fire Shrubs with either a ground hardwood mulch or a ground cypress mulch depending on your local availability. Any type of mulch will do, but cypress or hardwood mulch will be of a higher quality and provide better nutrition overall as they breakdown. Mulching helps to keep weeds away that will compete with your new investment for water and nutrients. A 2 to 3-inch layer of mulch is sufficient, but remember to take care not to cover any part of the stem of the plant with mulch. It's better to leave a one-inch gap of space between the mulch and the stem or trunk of the plant.

Maintenance of Dogwoods is minimal once established. There are two schools of thought for pruning to enhance the red coloration of the stems. The first method of pruning is to remove 1/3 of the shrub each spring to eliminate the oldest branches as it is the newer stems that display the best coloration. The next method involves rejuvenating the entire shrub every 3 years or so by removing all of the branches to within 8″ of the ground. The flush of growth that ensues will be a blazing fiery red… of course you won’t really see it until the following fall when the leaves drop, but you will be rewarded with a beautiful show. Either method is fine and occasionally it's okay to cut the plant a little harder than you normally would most shrubs. Cornus Midwinter Fire Shrubs are a plants that thrive on abuse.