Yes, to lime or not, or how much to lime, you really need a systemic evaluation of your environment, especially the plants you grow, the water and fertilizer you use. But I think it's a good idea for the bagged soil (most are limed to be 6.5 based on my own test) to be limed, given that most fertilizers are most available to plants in the PH range of 6 to 6.7. They have to accommodate for average gardeners and most plants, most plants do well in this range, even gardenias and camellias. But Gardenia thrives better at the stronger acid side, say 5.7 or even 5.5, some avid gardeners at south China, they use solely coarse absorbent sand, pine bark, peat moss and pine tree needle compost to make the container medium, which is on the stronger acid side. The gardenia and Camellias are flourishing. They use only rain water and composted soy bean meal tea as the fertilizer. The only way you can be sure is to investigate an accurate PH and EC meter, then you can tell how acid is the soil and how much resolved fert in the soil. This meter can get expensive. Mike, you Osmanthus is looking good. The foliage is a nice green. But the leaves are a bit on the spare side. Normally one flush can grow up to 8 leaves in a twig, most of yours are two. Mine has 6 or 8 all the time. Are you giving it enough sun? Or it could be a specific variety, I am not sure. I will post a picture of my Osmanthus recently, it's so bushy. So fare I have the Gold, Silver and Four Seasons variety. In the four seasons, I have FudingZhu, TianXiangTaiGe and RiXiangGui. FudingZhu is my all time favorite. But the RiXiangGui is flourishing for me as well. It's a four seasons, blooms more than 300 days in a year and the flower is gold, which is rare for four season. The fragrance is so much stronger. Take care. YT

What a great discussion! I have just purchased some Tea Olives and would like to train some of them into trees. I have seen pictures of mature trees with a single trunk that are stunning, but all of my young trees have multiple trunks. I'm guessing many people just use them as a hedge, and so this is not an issue. Is anyone else attempting to prune them into single trunk trees? If so, what pruning guidelines are you following? Also a question about sources for buying these trees. There aren't that many varieties available for some reason. I've found that nurseries don't even bother to put the variety, just labelling them Osmanthus fragrans, and are usually the ones with white flowers. Maybe they are the best adapted to the U.S. southern regions, but I wonder if it's possible to get some of the more 'exotic' varieties like these orange/red ones - Osmanthus fragrans "zao hong" Early Red" O Fragrans "Zhuangyuan Hong Gui" First Red" I live in central Tx., zone ranges between 8 and 9 with intensely hot summers. Our soils are more alkaline than in east Tx. and the weather more dry as well (about 28-30" rain in a 'normal' year). The tea olives are going to be planted in a sandy loam or chocolate soil that drains very nicely but doesn't retain a lot of moisture.

I use cuttings of this years growth taken August thru Sept. the cuttings are taken with a heel from a side branch. Then apply 0.8% IBA (rooting hormone) stick in well drained soil & mist .. Use bottom heat. takes 30-100 days to root.

The Seattle (USDA 8) arboretum has an old planting of Osmanthus fragrans that seems to have held up well on a greasy clay bank but more recent plantings in other Seattle area locations of forms in commerce don't seem to be well suited. Particularly with them having new growth continuing late into the year - a hallmark of a plant that is not cold climate adapted - and sometimes being burned off by cold. Such as one recent year where I saw all of the previous season's shoots had been burned off of a mass planting on a south-facing slope on the University of Washington campus. (And we have now had a sequence of hot summers and mild winters, to the extent that a local climate scientist has stated publicly that our winter climate may have become permanently softer). So unless markedly hotter summers in your part of USDA 7 compensate by encouraging more complete ripening of shoot growth than we get here I would wonder about long term success with this plant there. And you may have been encountering significant cold damage already.