Thanks whaas. That's the info I needed. As you may know, more than half of my interest as regards this forum is forest trees, not landscape entities. I would love to be able to introduce the genes from a nice blue P. obovata to my menagerie up north. Norway spruce-we've got approximately 4000 of those things planted up there. They are growing rapidly. A smattering of blue-phase ones would be grand. I can wait. I'm in "recreational" tree-planting mode now-the vast majority of acreage is planted, now we just need to sprinkle in a few elements here and there. Maybe I will be able to add in a few of these at some point.

Picea obovata 'Glauca'; probably not blue enough for you:

Thanks garcand. Don't necessarily trust that lighting though! Actually, my goals are quite different here than landscaping per se; I would appreciate having some groves of this type of tree in amongst other naturalized plantings I've done on my land. Not looking at this as "specimen tree" type of thing at all, but just another component of a created forest that is purposely being encouraged to grow into and mingle with existing native forest land. As such, grafted items, clones and all other manner of "landscape specimen" attributes mean nothing here. Ideally, I would tap into a seed or seedling source of an actual land race exhibiting a tendency towards glaucous foliage, something that would potentially become heritable. That's the kind of project i'm all about-more forestry than landscaping, although on a mega-scale, we are indeed drastically changing that landscape up there. But given the difficulty of this quest, it's not real likely to happen. It''s just icing on the cake anyway-we've got the place planted up. It's a cold land there, and plants with the word siberia in their name have applicability!

Tom, I have a graft of 'Arctos' for you assuming it lives thru the winter in my semi-heated greenhouse.

Dax

Indeed the light condition appeared to make it look paler blue (even though I didn't touch up the photo with any tool) but this is the only pic I took this year that shows this plant.

Sounds like a very interesting project you are are pursuing. Would be interesting to see the diverse species you incorporated (perhaps includes Abies and Larix etc. ?)

Indeed! Larix is the current star of the show there! I'm working heavily with the hybrid larch-Larix marschlinsii-and the performance so far has been phenomenal. Firs so far are largely relegated to some native balsams. I would like to try a smattering of perhaps nordmanniana there although it may be too cold a zone...Z4. Norway spruce also makes up one of the backbones, along with our two large-growing native pines, resinosa and strobus. So yes, along with the abundant native Thuja present there, quite a pocket of conifer life. And the entire area is largely a mixed forest, heavy on pine, cedar and hemlock, along with hardwoods.

Dax, i would be happy to use that plant as a focal point at the entryway to our property! That would be a good use for such an item. Let me know when you're ready and we'll make the necessary arrangements. thanks!

Tom, where did you get the Larix marschlinsii?

Larix marschlinsii sounds like a 'must have' larch (graceful and pink cone etc.).

I tried to introduce some conifer species to my cottage in zone 4 (about 16 acres of mixed deciduous and conifers) but the deer treated anything I introduced as candies. I am tempted try a Metasequoia with some protection just to see its hardiness limit in a forest context.

Whaas, as far as I know-and quite frankly, I'm probably the regional or national authority on this topic, itascagreenhouse.com is the only source. They offer plug stock in styroblocks. Despite these pencil-thin plants, they will grow with abandon and will be as tall as you are in two or three years. And yes, garcand is correct-the aesthetic attributes of this larch, IMO, exceed that of most other types. The Japanese genetics offer larger, more luxuriant foliage, a greater tendency towards golden twig coloration-very beautiful all through the winter-and whatever else. The European component is good as well. These are just some really good trees and the growth rate is easily 3 or 4 feet a year, often much more. I noticed the other weekend that whereas the ones we planted initially back in 08 have a more reddish-gold coloration to the twigs, the newer ones are straw-yellow. Neat contrast of big blocks of each age class. Man those things grow!

As I said, we've got way too many deer up there. Yet largely, our plantings have been left alone. A buck will rub his antlers-usually on my best spruce tree-and screw it all up-but we deal with that by planting thousands more trees. We'll have survivors. In fact, our success rate has been better than I'd hoped for. We largely have not lost trees......throughout this entire process. We really have not had trees die on us.

I can send it anytime, Tom. Send a message to me with your address and I'll ship it at that time.

Dax

Itasca doesn't seem to have Larix marschlinsii listed, just L. laricina.

Sounds like you're doing some real neat stuff, Tom. Do you have a long-term "goal", if you will, for your property?

Bill Seyward (SP?), the owner of Itasca, had asked me if my trees were coning yet! They are. So in effect, if could be that my groves will end up being the seed source for future needs of this tree. I don't know. Bill had it in stock, then it went away, but then last time I looked, he had it again. Must've run out of seed. Dern it.

Kyle, this has been a "biological planting", one in which the primary goal is for the trees being planted to reach their genetic potential, minus whatever calamity befalls them. Now when we did the last big block-6000 trees-we got a little too close with some of them, so quite likely we will be looking at a thinning cut at some point, whereby the best stems will be left behind to continue growing. But in reality, that could be a concern for my offspring and not so much for me! Just depends on how many miles I've got left. At 60, I might be around for a while yet. So we'll see. And then, the other big chunk of goal here is for the existing forest species that are already in the wooded portion of our land-these are all good species-to gradually blend with the planted area. To some extent, this is already happening. We might log some of it some day for cabin logs too. Among the species we've planted, it is precisely these larch which are heralded as ideal cabin logs-straight, not much taper, rot-resistant wood, good stuff. Maybe my kids will want to build a cabin some day. We're growing the raw materials right now!

Speaking of messaging, how do you do it with houzz? I poked around a bit Dax but could not see a way to message you. Used to be able to private message when it was still gardenweb. What am I not seeing?

It's easy Tom. Just click on my avatar photo to open my page and on the photo banner you will see a box to click. Here's Kyle's page and mine will be exactly the same:

You might try setting up messaging on your profile. It didn't take me all that long to figure it out. I don't have any tips for you though right now.

Dax

You're not too far away so I'll stop on out and dig up a few.

I'll keep you posted!

For real whaas-that could be an option. So, when we did the big machine planting, and as I've said, things got a little out of hand, 4 guys pounding out a 14 hr. day planting trees , the spacing got wonky for a while. The DNR forestry guys said the trees will still grow just fine, and I've verified that for example, in our trips to that site, we pass through the small town I grew up in. And right there in that town are some Norway spruce that have grown well, and which are roughly perhaps 8 feet apart from each other, and are likely about 60 to 70 feet tall now-no problems seen in growth. I will still thin some day because I want the remaining trees to grow to their greatest extent possible. But back to those larch: So in a couple spots, the guy riding the planting machine (one of my sons) didn't always see they were getting real close to the lane that runs down through the center of that field. So we do in fact have a couple plants that will need to be dug out of the way of that lane. You're surely welcome to come on up and grab a couple whaas. We've got plenty! Another situation up at that land is that a neighbor-good guy, we hit it off well-has a mamma box elder tree in his yard, the tree is situated to the NW of our planting, and therefore.....forever.....box elder seeds will be raining down on my planting. Now the species we've planted there are all big, bold, strong growers-white pine, Norway spruce, red pine, larch, etc. No way does box elder compete successfully with these big guys. But they can sure make a mess in the meantime. I haven't done all this work to have a field full of box elders! I may offer to this fellow too that if he would be willing to cut down that @#$%^& female box elder, I would be happy to give him a couple good trees. We'll see how it goes, but for real whaas, hit me up in the spring. I'm sure we can get you a larch or two.

One thing my son and I had to do up there this fall was to do a cut/treat on box elder saplings. As a shade-tolerant maple, box elders are coming up right in amongst our good trees. So we go in with folding pruning saws, loppers and spray bottles of Triclopyr and blue dye. We killed em all!

So is the blue dye so you can find your way out of the woods LOL. Couldn't resist.

Consider it done! I'm sure I can get you something of interest as well.

Send me a message if you don't mind. I think its on as I clicked edit profile in the right hand corner > advanced settings > privacy setting (towards the bottom > allow anyone to send me message