I've planted 30 or 40 blue spruce trees of the same approximate size as yours on my own property over the past 8 years or so. They have had about a 60 or 70% survival rate. One thing I never do is uproot a spruce that appears dead, because they can remarkably come back to life after losing all their needles. Sunshine is good, but small seedlings/saplings do much better planted amidst overgrown meadow grass or weeds to shield them from too much sunshine while they are small, and also the mulch from unmowed plants is very beneficial. Good drainage is important, so the slope you chose sounds like a good choice. Seedlings that spring up near a mother tree receive nutrients from the parent through its root system, so a single seedling (or even a number of seedling trees) planted alone without its/their parent will always be at a disadvantage. If your tree doesn't make it, I'd recommend planting several new small trees in the same area next so you have a better chance of getting a survivor. Good luck! Don't give up on the tree yet.

You have to host your pictures like on Photobucket or someone like them. Once you've done that, then copy and paste the HTML address of the picture into the body of your message. Once you're done, when you hit preview you should see the photo appear as it will when you post it. mark

In my opinion, any nursery offering the standard commercial form of this species in the Piedmonts and plains south of the Mason-Dixon or Ohio River valley (which is all that is ever offered; nobody yet has a special resistant clone or hybrid) should be shunned. Trees should NOT be 3 to 10 year annuals. The last time I went back to my childhood neighborhood in Northern Virginia, I noticed that all of the old blue spruces were either dead or horribly sick looking. Even in the suburbs of Philadelphia, many of them do not look good although due to the generally higher levels of horticultural stewardship there they at least get removed if they look awful. In the highland towns of central PA you can still find ones that look OK - although they are not always trouble free even there - anywhere summer averages stay in the low 80s. If I were willing to be a more public persona I'd go on some kind of crusade to reform American residential landscape planting practices. I'm sick of seeing hideous, sick or weedy trees in suburban lots. There's no FDA-equivalent PTA (plants and trees administration LOL) to say "hey, this plant causes long term problems, don't use it in your area" and apparently, a complete lack of nurseries having any gumption to tell people "I"m not going to sell that, it doesn't do well here, here's an alternative". Maybe horticulture needs to be tought in schools as a part of basic home economics...I mean, really basic, like, how not to get into credit card debt. "If you notice a tree looks like crap in 95% of the yards in your area, don't plant it." How hard is that for people to understand? (But that's why I compare to the FDA, since most people do not have the science education to understand Rx drugs. Apparently it IS hard for most people to understand. So it's mostly an indictment of the in-it-for-the-quick-money nursery and landscaping industries. Of course, I don't actually think there should be a "PTA", it would probably just be a revolving door with Picea pungens pushers in "big nurse" - the wholesale nursery industry!) I haven't actually lived in a residential area in the UK for many years (I took a summer semester there once), but if I use the more recent memory of visiting the admittedly somewhat posh town of Rye, England...I now think to myself, if this had been an American town, 1/3 of the trees would look sick or ill-suited to the climate. In other words, part of the picturesque quality was merely the avoidance of horticultural disgust by not having to look at sickly or ill-planted trees. Just taking Cecil County as an example, no, obviously you will never have a English-style gardening culture here as you do in tony pockets of the US like Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. That's not what I'm asking for. Just wave a magic wand and get rid of: blue spruce, white pine, bradford pear and leyland cypress, and it would look A LOT better around here.

G - for some reason your most recent post shows up in the 'Activity' tab on my user page, but not here. I sort of deduced you were in some manner a part of the medical care community by way of your phraseology. Edited to say: The lost post showed up around 5PM Christmas Eve - strange, that. .... I always find it fascinating to see evidence of how our physiology and pathophysiology is really not that fundamentally different from our green relatives. Like how animals will occasionally find walling off (like plants do in CODIT) to be the most viable - or only - way to control an infection (e.g. abscesses or TBC granulomas). Or the whole thing about the ability to fend off (opportunistic) infections/infestations as a function of overall vitality levels you reference over and over. I see many similarities as well, even with my pitifully limited knowledge compared to yours, and it makes me tend to want to draw parallels and comparisons between plants and animals. The problem with doing that, even if the equivalence offers a path to instant understanding, is, a lot of folks know what anthropomorphism is and have often point to it as a logical fallacy. I often refer to and get away with using phrases like 'plant central and its chemical messengers' because it saves a ton of writing and I'm pedantic enough as it is. I use those terms to convey the idea that, for the most part, plants' responses to their world are more orderly (until they can't be) than it would seem. To illustrate that I'm intentionally being anthropomorphic, I usually recognize it in advance by setting the word/phrase apart with "quotes" or an 'apostrophe', which seems to work reasonably well. But to get back to the topic at hand: Yes ....... "Older plants that become infected often remain viable for a period after infection but usually die. Often, seemingly healthy basal shoots or leaves will occur, only to collapse from the infection after a short time when the pathogen spreads systemically into the new growth." That's the most fitting description of what I have seen happening with my plant. And while you have avoided spelling it out so far (or well, maybe you did: "followed by involvement and death of the whole organism") my conclusion is that what I have at hand is a systemic infection that is too advanced now to be controlled. Sooo, aside from sitting the plant under some lights and hoping for a miracle I guess I should look at getting another set of cuttings from the mother plant for a second try... I'm not sure what additional info you're looking for, but: For vascular wilt diseases, think of the xylem as where the battle takes place. Vascular wilts can also be bacterial or caused by water molds (oomycetes). Usually the pathogen enters through a compromised root or through cracks that often form at root laterals, but there are several other POEs, like stomata, hydathodes, insect penetrations, grafting, notching, poor pruning practices ..... Even though both xylem and phloem are accessible to the pathogen, and the phloem is rich in sugars, it usually 'chooses' xylem tracheary elements that provide a nutritionally poor environment. It's widely thought that this occurs because the high osmotic pressure of living phloem cells makes penetration difficult. Symptoms of the disease are usually made manifest acropetally, which is why I wasn't convinced the disease was localized in the termination of the foliage. Which leads me to my next set of questions: - Can these fungal pathogens survive outside a host for some time? Definitely. Spores can survive (even over-winter outdoors) in soil, plant debris, dead host tissues (bark, .....) an infected water source, in insect vectors. Spores can also form a hard mass that includes a food source, and the pathogen can survive as mycelium/ hyphae. As in: Can I reuse the pot and soil mix for the new cuttings or do I have to treat them in some way beforehand (with heat for example)? Right now I feel like just letting them dry out completely should suffice. Given the persistence of the pathogen, you shouldn't reuse the soil or the pot w/o treating it. I would clean the pot thoroughly and soak in a .05% solution of water/sodium hyperchlorite (9 parts water: 1 part household bleach @ 5.25% so-hypo). Rinse thoroughly and allow to dry in full sun. You can reuse the soil w/o worry about fungal infections if you bring a pot of water to a boil, add the soil, cover the pot, return water to a boil, turn the burner off and allow to cool w/o removing the lid, strain, allow to dry. - Can you give me a quick reminder for the correct handling of cuttings? I remember the following: Make clean cuts with a sharp blade to avoid jagged or crushed edges (another parallel to human medicine) and sprinkle the cuts with cinnamon. Best to use something razor sharp - I'm thinking scalpels, for you. I normally use a straight edge razor blade (I buy in boxes of 100) or any of 3 high carbon steel tools I keep sharp on a 3,000 grit water stone to way beyond shaving sharp. For better results, skip the cinnamon - flowers of sulfur is widely available and much more effective as a fungicide. No need to use anything else on propagules if you're using a rooting aid that includes a prophylactic fungicide. Be sure to include at least one node of the trunk for each cutting. Depending on the distance between nodes, 2-3 nodes beneath the soil line is best. At least 2 nodes above the soil line is a good call, too. If one of the distal nodes fail to push a branch from the leaf axil, you have a spare/spares. If you want a single stem and you see more than one axillary branch, rub one off after roots are established enough that you won't be breaking a bunch of roots if the propagule is disturbed, rub one axillary branch off (or snip with sharp scissors) and retain the preexisting leaf for the time being (food factory). I use mostly gritty mix for cuttings, and the uppermost of the nodes covered by soil will tend toward going dry unless the propagule is tented, you're diligent about spritzing (the soil) to keep the top moist, or you covering it (soil). I often cut a slit in Al foil and fashion a loose cover from that in order to ensure the entire soil mass remains moist. If ever you're using a medium that supports a perched water column, please to be sure the proximal end of the propagule is not submerged in the perched water (hypoxia/ anoxia). Cut leaves in half to reduce foliage that has to be supported. This is often a judgment call, but it's better to err on the side of too much reduction of foliage rather than not enough. The drought stress can cause abscission of ALL of the foliage, which is very counterproductive and to be avoided. You'll often hear that NO foliage should be removed, but those with a long history of repotting and propagation know that you have to be able to adjust your thinking at times, so there is no hard/fast rule when it comes to adjusting the volume of foliage to arrive at the desired end. Plant immediately in soil (I'll use the 5:1:1 mix now) and water daily until enough roots have formed. Hold back fertilizer until there's new growth. Depending on the plant material, it's sometimes better to wait for callus to form over the wound before you stick the propagule. For instance, dormant deciduous cuttings, most evergreen cuttings, and a good measure of succulents do best by waiting an appropriate interval for that plant. I've pruned Aeonium in Feb and left the snippings on a paper towel on the basement work bench. Roots grew from the stems and the snippings too right off in mid-May when I decided they'd earned the right to remain viable by virtue of their mulishness. After taking the cuttings I won't be able to plant them for a day and I'll have to transport them. What would be the best way to handle that? Wrap the cut ends in a clean paper towel? Dry or wet? A moist paper towel in a bag or simply lay the cuttings on their side and cover with the moistened medium you intend to use. Whew! You really made me think!I hope that was what you were looking for. Al