GARDENERS BRANCH OUT AT TREE TIME.

Byline: JANE GATES Gardening

SANTA CLARITA - Winter is a great time to work on trees. Buy trees, plant trees, prune trees, care for trees.

Deciduous trees are sleeping without their leaves and evergreens are meditating. It's vacation time for them and their sap is moving the slowest it will move during the year. That means that pruning and planting will have the least impact on their health and sap-bleeding will be less than at any other time of the year.

We are coming to the end of our short winter so this is the last chance to do tree work at the optimal time.

To shop for trees, do your research first. Decide the size and shape you want and choose your tree for its adult form. Sometimes trees look quite different when full-grown. You do not want to select a large growing plant for a small space and spend future years trying to butcher the poor tree into the size you want.

Consider watering. Know that trees such as cottonwoods, willows and white birches are beautiful and popular, but they are very thirsty - growing naturally by streams - and their roots are likely to invade water pipes if at all possible.

Deciduous trees will provide cool shade for your house in the hot summer yet let warming sun through bare branches in winter. Make sure you check the orientation of your trees to your house so the shade will fall the way you want.

There are a number of other issues you will want to think about. Do you want fall color? Flowers? Is it a messy tree? Are surface roots going to be a problem?

Although you don't want to work on muddy soil, soil that is somewhat moist from the rain will make the digging easier and the higher water table will keep roots moist as they begin to grow. That's another incentive to plant trees now.

Tough chaparral trees will require no additives to the soil. Make sure you don't plant them on or near lawns. Other trees will probably enjoy amendments. Dig a hole as large as possible to work in amendments. The hole needs to be at least 1 1/2 times the size of the root ball, but bigger is better.

Most trees in this area will need to be staked for the first one or two years. Our winds can be tough on young trees. Water slowly and deeply after planting to be sure the soil fills in around the roots. Watering the hole before planting helps moisture to penetrate deeply, encouraging new roots to head downward.

Major pruning should be done before trees begin to leaf out. Call in an arborist for the best advice or call in a reputable tree trimmer for larger, straightforward jobs. Dead branches should be removed along with damaged weak branches both for the health of the tree and for safety reasons. Proper pruning of young trees will save you a fortune in trying to correct problems once the tree grows large.