That sounds much better. Yes planting one 35 feet away from your neighbor's house is very generous and considerate. I would pick a different tree for planting only 13 feet from my deck, but I might simply be reacting to the last 12 or so years when my two Shumard trees have caused so much litter on the sidewalk, which runs along side them about 10 feet to the West of them. Of course a Shumard tree the size you are planting will not start causing such problems on your deck for a many years after planting. Lots of people would by then have sold the house, moved elsewhere, and let the then occupants deal with the litter problems. It will take about 15 or a few more years for the tree to do a good job shading your two story house, but it should only take a couple years for the tree to become well established and begin to fill out enough to begin offering some afternoon shadow type shading at least for the lower windows and patio. My Shumard Oaks, once established grew about 3 feet during each spring and fall growing seasons. They were planted B&B at the size of 4 inch diameter trunks. This was about 26 years ago, when I let the nursery man plant them for me only 25 feet from my house. They are now about 30 feet tall and would have developed lower branches, which have already been spreading into my house; that is, if we had not kept them pruned up during their pyramidal stages of growth. If I had it to do over again, due to the litter these trees create, I would choose a different type of tree to plant in front to shade my house and that close to my front sidewalks. The sad thing now is that they look terrible after suffering so much, 2007 or 8 (I forget which year's) spring, ice damage. In the back yard, my same age Scarlet oak tree did not loose any canopy structure from that almost 4 day period of freezing rain and drizzle. Now, it is about 40 feet tall and spreads about 26 feet across. An interesting point is that I planted this Scarlet tree from a one gallon black nursery pot. At that time the tree was only about 1 foot tall, and I planted it near the same time I planted those then, 4 inch trunked B & B; currently damaged Shumard oaks. I also have a 15 year old Shumard oak tree, which I first dug as sprout from an acorn under those first mentioned Shumard oaks. This young sprout has now grown to be an about 18 to 20 feet tall tree, and its canopy currently spreads only about 10-12 feet across. I have kept it pruned it to maintain a clean trunk in the lower 1/3rd of its main leader height. It is growing in the northeast side yard on my residential corner lot, and has amazed me at how much better it handled that icing event I mentioned above. Not a single branch broke off this shumard tree. Of course since it was produced by my Shumards, I do not know what other oaks cultivar genetics might have affected the production of this tree's originating acorn. The tree looks like a shumard by its growth pattern, bud, and leaf shape, but it still could be encountering ice damage resitance, benefits from the genetics of a different cultivar of oak cross pollinating with my shumard oaks that year.

This oak was growing on the grounds of a rest area on a high bluff very close to the Appalachicola River - the soil appeared to be dry and very well drained. I know what you mean about those orange acorns, jqpublic - the ones I pick up from what I've assumed are red oaks on my property are orange inside, orangy brown on the outside. The acorns under this oak were small and mostly plain brown with only a few of them showing orange on the cap side. I went outside and picked up leaves on my property from what I've assumed were southern red oaks and post oaks. I don't know if my red oaks are q. falcata or q. pagodifolia - the red oak leaves are on the left. The leaves on the Appalachicola oak didn't look the same, they were still green combined with some red, whereas my red oaks never have pretty color, just green or brown. Of course, this may have to do with the growing conditions. I'm beginning to think there are more hybrids out there than I realized, which is logical, since these oaks were all growing near other, different type oaks. I'll be planting up the acorns today - I'll probably be even more confused when they come up, so I'll just pick the most vigorous and/or interesting looking to plant. Sherry

Yes to Rhizo and more generally, yes to identifying "pests and diseases", if actually present, before reaching for a control product. And yes too to the notion that by October, all manner of insect and fungi have had their way with leaves-temporary organs that the tree will reproduce next growing season-and that any control measures are quite likely to be unnecessary at this time. My gosh, if we were to panic about every landscape plant that has leaf blemishes in October.........we'd be a bunch of spraying nincompoops. Stuff is all beat up in the fall-this is normal! Please, let's not be applying pest control products outside of the growing season! To leaves that will soon be sloughed off by the plant! But do the work of identifying, so you know if there is any legitimate practice you should be undertaking, like raking up and composting all the leaves you can, that sort of thing.

It's good to know that peeling bark is normal. I haven't observed that yet on this tree but I won't worry if it does start to do that. Regarding watering I've been watering it every day since planting. I couple days here I'll probably slow that down to every third day for a couple iterations and then go to a normal watering cycle of once a week. As of today there aren't any wilted are brown leaves so I guess it wasn't too shocked by all the root work I had to do. Regarding the mulch. I use planner shavings as mulch. They are inferior to normal large wood chunk mulch but are free and keep the ground moist. This planting I was running low on shavings and mixed in some shredded paper. I've read on line that paper shreds make a great mulch around trees. I find that it's not so great and tends mat down into a hard paper mache. So I mixed it in with the shavings and that seemed to work decently.