Don't plant the seed strain: 'Ambrolauri'. They're advertised as 2-weeks later vegetators, but, are not as cold-hardy. That's from experience here. I think you're really pushing it with Nordmann, +oM. They're solid zone 5b in my opinion. You can try a few of course. You'd find out what you want to know with a dozen. Treehaven sells big seedlings and 25 is their minimum order. I'd definitely start with more roots/plant. Dax

Native soil is rocky, acidic, goes pretty deep but there is bedrock in the neighborhood so that depth is inconsistent...it drains incredibly well. My theory is that there are fissures in the crystaline bedrock (I grew up a few miles away and when our oil tank leaked, 500 gallons of oil leaked hundreds of feet down into our well within 4 days...we had oil water coming out of the shower...EPA took care of that thank god!). Septics do very well here, even in the middle of forests. I'm 32 and I just bought the house...so I suppose it's possible that I'll still be here in 30 years. Not interested in dwarf for this particular species or location. I put a rhod. maximum in the area and I'd like the red spruce to add to it's shade over time. On this one I took your advice Ken! I have 10 red spruce bare roots coming to me from the NH nursery.

The seedling red spruce I planted this year are doing good despite our lack of rain in the North Carolina mountains. More hardy than I thought they would be.

I don't know if there has been any research done per the range of red spruce, say one thousand years ago. I would guess if the climate then favored conifers rather than broadleafs red spruce may have been more widespread. There is a site that talks about the forest of southern North America at the peak of the last ice age. I didn't bookmark it so I don't have a link. If memory serves, it stated that a forest of mainly spruce and fir existed from the edge of the glacier in the north to the Gulf of Mexico, FL, and the south Atlantic. The shores of the gulf and ocean were at least 200 miles further out than at present. I would assume red spruce would have been a component of this forest. But I'm not a paleobotanist, or any kind of "ist" LOL. I've traveled the Cumberland Plateau fairly extensively, and have never noticed what I thought was red spruce, either planted or wild, but I've seen a few planted Frasers, and elevations there are 2-3K feet on average. Precip is probably 10-20 inches lower, and soils are different. If I get a chance, I'll ask our county forester, who has traveled the state extensively, if he's seen red spruce anywhere outside high elevations of east TN.