Yucca Yucca Yucca
Get too close to a Yucca and you get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, actually a sharp sword-like leaf end. It’s actually a bigger and more serious hazard than I make it sound. Yucca leaves are about eighteen inches long and spring forth in every direction from the end of the branch. They actually form a sort of ball of green leaves about three feet in diameter. A yucca tree has several varieties, but mine are technically Yucca Aloifolia and they are native to this sort of tropical, but dry environment. They are perhaps our favorite succulent because they grow like trees and when properly pruned they are very handsome plants for framing our garden scenes. We have two large picture windows, one in the kitchen and one in the living room that point out at the garden in the front of the house. In some ways they are the most pleasing views we have because they look out on large boulders and a wide variety of succulents and cacti of all sorts. It so happens that both windows are framed by large Yucca trees that have been heavily pruned to create a sort of Yucca sculpture. Both trees have been pruned twice in the nine years I have owned this house and they are far nicer to look at than the more wild-growing Yuccas in the back of the property.
Recently I have written about the fact that I have taken on pruning the back Yuccas myself. I would prefer to have our gardener do it, but the one time I asked for that to be done, it resulted in a light pruning that didn’t sufficiently satisfy me in the way it made the trees look. I’m not really in tight with my gardening crew lately due to some changing roster due to illness on their part. So, I feel more at loose ends as I await the finishing of the deck, so I’ve decided to tackle the job myself. I have one large Yucca tree at each back corner of the house and then several smaller Yuccas scattered about (not to mention the three cuttings] I recently planted after pruning the first of the back Yuccas).
Today I went after the larger of the two back Yuccas on the South side of the house. My pruning technique is largely self-taught with the help of You-Tube. My general sense is that succulents are hard to harm and they fix themselves very easily and quickly. Time will tell if my assumptions are correct. The approach I have decided to use is to cut off all low branches first. This is easier said than done. Remember those sword-like leaves with their rapier points? The ones that point in every direction? Well, the first challenge is deciding what direction to approach the Yucca. The first thing I think of is Jackie Gleason and Art Carney in The Honeymooners when Ralph is trying to learn to play golf and Norton is trying to help him. The book says to begin by addressing the ball, so Norton says, “Hello, Ball”
My way of addressing the Yucca (after saying hello) is to find a path into the lower branches that is least likely to poke me in the eye. I then try to hold back the most offending leaves, but that never seems good enough so I take the harsh approach of snipping off those pointed directly at my face. I know from experience that I should never get too confident as those leaves come at you from nowhere when you least expect it. Anyway, I go in with my tree saw and start with the lowest branches. The good news is that you can count the low branches on one hand and there is nothing tricky about knowing the directionality of a Yucca branch. Live Oaks and Bougainvillea trees are far trickier in that regard, but the Yucca, as prickly as it is, is straightforward. The branches of a succulent are more tuberous than woody, so they saw off pretty easily and quickly. But then you have to get in there and drag that branch out of the tree to be dealt with later.
After doing that half a dozen times you find yourself looking at a leggy tree (the look I am going for) that is already starting to resemble the properly pruned Yuccas in the front. Sometimes these Yucca trees have multiple heads off of one branch. That is a toss-up call as to whether you want to prune down to a single head or leave several. I find that it is mostly a function of how tired and poked I am feeling. But one thing must absolutely be done. These Yuccas, like most succulents keep growing new leaves and leave the older leaves lower down on the stalk to eventually shrivel and die. This happens on agaves and aloes as well and I am just anal compulsive enough to want to take off all the dying leaves at the base of the stems. These succulents and even palm trees can survive just fine if you leave all the dead leaf material where it lays. In fact, that’s how you tell a succulent in the wild versus one in a cultivated garden.
Based on what I observe, I get the feeling that the leaf bloom that sprouts the seed pod stalk is the one which will be first deprived of its essence and shrivel and die. Hardly seems fair but that’s an issue for Mother Nature. As for me, you shrivel and die and I prune you off. So each of these Yucca stems have a good number of dead and brown leaves on the bottom of the leaf bloom and they dry and harden in the case of Yuccas. In fact, they become serious weapons that need to be pruned with care. If you start from the lowest one you can just yank down and they pull off quite cleanly at the base of the stem, but that gets rather tiring and tedious, so I use a garden knife and just trim away until I have a nice clean ball of leaves with no dead matter at its base. Its a clean and tidy look that lasts for 6 months to a year until more dead leaves accumulate that need pruning.
The last thing is disposing of the Yucca branches. Today’s trimming has yielded perhaps a dozen branches and while I may plant one or two, I really just want to dispose of the plant matter. I suppose I could haul them over to the cliff, but I prefer the rigor of cutting up my prunings and putting them in one of my four green organic waste bins for pick-up on Thursdays. I somehow sense that that way they go to an Edco compost pile in the sky somewhere to get turned into mulch and then sold back to chumps like me. I have forsaken the notion of buying a wood chipper that could mulch them myself, so instead I have to find a technique for cutting them up. With Yuccas, so long as you start at the bottom of the stem and work your way up, its not so hard to do. I use that garden knife and make short business of it leaving me a pile of relatively harmless sword leaves and pulpy stems.
It actually is a good upper body workout (at least for a non-gym guy like me) to cut up these cuttings. I did two of the stems today and have left the rest for tomorrow. There is little sense in pushing myself as I will just wind up needing to find something else to prune or fix to keep myself busy in between my work assignments. A nice warm hot tub soak letter and I’m good as new, ready to go back at the Yucca Yucca Yucca tomorrow for my second bout of cuttings cutting. When I feel braver, I will attack the big aloe plant that is menacingly breaking through its big pot. Aloe leaves are about 10X more dangerous than Yucca leaves, so I need to steel my resolve to mount that attack.