Lone, mostly speculation on my part, but I would tend to support this view-that a longer fall can lead to more and better transplant root establishment. If this were not so, I'd have a hard time understanding why not. The one caveat would be, if the area in question was not only staying warmer than average, but was also too dry for good root growth...and the occupier of the site was not providing water. Here in Wisconsin, while there's a big cool-down happening today, it is only just bringing us down to average temps for time of year. So we've been unusually warm. But it keeps raining too, so a pretty good situation.

+oM

Same situation here, wiscon, good amount of rain too. One thing, I had to dig up a couple maples last week to fix the roots and one of them really required major surgery/butchery it was such a knarled clump. I should have tossed it on the brush pile, really. Hope the nice weather will help it some. It'll be one to watch and learn I guess to see how much of a mess will take, or not.

I would think so. More time for the roots to grow. As I also planted a bunch of trees, I'm hoping so. My one caveat would be if you had a warm spell that kept trees from going dormant, followed by a sudden return to cold temperatures or a hurricane. I'd look to see if any of the young trees are keeping leaves far longer then expected. If not, I don't see the down side.

I had to dig up a couple maples last week to fix the roots and one of
them really required major surgery/butchery it was such a knarled clump.
I should have tossed it on the brush pile,

==>>> you might be surprised how resilient they are... see pic of cherry below ...

late fall ... most plants are in suspended animation ... some root growth would be great... but it doesnt matter ... imho ... the key is.. it will be all set.. come spring .... when soil warms ... and roots can get 6 to 8 weeks of root growth.. before leaves start trying to suck all the moisture the roots can suck up ... much better than planting in may.. and heat hitting in late june ... eh???

ken

Quite right^. As is always the case, we don't know what's coming next! So, long drawn-out autumn? Great. But followed by precipitous cool-down? Not so good. And Maine is exactly right-we've seen these things happen before.

+oM

Back to more normal fall temperatures for a week at least here. Around the freezing mark or slightly above at night. So no precipitous drop where they get slammed, I hope.

I think this is true generally as many species, but not all, do the most root-growing in fall, as soil temps permit.

the weather here is doing the same but that didnt stop me from putting out my Christmas decorations!

Lone_elm, where are you? Zone 6 covers a large area.

Mike

Mike, zone 6 is pushing it. More like 5, Southwestern Ontario, Leamington area. Considered a small pocket of Z6 on the map but Ken told me once not to bet a nickel on that.

That said, I was surprised to see things like peach orchards, etc. not too awful far from the Leamington area. Not to mention, roughly ten million acres, give or take, of tomatoes under glass! Quite the ketchup...or is that catsup.....business around there!

+om

I'm not familiar with the SW Ontario area, but I see others are and can give you very good advice. The closest I've been to where you live is St. Louis or western Massachusetts. I have gardened in zone 5, Spokane, Wa. before, but I was a kid growing veggies.

Everybody should list approximately where they are located to get pertinent advice. The Zone helps, but usually covers too wide of an area for really good answers. For example, I'm in rainy Seattle, Zone 8, so is a lot of Texas.

Mike

LOL!! Mike, as a resident PNW'er, you should know our reputation for being wet and rainy is grossly overstated. In fact, we only receive about 36-37 inches of rainfall annually, about the same as Dallas, TX and well below the national average. On a rating of the top 275 weather stations across the country, Seattle comes in at 134 for total annual rainfall, topped easily by such diverse locations as NYC, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City and just about everywhere in the southeast.

The issue is not with the amount of rainfall but how it is presented. Places like Dallas can receive multiple inches in a single rainstorm while we tend to just "ooze" rain - that well-known Seattle drizzle - for days on end :-) In fact, Seattle approaches the top of the rankings for the number of rainy days per season at 155.

Not to mention the concept of available moisture. So, much of this state gets even less total precip yearly than Seattle most years. Yet, if a lot of that comes in the form of snow, which is often the case, and if much of the growing season is relatively cool....the actual effect is one of adequate soil moisture. That's the thing that really matters; During how much of the growing season-and to a certain extent, those months that bookend the growing season-is there adequate moisture available to plants? In that regard, that total picture, a place like Wisconsin can fair very well. Meanwhile, if this is El Nino, we are being continually hit by significant weather events this fall. Maybe it will settle down into the more expected warmer/drier than average pattern this part of the continent usually sees in that weather pattern, but so far, yes it's been warmer than average, but anything but dry. I like it!

+oM

Gardengal, sssshh!

When I go on vacation I like to wear a shirt that says Seattle on it. People ask me if I've been there. I tell them I live there. Invariably they they say, "It rains a lot there, doesn't it?"

I say, "It sure does!"

Judging by the horrible traffic, we have enough people here.

Mike......ducking in out of the rain.

Wisconsitom, yes I'm near a peach orchard. Wine country too. Just getting an interest and knowledge in trees I wonder what I can try in this climate. I planted a peach in spring, and plan on a sweet cherry (they are fairly borderline for true zone 5, yes?) Ernie Grimo/Grimo Nut Nursery even has a supposedly north hardy Pecan a customer has had success with. I'm not much of a fan of the greenhouses, they look ugly industrial and take away the skyline. New ones are being built on a property at the southwest corner of our farm. Somewhat hidden by trees.

Just a few musings based on the direction this thread has taken.

Annual rainfall matters. Our average annual is about 41" of rain here in central MD, however, we're slightly drier in summer than much of the Midwest, and wetter in winter, despite similar annual precipitation. We get more reliable winter precip due to coastal storms, but the Midwest gets more reliable spring/summer rainfall due to MCC's and more reliable thunderstorms. Our thunderstorms often get weakened by the Appalachian mountains a bit, needing a good southerly wind to "recharge" them. However, we usually have "enough" summer rainfall, and our springtime groundwater reserves are probably a lot better, due to higher winter precipitation.

When compared to Seattle, we're a bit wetter overall, but Seattle is bone-dry in summer, so we get the edge there, but our hotter summers somewhat negate that.

My understanding is only the places right on the coast in the PNW are truly WET, like Astoria, OR, and Forks and Hoquiam, WA, all of whom break the 60" mark annually.

Dallas' annual precip of about 36" doesn't sound too bad, but July and August get half the rainfall we do here, and at temperatures FAR hotter, so the net available soil moisture, while usually good in spring through early June, is usually pretty dry after that, until fall's cooler, wetter weather kicks in.

Then, look at Europe. The vast majority of Europe gets around, or less than, 30" of annual rainfall, yet is far greener than Dallas, due to the more even distribution of rain, and, more importantly, the much cooler summers.

Heh, yeah, that is one huge, uh, tomato-industrial complex Another tidbit of interest to us-we were passing through on our way to Niagara Falls, etc.-was the existence of something called "Friday night fish frys". Up to that point, the absolute only place I ever knew of where that term meant a darn thing is right here where I grew up-eastern Wisconsin. And as long as I'm pretty much babbling away off-topic here, I was also somewhat impressed with the city of Hamilton, Ontario. Big elevation difference in that town between the upper and lower parts. Kinda cool.

I'll quit now, lol!

+oM

The really wet place in the PNW is the Olympic National Forest, especially on the western side of the Olympic Range. The rain forest there receives on average 150 inches of rainfall, making it the wettest place in the continental US - I often think that factoid tends to get extrapolated to cover all of western WA!! Then on the eastern side of the Olympics is the rain shadow effect, producing an area that gets about the same annual rainfall as LA..........only 16 inches. From the ridiculous to the sublime within about 50 miles!

But, but but...southeast Alaska is "continental", ainet? I mean, Prince Of Wales Island has many locations picking up 200 or more inches of rain/year. Ketchikan averages around 155.

I should think that super-heavy snowfall areas in Washington (most years) like Mount Baker and of course, Rainier, keep an awful lot of lower elevation landscape well-watered. A lot of water being in suspended animation until some warmth kicks in, right when plants get ready to do some growing.

+oM

I think 'continental' refers to just the contiguous 48 but maybe not, in which case parts of AK do exceed the Olympics. But according to my sources, Ketchikan is not that high - only 131 inches. The biggy is Mt. Waialeale on Kauai in Hawaii with an average of 460 inches - that's 38 feet of rain!!!

And we did rely on mountain snow pack to keep us properly hydrated and reservoirs filled during our dry summers but then this non-existent thing called global warming intervened and is messing everything up.

Agree with that last comment. I always heard the term lower 48 for what you meant originally by continental. That term still works for me. My Ketchikan result was what seemed a good source. I can tell you this-parts of POW Island are too wet for my son, who like me has some of that Irish rain-loving blood in him. The rain there, in a town called Thorne Bay, drove him and his girl right off the island eventually! And that is most def. a region of 200 inches plus/year.

Had a friend who did some service time on Kauai. Said it was indeed the wettest place on earth. They'd just get dropped off on a mountainside somewhere and have to use orienteering to find their way back to base. Good times, I guess. Looks like the PNW mountains might just get some snowpack here for a while. The hose is turned on, as they say.

I still think available moisture is the big ticket. Going back to my state, we've always been a leader in growing K. bluegrass turf. People travel here and literally marvel at all the bright green grass! Of course, to me there is no more boring plant community than turf, although I'm not hating on it totally as some do. But with our area locked up in ice for almost half the year, whatever total precip we do get is almost doubled effectively.

+om

I've hiked both in the western Olympic mountain rainforests and Mt. Waialeale on Kauai.

When planning a trip to the rainforest in the Olympics I would make sure the prevailing wind was from the north, then the rainforest was dry. When the wind was from the southwest I'd head to the NE side of the mountains in the rain shadow where it's dry. Wear a red hat when hiking in the summer and the Hummingbirds won't leave you alone.

Usually people think of the rainforest down in the lowlands with moss covered Acer macrophyllums, our Oregon Bigleaf Maple and Sitka Spruce with Western Red Cedar. I like the sub-alpine rainforest up near timberline. Absolutely beautiful! The predominate trees are Abies lasiocarpa and Tsuga mertensiana. A lot of those grow in groves called atolls that provide shelter for the wildlife. the last hike I did was with my son a couple of years ago. We did 53 miles in 4 days. Next time I'm going to take more time for that distance. I was beat!

Mike

I think I too would enjoy those higher wet forests, Mike. Although western red cedar is one of my faves, those atolls must be almost indescribably beautiful. My one son, the same guy that spent some time On POW Island, also lived in a town near Olympia for a while and he has recounted many stories of much magnificence in that area. We hope to visit some day.

What I find amazing is the overwhelming similarity of "old growth" areas even though they be separated by a thousand miles. Heck, right in my own woods, deep in the swamp area, there are numerous springs with water gurggling all winter long, which is saying something in a place with as cold of winters as we get here. There is almost no "ground" to speak of, only hummocks of old rotted logs and stumps and root systems of still-living trees. There are northern white cedar tipped horizontally by the wind, which, having still a bit of root attachment to terra firma, now have a series of "trees" growing skyward, each one a former branch. There are very large paper birch, much larger than they ever become in suburbia, which, having sprouted right tight against one of the cedars, now continue to grow as a double unit, the trunks of one actually growing around and encapsulating the other. You just don't see stuff like that unless it's been left alone for a long time. Now what was this thread about, lol?

+om

ps.............oh, and my apologies to Resin and any other sticklers for proper nomenclature. I'm in that camp myself, but "cedar" is all you'll ever hear anyone, including pro foresters call the Thuja growing here. No, I'm not talking about formal report writing, etc. Just general speech....everybody calls Thuja occidentalis "cedar" around these parts. And while I knew many decades ago that that was not proper, if the purpose of language is to communicate with another individual or group, that's the word that's going to get used, exceptions noted.