get inside it.. and look up .... and you will see yearly whorls of growth .. one whorl per year ... you will probably see.. that the inside looks like a ladder... perhaps 1 to 3 feet apart ... count those.. and you will be in the ballpark ... needle shed is normal ... as long as its interior older needles ... and that is why in a spruce forest.. the earth is carpeted with needles .... its a great.. natural.. FREE mulch ... i hope you arent raking them up all the time ... the cones ... are supposed to fall off ... and i would not be surprised.. if you said nothing grows under it ...and that is also normal ... it is a super competitor ... at this point in life .... i dont know.. how happy i would be about an 80 foot tree.. 10 feet from my house ... ken

spedigrees: Limestone varies in magnesium content. If you go to your local agricultural store--I am not sure what you have up there--and ask for “high mag limestone“--crushed or pulverized--they should be able to direct you. The analysis is always posted on the bag. Dolomitic limestone is generally “high-mag,” but perhaps other types of limestone have a high magnesium content. Our soils here in the northern Shenandoah Valley are very high in magnesium, and high mag limestone underlies a good portion of our soils, and high mag limestone is readily available. And, almost all the NS in this area look very nice, in spite of our hot, dry climate. As for soil acidity--that should not be a problem for Norway spruce, unless the soil is extremely acidic, maybe in the low 4’s. At my timberland, where the soils are a bit below 5, Norway spruce does very well. I am not sure what an optimum pH would be, and it would probably vary with soil type. Maybe somewhere in the 5.5 range is "safe." As for magnesium for Norway spruce--this has been fairly well documented. I titled my original post “a hypothesis,” but there is substantial evidence. A site factors study done at SUNY Syracuse some years ago now, noted that “at least 75 kg per hectare” is needed for good NS growth. Studies in Europe, where there has been extensive decline in NS forests, has shown that the acid rain causes a reduction in the availability of magnesium, and supplementing magnesium often solves the problem. And, I have made some personal observations--not scientific, and without all the facts--that magnesium supplementation can make a dramatic difference. But, the main effect of magnesium may not be in height growth, but in the fullness, density, and lushness of the foliage. I have seen many poor looking, thin foliaged NS trees growing reasonably fast in height. Also, the thin foliage on some Norway spruce trees has causes other than a lack of an optimum supply of magnesium. And, I know, some of that is genetic, and not correctable. As for your experiment: Yes, 5 years should be long enough to show some results, but no sooner. The limestone has to dissolve into the soil, get down to the roots, and, because NS hold their needles for several years, the "thickening" of the foliage may not be vis1ble for several years. BUT, and this is a big "but," the effect may not really show up on very young trees. It may help the growth rate, but as for foliage density, that is never really noticeable until trees are somewhat older and larger--maybe not until they are 20 feet tall or more will any difference be really clear. As for the growth rate: white pine usually starts growing faster than NS. How old are your trees? How tall? NS trees don't begin to grow fast until they are about 4.5 feet high, and that could be only after 6 to 8 years. At that point, they should "take off." On the best soils, and in the right climate, an average of 28 inches is possible, with some years the new shoots elongating up to 4 feet or more. But growth averaging 20 to 24 inches is good for many sites. Norway spruce and white pine, assuming equally good strains, should grow equally well over the first 50 years. The white pine up to about 18 years should outgrow the NS, but after that NS should catch up a bit. After 50 years NS should outgrow the white pine for some years. SUNY Syracuse did a growth curves study for NS, and found that for the first 60 years--after the trees reach 4.5 feet in height, there is no "curve" as such, but a straight line. White pine growth curves bend sharply over to the right after the first 18 years or so, and at 50 years the growth averages about 1 foot, while at the same age, NS trees can still be growing 28 inches per year. But this rate does begin to decline not too long after the 60-year mark. On the best sites both should eventually make 150 feet or more in forest stands. Open grown NS should make 120 feet or more on better sites. As for the blue spruce and magnesium, I really don't know. Tom may be right about this. --spruce

Resin: Yes, I thought the larger coned spruce might be from a southeastern European origin. What brought this to mind now is I just ordered 50 seedlings from the Virginia State nursery that I am pretty sure are from a Romanian seed source. I am sorry--I am at my Virginia place now, and the cones are up at my timberland place, so I can't measure now. But they are very long--I am guessing, but I am almost sure they would be longer than 16 cm, and maybe longer than 18 cm. When I get back up there--I hope in a week or so, I will measure and get back to you. Actually, the longest cones I have found are from a tree--just one tree--on my own timberland. But these very long cones don't look like the ones from the stand at Glady in other respects. Oh, another characteristic of the cones I forgot to mention before is that the ends of the scales have a tendency to curve outward, something I don't usually see, or see so prominently, in cones from other sources. Another question/issue that interests me: I notice that trees in some plantations have more diversity than others. In some stands most of the trees are reasonably similar to each other. There is always some diversity in a variety of characteristics. But in some other stands the trees often are very, very different from each other in their appearance. Probably the most notable example of this that I know is one of the stands on my own timberland, where I almost never see two trees growing next to each other that look very much alike at all. And there are more than just two or three "types" of variation--the differences in growth and appearance are "all over the place" so to speak. I think this is wonderful, but I also wonder if that tendency towards so much diversity can be an indicator of seed source. Are there some areas of Europe where the Norway spruce trees show more diversity than others? Of course, one possibility is that my stand came from more than one seed source, but from what I know about how nurseries grow seedlings and and seed companies collect and sell seed, that seems unlikely. Of course one part of a plantation could be from one source, and another part from another source, but in my stand, the diversity is really all mixed together--there is no one part where trees have more of any one characteristic than another. --Spruce

winter caused the browning... winter .. regardless of how much snow you see ... is the driest time of year... because it is all bound up in the snow and ice ... plus add on the blistering FREEZE DRYING effect of winter wind ... and the constant heating and cooling of the needles when the sun actually does appear on a 3 degree day ... second .... imagine your are some minimum wage stock boy .. and you have to offload 5000 trees off the truck .. look close at your first one.. and tell me.. or yourself.. doesnt it look like all the damage is in one place where some schmuck grabbed the tree and tossed it off the truck ... regardless.. the buds look fine.. it is winter damage made worse by transplant ... there is nothing to do.. other than wait until it buds out ... as for the second ones.. many juniper have transitory coloration all winter long ... but again.... there is nothing to do but wait and see .. but you would have been better off planting them back in the ground .. instead of the pots all winter.... even if you dug them back up this spring.. they would have handled winter better in mother earth .. all the wind/sun/snow issues .. etc .. are multiplied because normally.. roots are protected in the earth.. leaving them above ground complicates the whole thing ... please report back in late spring.. and let us know.. good luck ken