3 separate tree questions:Weeping willow, Crepe Myrtle, & Holly: pics
Welp I figured I'd ask my questions as a group rather than three separate threads. This might be a tad long, bare with me :-)
My first set of questions starts with the weeping willow I planted last year. Bought from Lowes, planted behind our house far away from anything. My wife loves weeping willows and I planted it in hopes that it becomes some monstrous beautiful tree...lol
When I planted it last spring it was just about as tall as me, I'm 6'2". Now present day, it's at least 12' tall. I had it "lightly" staked for about one year (maybe a couple months shy of one year) only so that it didn't snap because it was on the thinner side. Two weeks ago I took the stake out of the ground and now it's on it's own. The only thing I am worried about is the current "lean" that is happening with it. Hopefully the picture shows it.
The upper top portion is leaning to the right.. See picture below. Should I be concerned about this or is this the nature of a weeping willow. I know they will weep but I don't want the thing to grow at an angle to the right where it will then be a problem for the tree later on. When it's windy the tree moves a lot. I have read several things saying that the tree will naturally become stronger as it will adapt to nature. Should I trim the upper part of the tree so there is less lean or stake it and pull that to the left? OR, let it takes it's course? Next question is I have noticed there is a slight change in the bark at the bottom. The upper part of the tree is green, where as the lower bark is turning a brownish color. Is this normal? Is this the tree starting to get hard bark or is there a problem? Note that the tree has leaves and isn't dropping any, it appears healthy to me. I say this only because in a year it's grown 6'+... See pictures below.
Next up is a Holly. My neighbor was going to just cut the thing down and I said I'd dig it out and transplant it to the side of our house. It has to be about 12 years old and was very healthy. It was at the front of his house and got probably 8+ hours of sunlight. When I transplanted it, it was back before winter. I dug it out and there was growth for about 2 months since our winters here in VA are not bad, you can see some of the longer pieces up top (that was the new growth). Also before I took a LOT of the dead out... Then we got snow for a day or two, which was cold, then it warmed up, then got cold and then warmed up... all in the matter of about two weeks. Just last month it started dropping ALL it's leaves... Please see picture below. It looks horrible compared to what it did during the winter time. If I lightly scratch the bottom of the trunk there is green (see picture) but the rest of it as far as upper branches are brown and break. If I try bending the lower branches it bends but doesn't break. Is this on the way out, or is it dead? Should I let it be until fall or just dig it out. I will note that it now receives about 4 hours of direct sunlight due to it being on the side of the house :-( Not sure if that has anything to do with it or if it's just the age and didn't like being moved? I have transplanted trees before with success so this struck me as odd, since hollies are pretty resilient and hardy.
Last up is a question about a Crepe Myrtle. We have one in the front of our yard. It's rather large and quite beautiful once it blooms. One day I noticed something growing near the house. I didn't think anything of it until I started seeing green leaves and then the same purple flowers that look exactly like the crepe myrtle... I thought perhaps it was a sucker that reached the house but then I figured it was a seedling (main tree below in first picture is 30' from the house. Second picture is of baby myrtle right up against the house. Needless to say it's covered by other bushes and I would love to dig it out and transplant it to an area that would let it grow. My first question is will this turn into a tree? (See pictures below) It has a few smaller trunks like that of the big crepe myrtle so it makes me think it might turn into a tree after some years as it matures. Should I wait until fall to dig it out and transplant it? I know fall is best when the leaves are dropped and it goes into dormancy but wanted to ask since it was so small now if it would hurt it to move before it gets super hot?
That's all I have for questions, sorry this was a long post but figured if ya can answer one or all questions I would appreciate any advice. I'm in Northern VA as far as region. Right now in April we are starting to get more rain, and the weather will fluctuate between 50-70 degrees. Not yet scorching humid weather but that's probably a month or two away.
Thanks!
-Nigel
Comments (12)
gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
7 years ago
edlincoln
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Removing 3 bradford pears need ideas for alternatives. Pictures
Comments (12)I put my Pterostyrax in the ground as a rooted cutting barely 1-foot tall in probably... 2008. It is now at least 15 feet tall, I think. It looks to me like the new shoots every year are up to 4 feet long. So at the early stages, I'd have to say "fast." This is with good soil and pretty adequate water. Since it is not described as a large tree, I imagine that the growth rate slows eventually. Mine has a very clear tendency to a single leader, and a single trunk; definitely a tree, not a shrub. The flowers are actually quite subtle in real life both in looks and fragrance, but the leaves make up for it (I'm a foliage person anyway, so at least I think so). The branch structure is lovely, very straight branches and consistent angles. It's also very tidy. The leaves stay on quite late into fall, don't do much colour changing, and then they're gone quite quickly. Granted, it's not above a deck so I might be missing something. I don't know how big crepes get but I have to agree with Ink that from the perspective you've shown, a variety of canopy shape would look more appealing than three all the same. And incidentally, what would allow them to grow bigger is the relief from root competition of the pears, probably not sun alone. I could also recommend Heptacodium, except it may be a problem with respect to bees. For me the fact that it attracts bees is a good thing, but might not be ideal on a deck. Mind you, in my yard the tree is close to the front porch and I can't say we have a bee problem. But again, this might be a smaller tree. I have a bunch of young trees so in terms of long term experience I am not very useful. But I also enjoy my Parrotia. Karin L...See MoreLawn and Landscaping WoesPlease Help (Pics Inside)
Comments (12)Ground cover is, I agree, appropriate to many situations. Prolly not to this one, though, given the OP's concern about his lawn. (He'll likely have to give up having any gorgeous grass in that sideyard.) Whether water is precious depends on where you are. Dallas? Yes. BUT...you don't need St. Augustine in Dallas. All hail Bermuda grass there! Houston? Rarely is there a drought severe enough to cause a temporary water concern. As for there, St. Augustine or "stickers" are your choices. Mobile, AL, is another place that needs St. Augustine. And rain? Try the rainiest city in the lower 48! Different regions have different concerns--some have water concerns, while fertilizer runoff is a lot more troublesome in others. (Apparently, the strawberries that annoy me so in my grass? A noxious invasive exotic. Great. Suggestions for getting rid of them or even controlling them? Pretty darned feeble, as far as I can tell.) Trying to nurse a lawn that won't ever do very well into a state of verdant, glowing health is going to do a lot more damage than watering a lawn up to two times a week in August in many places. 1" per week *includes* natural rainfall and only applies to the growing season, BTW. Areas that need St. Augustine that I've lived in have ranged from 36 to more than 40 inches of rain per year, on average. That's not much water. It's less than I had to put on my "xeric" plants in NM while they were getting established. (You should have seen me panicking when I first planted them and they started to wither even though I was watering them, in my mind, "all the time"--meaning once a week. *snort* Yes, in a high-wind, high-elevation, semi-desert environment!) I am ALL for choosing a low-maintenance ground cover--*where it works*. I haven't found a single satisfactory replacement for a lawn for kids to play on. I've looked. "Light to medium foot traffic" groundcovers won't do it, though goodness knows I wish they would. And many people live in areas in which replacing a "merely decorative" front yard is either culturally unacceptable--take that as you will--or is actually explicitly restricted by covenants or zoning laws. And that's assuming that the OWNERS like them. In those cases, the best you can do is make large beds which you can try to make as low-maintenance as possible. (Honestly, for 9/10ths or more of people, high maintenance is a bad idea from any standpoint, anyway. Vacations, boredom, illness, business--all of these things would intervene in a strict routine of trimming, spraying, fertilizing, etc., etc., to such an extent that the landscape would soon look pretty pathetic. And so often does! I am WAY too lazy to do that and bitterly, bitterly disappointed that I'll have to water the slope in back next year at least four times to keep back that $%# crab grass.) As for Lyme disease--I'd rather not have my kids--or the neighbors' kids--get it by playing in my yard. I can check myself after going out. I can trust other adults to do it, too. Stripping down elementary schoolers every time they go outside--and in summer, they're banging in and out all the time--is practically insane, but it was the only alternative to treating the 1/8th of an acre that's the major play area last year. We had started averaging, literally, a tick a week. I looked up the incidence of tick-borne diseases in our area, and the statistics were NOT good. Now, I hate using pesticides. This was the first time that I'd personally applied them. I'm killing all sorts of critters I'd LOVE to have in my back yard, but if it's that or a sick kid, I'm grabbing my bag of pesticide. Of course, I COULD just keep the deer out somehow. If you can suggest an effective and economical way of keeping deer out of a 2-acre spread, part of which is wetland, please do! *g* I mean really, I'd love to know, 'cuz I have an azalea that's looking bedraggled nearly 2 years after some young buck decided that it was an all-you-can-eat salad bar for several week running. I have another question, though, purely hypothetical at this point. In one area I lived in, we wouldn't get a hard freeze once every four years or so. And in those years, no matter how we treated the dogs (pills, sprays, collars, what-have-you), they would bring in hundreds of fleas--dozens with every trip outside--that would set up home and eat people and pets constantly. The dogs went piebald with scratching, and we were covered in bites. How can you get rid of fleas at that level of infestation without using a pesticide? We did every de-flea-your-house trick known to man, BTW, from vacuuming more than once a day to the dust that dessicates them. After going through every other option the first year, my dad (who, BTW, has a master's degree in a wildlife field!) broke down and went the poison-the-yard route--which worked beautifully, knocking back the numbers hard enough that bites were rare rather than constant. I do want to makes a BIG point about using "organics." Raw sewage is organic. It is also devastating to the environment. Soooo many gardeners like to make a big point about how they only use ORGANIC compost/worm castings/whatever on their plants. The streams really. don't. care. whether the nitrogen that gets dumped in them from your/my garden is from 100% certified premium organic sources or from cheapo-granulated nitrogen pellets. It doesn't make a difference! I like compost for all sorts of reasons, including reduced runoff and reduced chances of burning a plant because of slower release. But I don't pretend that there's "good organic nitrogen" and "bad inorganic nitrogen"--once it runs off, it's just plain ol' nitrogen. Sorry for sounding condescending--it was meant to be a drawl. ;-)...See MoreNew year, new house. Tree selection input requested.
Comments (56)Just sitting here nodding in agreement with a lot of posts. I think the most important thing at this point is to look at your property and decide the functions you will use it for down the road so you don't ruin the space when you get around to addressing it. Yes, leave access for getting trucks and machinery to various parts of the property, even on three acres. Especially on three acres you plan to fill generously with trees. Yes on considering some groves and avoiding onesie-twosies and when the tree bug bites you, and it will, it's very enticing to want 'one of everything' and three of nothing and the visuals on that can be busy and disjointed. You have a big house, and need to consider proportions so that the trees planted near it don't come off looking dwarfed and the house monstrous. We have an epidemic here of mini-mansions festooned with dwarf weeping cherry trees, the branches pruned abruptly like a bowl haircut. We also found it more logical to start close and move out with our plantings. Although we are not close to any other dwellings, I use plantings as visual blockades to scenes I don't care to see and for privacy, so do look out your windows in the general direction of any tree you consider planting to make sure it DOESN'T block what you want to see, and does what you don't want to see. Yes I do plant trees to block sun for the shading effect. If they are deciduous, blocking sunlight isn't an issue in winter and it has a tremendous impact in summer to keep our stucco over brick house cool. It sort of amazed me to see someone mention leasing solar panels. You lease from them for your power, or they lease from you for the exposure and buy the power you generate? In our neck of the woods, it would be a company wanting to sink an oil well, instead. LOL. I have a perfect south facing roof area, but any solar panels ever getting there would be self-financed and simply supplemental in their efficiency. I don't have central air, and having a boiler heat am not interested in retrofitting ducts to accomodate it. Trees size so much more quickly than you think. I have some aerial shots of our property taken fifteen years apart and it's astounding at the amount of canopy we have now, compared to then. Our annual rainfall is adequate for most of our plantings and we have installed some freeze proof spigots away from the house, but I got a chuckle over the remark of 100 gallon tanks for watering. Tried that one year and .........well....despite how large a tractor you have, you'd better have more than a trailer behind it to pull your water tank. The center of gravity shifts in liquid loads. It ain't purty. Yes on buying small for most trees. They establish more readily and catch up with the bigger, more expensive ones quite quickly. I've had just as good success with B and B, but really the only reason I got the ones I did was I couldn't find them container. This is going to take years and it never really gets done. That's as it should be and part of the adventure. I can honestly say I've never had to rip a tree out because of poor placement. Nobody shares the exact gardening philosophy and what's right for me might not be right for you as far as pleasing to the senses. Over the years I have found I've been much more pleased with a tree whose needs have been met than one unsuitable for the growing conditions. A healthy and robust, easy care tree is often more beautiful than one which you much struggle to keep happy. Remember it's a lot easier to attend to correcting things like improper branch angles than addressing the problems they cause down the road. Have fun with it and enjoy the journey, too....See MoreShrubs or Small Trees for Narrow Shade Garden
Comments (15)Hello, everyone, A year ago I moved into an 1870's cottage in Little Rock. The front yard (holding to old Southern nomenclature for now) is already a pretty, highly traditional (if predictable) azalea, dogwood, oak mix, but the back is a mess with some nice plants. It already divides fairly naturally into three areas. I'm going to follow my longwinded predisposition and describe the whole space before getting to my questions, which mainly apply to the third, quite shady area north of the house, which will be a woodland areas focusing on natives and bird habitat. 1. The first spot is tiny, about 12' square just north of the garage. The garage is a separate outbuilding west of the house, and I'm turning it into a pottery, so gardening-unlike myself-is on a no fat diet for now. Bamboo, an unknown tree, loropetalum, and a non-blooming biggish crepe myrtle grow there now. The crepe myrtle is on the property line opposite the garage, and makes a natural division into the next area, I plan to stay with all dark foliage and blue and pink bloomers back here. 2. in the central portion, I cut down two sassafras trees (to which my neighbors objected and for which I had no love). This made a sunny area. This is 35 feet wide at one end and 25 the other (where the deck cuts in), and about 50 feet long. Here, I want roses and other sun lovers in the broader, full sun space. The narrower portion is partly shaded by a large unidentified tree that butts up to the deck and is midway between the house and the garage. The narrower space ends where a magnolia grandiflora stands just west of a large crepe myrtle. Almost buried behind the trash trees among broken furniture was a lovely wrought iron, gothic arch. I've moved that so that it bisects this sunny section of the yard from area 3., which is almost full, but not deep shade, as it lies on the north wall of the house. Steps come down from the deck across from the crepe myrtle. To the left of the steps, a small fishpond sits off a picture window in the sunroom. The pond is currently uninhabited due to Beelzebub the raccoon, who ate the previous tenants last winter. The pond needs a total. face lift and has to be deepened before restocking. However, my desk is by that window and, even in it's ugly as-is state, you talk about bird watching heaven! I LOVE it! So re-camping that little pool is where the largest pot of my broke-ass garden-dedicated pesos are headed this round. OK, so now you'll pass under the arch into 3., a small (25' L x 15' W?) woodland garden. At present this area has 2 small redbuds, a pretty 10 foot Enlish holly, a lot of spindly nandina, a multitude of evil-minded vicious, but well-grown Rotunda holliies, and the a/c condensers. Opposite the house is a 6' fence. I thought I could put in 2-3 native shrubs and some vines here. On the other side against the house, I want to replace the Rotundas with mix of camellias and natives. So I finally get to the question, what should I plant, hoping for 4 season interest?...See MoreNigel (northern Va; 7A)
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoOk awesome, thanks on the willow. I figured it was doing ok since the growth but the definite "lean" it's got going presently made me wonder if it is going to grow at that angle or eventually straighten out then weep so to speak..lol
That stinks about the holly. It was such a beauftiful one as well. I just wanted to save it as the neighbor didn't care and was going to take a chain saw to it and throw it out.
I honestly don't know about the crepe myrtle only because it's at least 30 feet away from the main tree, so I figured it was a seedling? Do suckers travel that far? I have pulled out suckers right at the base of the main tree no problem but this seems like it's going to be another crepe myrtle after some years. I tried searching and a lot of what I found appear to be bush type looking but this has three tiny little trunks. I am imaging that the roots are probably intertwined with the box shrub and the other evergreen bush since they are all so close together. Looks like I'll leave it be for now, and then move it in the fall.
Another view further out from the mini crepe myrtle.
:-)
-Nigel
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
7 years agoNigel (northern Va; 7A)
7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
PROForm and Foliage
7 years agorhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
7 years agoNigel (northern Va; 7A)
7 years agorhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
7 years agofloral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
7 years agoNigel (northern Va; 7A)
6 years ago
rusty_blackhaw