A third choice is to sow and put the pots outdoors now, either in a cold frame or someplace they are protected from foraging birds, rodents....or you can protect by putting a piece of screening or chicken wire over the pots. Fall sowing lets mother nature take care of the temperatures and at a natural progression - I've sown seeds for several things this month and have the pots in tiered carts on my deck. I top seed pots with a layer of grit or very fine aquarium gravel for those things that will take several months to germinate - discourages moss, algae. You could sow and leave indoors if you are sterilizing all your materials - sowing in potting soil indoors in an enclosed space can lead to some interesting fungal things growing on the soil surface when you are keeping them moist, and, you lose what could be some benefit of fluctuating day/night temperatures in conditioning your seeds.

no properly prune it out.. once it leafs.. you will not see the loss .. especially in regard to the last pic ... its been a heck of a couple weeks here in adrian mi ... this aint nothing compared to some of my damage ... with no insult to the root system .... there is no reason that it can not fill in any open spots.. by fall ... depending on what type of dogwood.. i would be more concerned with the multiple days near -20 .... than this rather minor pruning concern ... prune it properly.. and be done with it ... though i didnt think one usually doesnt think to REJUVENATION PRUNE a dogwood.. but the shape of yours would lend itself to pruning under this method... google that term for youtube and guidance ... do it right.. and forget about all these voodoo remedies ... you will spend hours and many dollars.. and most likely.. end up failing.. next time you have the next ice/heavy snow storm ... a $10 invest in a good pruning saw.. and cut that branch out.. as close to the ground as you can get down in there .. no trimming at height ... get in there .... good luck .. go blue or green at your discretion ... ken

Yes hit them again with oil now before they leaf out, but it is hard to get enough and the right concentration of oil on a large tree with a hose sprayer. Oil needs to coat all of the insect. Any time you treat scale with oil you will do some good, but the best kill time is when the crawlers hatch. This is different for each species so you need to know what scale you have and timing is critical. You actually may have killed more than you think though, scale stays on the plant a long time after it is dead. Bayer tree and shrub which is Merit can take a few weeks to get through the whole plant. It is very effective on most, but not all, scale species. Mites love Merit so watch your plants for Mites if you use Merit. Also it takes a lot of scale to kill large branches so don't rule out other causes like Dogwood Borer.

Gray Dogwoods sucker so much that they end up growing in a dense thicket. I think you could plant them 2 feet apart and be OK. In my fields the gray dogwoods stems are about 6 inches apart. I'd expect Elderberry to grow taller that Gray Dogwood and not sucker or spread as much or as rapidly. I would give the Elderberry some separation from the dogwood - don't plant a dogwood within three or four feet on either side of an Elderberry. One drawback to Gray Dogwood as a screen is that they are deciduous - in the winter they won't provide much screening. Same goes for Elderberry, which are even less effective as a winter screen because they have far fewer stems. I think you will see lots of birds eating the berries of both shrubs. Both shrubs will fruit much better in full sun than in shade. I have Gray Dogwood growing throughout the woods, but see little fruit on the shade-growing dogwoods. Same goes for Elderberry. Both need about half sun to grow much fruit. If you have lots of shade you should consider a different shrub. Mapleleaf viburnum (Viburnum acerfolium) would be a good choice, although it doesn't grow upright like Gray Dowood - it tends to sprawl.