"And those things are like cement now." Yep, they are basically Cement! Especially if you have clay! My now deceased neighbor hired someone with a tractor mounted tiller to deep till his garden years ago. The soil was too wet when the hired hand tilled it. He was still cussing about the rock hard mud balls the summer before he died. 5 years after the tilling! If it has rained since the last time I have been in my garden, I will not even step on it without grabbing a handful of dirt and doing the ball up and drop test. My Daddy taught me that! He was an old time farmer, raised on a really big farm. Their food and all of their income came from the farm. They had to know when and what to do or starve.

Yes, it's difficult to see exactly what the frost-crisped foliage (?) is. I can't tell what's happening under the pen, but the branches above the pen are all on the same plane, so my mind keeps insisting "Fern! Fern!" Anyone know any ferns (or anything else) with cute 3-toed-footprint leaflets?

Thank you all! I was in a dilemma about what to do with all those seedlings. Fledgling: Thanks for this information. It's always good to find trees that can take salt. You know, the first time I heard about Hairstreaks was in this forum - I think in a discussion between Sherry and Sam. Living in South Dakota, how did you learn so much about them? That photo was striking. Sherry: I know you have a couple of these trees. I appreciate your information about the tree and the hairstreaks. But we can't have you DIE on us. Ken: You are a treat! I've already taken your advice with 100 bald cypress seedlings that arrived two weeks early. You are far more experienced with Roundup but we were having gusts of 55 mph. Trying to stay upright while also spraying a specific area begins to wear you out. I knew the winds would drop within 24 hours. After I threw in the towel with roundup, a friend and I went for a 4 mile walk ... jog ... run ... stagger (we are training for a 10K). That was hard but not as hard as trying to Roundup in the cold and wind. I know, we don't really know about cold and wind down here. That's enough for me! Sam: The NC Forestry people called today. They said "keep the seedlings." I'll contact the Meadowview Research Station tomorrow, see if they can take the extras. I'd prefer to do that. Treeguy, I really appreciate your looking up this information. I had a hard time accepting the info from the VA Forestry site but who am I to argue? I misunderstood, this happens all the time. I Googled and found some wonderful papers, research, etc about the AWC but nothing about how to plant or space them. Thanks again! Pam

Tom: Let me give you a few more of my thoughts/observations about growing Norway spruce stands. As for provenance/variability. In addition to the general differences in the adaptation of various strains/provenances to different parts of the country, another thing I have observed in the 15 or so substantial NS stands I have seen and collected seed from in the nearby MD, WV, VA, and PA area, there is also a distinct variation in the amount of variability from tree to tree in each stand. In some stands, the trees look more like each other than in others. As luck would have it, in my own two older stands I see more variation than I have seen in any of the others I have visited--I have no idea why this should be so. The trees were planted between 1962 and 1966. But the variation is such that I can sit now and picture in my mind dozens and dozens of individual trees and the color and weeping character of their foliage, branching angles, bark color. I have quite a few special favorites. This may seem strange, but you have to understand that in addition to walking through my NS stands very often, I have pruned each individual tree in several phases up to at least 25 feet, and in some cases well over 30 feet. Anyway, one of the things I especially like about NS is this variability--with the possible exception of red maple, I have never seen another species of tree like it. For me, the effect in a forest stand of NS is glorious. Next, if you plant 6 X 6, or even 8 X 8, in about 12 to 15 years what you will have is a really dense "thicket" of NS trunks and branches that you will not be able to walk through. If at that point you want to thin and prune, you will need loping shears just to work your way into the stand, unless you have long arms, a good pruning saw, and dont mind getting scratched. I would recommend not doing anything for about 30 years, and then if you prune and thin, do it yourself by hand and leave all the wood to compost the soil and be taken up by the remaining trees. But if for aesthetic reasons you want to do some early pruning and thinning, that can do no harm. But for the long term magnificence of the forest, you dont really need to do anything. Norway spruce trees express dominance as well or better than any conifer I know. A couple years ago I called Professor Edwin White at SUNY Syracuse with a few questions that followed up on the studies he directed a few years before, and in the conversation I marveled about the stand at Glady, WV, which I had visited again shortly before--marveled at the strength and beauty of the trees that had continued to express dominance since I first saw the stand almost 20 years before. And he said he was not surprised that I was so impressed, and that if one wants to have the most magnificent stand of NS, and white pine for that matter, there was no need to do any thinning (or pruning) at all. He emphasized that both species expressed dominance over the long run very efficiently. My own observations make me think that NS is even better than white pine in this regard, but I dont have any data--just my informal observations--to back that up. One of the studies that Professor White directed was a site factors study. I will look that up for you and give you the reference--it was published in the SAF Northern Journal of Applied Forestry. If you are near the U of WI you can find it there (they do have a school of forestry?), but if you call SUNY Syracuse I would guess they would send you a copy. I am not sure how useful this would be to you in selecting a site for your planting, but I found the study fascinating. It is an observational rather than an experimental study, so it is not easy to understand exactly what it all means in practical silvicultural terms. But I can suggest that NS will grow well in soils with a pH above 4.8, and maybe 4.4 or a bit lower, but pH above 5 with some good amount of magnesium is probably best. I have soils in the 4.8 range and I experimented by broadcasting some high mag crushed limestone around a few groups of trees. No dramatic results, but perhaps some improvement--the kind of measurements really needed to determine exactly what the effects have been, were too difficult for me to do with any accuracy. One surprising finding of the study was that slope position and aspect were apparently unrelated to NS growth. For many species the lower east and north facing slopes are best. When I remarked about this to Professor White, he said that since I am so much further south, that may not be true for NS grown here. Anyway--interesting! Well, if I can think of anything else, I will come back and post it. In the meantime I will look up the site factors study and give the specific reference. Oh, I just thought--about larch. There is a professor at SUNY Syracuse who has dome some work with larch--I cant remember his name now, and he told me that larch does best where the soil is fairly deep--he gave me a number like an "A" and "B" horizon (or rooting zone) of at least 18 inches, or something like that. But then he added that if growing on a slope they can do well with less soil depth. I dont know if you have any slopes on your new land. Anyway, for what its worth --Spruce