Visit our new neighborhood pages where you can send in photos, find quick information and news and join our message boards. Visit our new neighborhood pages where you can send in photos, find quick information and news and join our message boards. Question: The leaves on my muscadine grapevines are turning yellow with brown spots. What should I do? Answer: Grape foliage declines during late fall, so the leaf changes you have noticed are likely normal. Care is easy at this time of year because the plants need watering only when the surface inch of soil begins to dry to get them through the remaining fall and winter months. In late January or February, give the plants their yearly pruning. Individual plants of muscadine grapes are grown with four to six permanent shoots, often called arms. These are trained to a trellis or an arbor. At pruning time, all side shoots arising from these arms are cut back to form short-stem portions. Leave two or three buds on each to begin spring growth. Q: Most of the ligustrum trees I see are pruned to a rounded shape with a pointed top. Is there any reason the plants have to be pruned this way? I like a more natural look. A: Some residents like a lollipop-and-gumdrop look; others do their trimming because of tradition. But there is no reason to give ligustrums such a harsh pruning. In fact, they look great as natural small trees. Gardeners who like this free-growing tree look usually select one or more trunks to become the structure of the tree. Then, they allow side branches to develop much like any tree. Shoots can be removed as needed to keep an open appearance and allow movement below. The trees naturally develop a rounded top that might need occasional trimming to thin the growths and remove out-of-bounds shoots. Generally, the trees are carefree. Q: I see a faint coat of gray on my poinsettia leaves. Is it too late to cut them back? A: Perhaps it's best to pretend this gray is an early winter snow just in time for the holidays; it's way too late to think of pruning. Most likely, this gray look is caused by a fungus called powdery mildew. If the snow or gray look is getting worse, you could apply a fungicide available from your local garden center. Most gardeners would ignore this minor leaf blemish and enjoy their bright-colored poinsettia bracts. Q: We recently bought a house with a bermudagrass lawn. It had lots of weeds, which I hand pulled, and now there are a few brown spots. What care and watering does this lawn need to look attractive? A: Bermuda makes a nice lawn, but this bright-green, foot-tickling grass definitely requires the most maintenance of all turf types to remain attractive. When put on a minimal maintenance program of limited watering and feeding, it would be a survivor, but it's going to turn brown during the dry times. Most gardeners usually want a green lawn, and this takes twice-a-week waterings and feedings about every other month during warmer weather. With this type of care, most of the brown spots should regreen and fill in with good turf. Weed control is normally quite easy with bermudagrass lawns. Most garden centers have products that remove about every weed that competes with this grass. Contact a local University of Florida Extension office to obtain bulletins to help you better care for a bermuda lawn. Tom MacCubbin is an urban horticulturist at the Orange County Cooperative Extension Service, a division of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida. Write to him at Orlando Sentinel, MP-240, P.O. Box 2833, Orlando, FL 32802. E-mail: TomMac1996@aol.com. Or blog with him at OrlandoSentinel.com/tomsdigs. Question: The leaves on my muscadine grapevines are turning yellow with brown spots. What should I do? Answer: Grape foliage declines during late fall, so the leaf changes you have noticed are likely normal. Care is easy at this time of year because the plants need watering only when the surface inch of soil begins to dry to get them through the remaining fall and winter months. In late January or February, give the plants their yearly pruning. Individual plants of muscadine grapes are grown with four to six permanent shoots, often called arms. These are trained to a trellis or an arbor. At pruning time, all side shoots arising from these arms are cut back to form short-stem portions. Leave two or three buds on each to begin spring growth. Q: Most of the ligustrum trees I see are pruned to a rounded shape with a pointed top. Is there any reason the plants have to be pruned this way? I like a more natural look. A: Some residents like a lollipop-and-gumdrop look; others do their trimming because of tradition. But there is no reason to give ligu
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