Why Is Vitex Called The Chaste or Chastity Tree? / How To Prune & Learn About A New Hardier Hybrid

Good afternoon and welcome to Over the Vast Nurseries. It's a beautiful sunny day in early spring, just the sort of day when it's great to be outside and to get some projects done in the garden. And especially if you come across some gorgeous plants like that little Viburnum I was just smelling, that is Viburnum Spice Island, a relatively new variety that is absolutely exquisite, short and compact and rounded, lots and lots of flowers and above all a fantastic fragrance, wonderful on a day like today when the fragrance is wafting on the breeze. And here in front of me is another new variety that we're excited about at the nursery too. This is a new variety of Vitex that was developed at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. This is Vitex Summertime Blues, and what's neat about this particular variety is that it is one zone hardier than all of the other Vitex that we've been hitherto able to grow. They're mostly zone 6 and warmer. What's neat about the Vitex is that this is a summer flowering shrub that is very tolerant of hot summer conditions. Once it's established it's very drought tolerant, it flowers at a time of year during the summertime when a lot of other plants are kind of wilting in the bright sunlight, not this one. This holds up remarkably well, it's got panicles of purplish-blue flowers that are very attractive to pollinating insects, to hummingbirds and butterflies, and it's really good in that it also can be grown without having to worry about deer bothering it and so on. So if you want to find out more about it, check out also on this website we have a video that explains in more detail more of the features of this variety, and if you haven't come across it before I would suggest that you take a look at it because I think that is something that certainly if you've got a sunny well-drained area is a plant that you'll probably want to think at least about growing. Now I know it doesn't look that great just now, but I promise you during the summertime it really is quite striking and very easy to grow, but there's a couple of things that you can do to it to really get the most out of it, and one of those things is to prune it now at this time of year in the early spring. You see this is kind of like a butterfly bush, it grows out and flowers on the current year's growth, and if you look here on the stems you'll see these are the remains of the old flowers from last year, and it made the growth from the base and then grew out and flowered on it, and that kind of gives a clue to the thing that you should do when you prune it now at this time of year. So like many other plants that grow and flower on the current year's growth, the more you cut it back the stronger it's going to grow out and the larger and more impressive the flowers are going to be, and this is really no exception. Now when I look at this plant here to prune it back the first thing I want to do is to get in here and cut back all of these little thin weak spindly growths here in the middle. Now there's some old leaves and other debris that is kind of collected here at the base over the winter time, and so it might be hard for you to see, but effectively what I'm doing is going in here and taking out all of this congested little thin spindly growth that's here in the inside, and if you come across any dead branches or anything like that that's in here, that there's one there that is dead and showing no life in it, so those you'll take out too. So basically what we're doing is just opening up the center of the plant here and then leaving it so that we're able to take a look at the framework, the main framework of branches. Now it might be a little difficult for you to see, but effectively I've taken out all of the little twiggy growth that was here, I've shortened back some of the small little shoots that are growing in towards the middle of the plant and that leaves me now with as you see this structure which as you see what I've done with these shoots is shorten them back taking about two-thirds the growth off and leaving a third here at the base. So here's the other half of the plant and I'm going to do exactly the same with that. Take a look at this shoot here, you'll see there's the flowers from last year and now here's nice strong vigorous growth and I'm going to take this shoot off just about here and that means that now what's going to happen is the buds are going to sprout from here and this is all going to grow off in this direction. This one I'm taking out there, there's an old flower head that comes out and this one over here on this shoot you'll see there's a set of buds just there and that's where I'm going to take that out as well. So now working my way around the plant we're nearly finished as you see there's really just a few shoots over here in this direction, so here's one again I'm going to take this back to here, there's a couple growing off out in this direction I'm going to chop those back to there and then here's one that as you see is almost growing along the ground, there's where it was pruned last year and all of this growth was made. So this time and already is starting I see to form buds here, so I'm going to take that back to there, little twiggy growth there, so that comes out and then finally the last two I'm going to shorten it back to there and this one here I'm going to take back to there and now as you see the plant is all set to produce lots of good strong vigorous growth. Now the only thing left to do now is just gather up the trimmings and also give it a treatment with some well-balanced formulated fertilizer. I like to use a slow release fertilizer because I only have to put it down once and it slowly releases fertilizer over the year. Now what's interesting about the Vitex is that as you see if you get some of your prunings they're very flexible, they were used in the ancient times in fact even middle ages I believe for basket work, for weaving wattle fences and basket work and so on. And there's also another interesting thing about Vitex and that revolves around the common name the chase tree or chastity plant. You see one of the parents of this hybrid is a species that comes from the Mediterranean and the ancient apothecaries there believed that it had peculiar sedative properties and it said that the matrons went out and cut leaves and shoots and used it as bedding to quell the desires of young maidens. Now I doubt very much whether it works or not but if you have a house full of daughters it might be worth investing in a few. This is David Wilson, enjoy your gardening it's good for us and it's very good for our environment too.