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| Dear all
the first major planting on the property was done yesterday.
Check this link for pictures.
Can you advise, comment??? P.S. I know the windbreak is quite close to other trees, for now. But I believe those plants won't last very long... |
Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of planting
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by ilovemytrees 6a Western NY (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 12:33
| I'll leave others to answer your question, but I have one for you. How are you going to water all those trees? I planted 20 this year and having to water just them was quite time consuming. I can't even imagine watering 100! |
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| The main waterings (the one I had to do yesterday and the one I will have to do in the weekend) will be by hand, one by one. I have a well that outputs 5 gallons in ~2 minutes. So, for 100 plants, that is about 200 minutes or about 3 hours... For the later waterings, I have a very long soaker hose (I am not very happy with it, but it will have to work) |
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- Posted by gardengal48 PNW zone 8 (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 17:14
| Your oaks do not look like chestnut oaks to me - leaf is too small and too distinctly lobed for a chestnut. Hope you realize that soaker hoses lose effectiveness at lengths longer than 100' - and less is better. You may find at the extreme lengths the trees at the end of the run are not getting their fair share :-) |
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- Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 17:40
| I see some northern white cedar too-Thuja occidentalis. Your soil looks great which is what I'd expect for Iowa. I'm not nuts about augers used for planting but I do understand many places use this implement for planting. You'll probably be alright-such small plants. I don't know enough about chestnut oaks to say for sure on that, but they could indeed be swamp white/bur hybrids, which are usually pretty decent trees BTW. +oM |
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| WHAT??? Thuja? I hate that! Please tell me that they did not plant a whole row of thujas.... Wisconsitom: are all the photos of the smallest critters all thujas or you do see some red cedars??? I could not figure out what it was as they were so small! |
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- Posted by ilovemytrees 6a Western NY (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 17:48
| Am I reading this right, you plan on watering your trees only 2 minutes per tree? That is not enough for them. I know different soils need different amounts of water, but 2 minutes is flat out not enough. You've made a huge investment; it is going to take more water than you planned. For contrast, I watered 20 trees twice a week, for 20 minutes each tree, they were all 2-3 feet tall in March. If I got an inch of rain in a week, then I didn't water them. Which is why I haven't watered in a while.. I am not saying you have to mimic my watering, I have fast draining sandy loam soil, but what I am saying is 2 minutes is unthinkable. Next year, water each tree at least 15 minutes, once a week. Good luck. |
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- Posted by ilovemytrees 6a Western NY (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 17:50
| Wisconsitom, I agree the soil looks beautiful. |
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| 5 gallons per plant is what the nursery recommended. They plant windbreaks for a living, especially in Iowa. |
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- Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 18:01
| Yes 1cad, first or top row of pics, second from left-quite clearly arbs. I like them myself but strong preference for species or the cultivar 'Hetz Wintergreen'-single leaders, ya know. If you get these trees watered in decently at planting, you conceivably may not have to water them at all-ever again! If t hey were mine, that would be my plan. Big storm coming up from the SW through Saturday could really help you out. Ilove's trees had to go through all the heat of this blistering hot summer. No real similarity to what you've got going. +oM |
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| oh... ok... those were trees for another customer in the area :-) Regarding watering. They told me to water every two weeks until Thanksgiving, unless it rains. Also, they recommended not using mulch but only herbicide. I was meditating on whether to give a nice mycorrhizal treatment. |
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| What did you find on Picea omorika wind resistance? Some sources say they have moderate wind resistance and can be used for windbreak. Others state they are sensitive to wide open wind and are not recommended for windbreak. Planting them in your application (wide open) in 5a is somewhat of a bold move. Hopefully they do well for you. |
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| The windbreak guy vouched for them and said that they appear to be much more resistant than previously thought. If you see their webpage, they don't seem to be interested in hiding weaknesses of some of their products. He said that he has yet to see any winterburn on them. The nursery is in Iowa. Apparently there have been some cold winters recently. I hope they turn out alright. They certainly look gorgeous. |
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| I'd agree, Picea omorika is my favorite species spruce followed by Picea orientalis. Both the beauty queens for spruces. |
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| Yes, those definitely aren't Chestnut Oak. The one species that came to mind was "post oak" but I can't vouch for that. I could be completely wrong. |
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| one picture does look like cedar which deer like, the other pictures look like juniper (deer resistant) most of the oak pictures look like bur oak which are good trees . maybe they can replace the cedars and add some chestnut oaks . |
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| maybe they can give you a credit to fill in if some of the trees die or have bad deer damage and replace them with chestnut oak or red oak. |
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| A couple of pictures looked like Bur Oak to me also. |
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- Posted by ricksample 6 (My Page) on Thu, Oct 11, 12 at 11:37
| I wish I had soil like that and a machine to put them into the ground. I did about 120 trees in a 2 year span. Ilovemytrees- Why do you water your plants so much? Do you have sandy soil or live in a hot climate? I simply carry around 4 milk jugs full of water to do mine. I give them all a light drink, then after that soaks in come back around with something more heavy... but I only spend about 2 minutes per tree. I look at it this way, especially for new plantings, if you water your trees while they are still in the black plastic container, the water poors out the bottom in just a second. If you do that for 20 minutes, you aren't giving the tree any additional water, your watering the soil under the plant. Unless I read your post wrong maybe? |
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- Posted by ilovemytrees 6a Western NY (My Page) on Thu, Oct 11, 12 at 12:18
| Rick, I've got sandy soil that is almost all rock and it's fast draining. I watered my trees this spring and summer twice a week for 20-30 minutes at a time because we had constant 80-90 degree temperatures with almost NO (measurable) rain for 5 months straight. Trees are living things that need water to stay alive just like you and I do. They are no different except they don't have the ability to spring themselves out of their hole and grab the hose to get a drink. We go to the refrigerator, they have to wait on the good will of their owners. Or of rain from above. Obviously, if I had gotten an inch of rain once a week from natural rainfall I wouldn't have watered them. As it stands today, I haven't watered (and it's been great! lol) since the first of Sept because we've been getting hard rain at least twice a week in Sept and October. All the grass is green, and we've made up a lot of our water deficit, I believe. Buffalo hasn't been getting the rain, it's been right in my county and the county next over that's been getting most of it from cold fronts and lake effect rain. |
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| Rick I am certainly not an expert such as ilovemytrees but I believe your assumption is somewhat incorrect. There is value to slow watering and this has to do with the heterogeneous structure of soil. Large flow rates of water tend to create crevices in soil (especially dry soil or soil that lacks organic matter, not quite my case) that are capable of draining water extremely fast, leaving the remaining soil, which has smaller pores, not saturated with water. In my case, I just limit myself to do the best I can provide to the trees I got. Cheers |
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- Posted by ricksample 6 (My Page) on Thu, Oct 11, 12 at 16:40
| lcadem - I agree.. I don't water fast, let it all run off, then walk away. I make sure I add water slowly, for a couple minutes to avoid run off. I do it in two passes to allow the first one to soak in. It would be impossible to water that many trees (without a drip line which I can't use) for 20 minutes at a time. That would take me about 50 hours a week. Now I have clay soil, so the less water the better. I think I usually give each plant around 4 gallons per month during dry spells. I haven't watered since mid August. About my pot theory (I guess I'll call it) lol... if the plant is in the pot, out of the pot sitting on the ground or in the soil. As soon as the water hits the black soil of the plant, it'll just take seconds before it reaches the bottom of the hole. Any additional water added will just soak into the soil surounding the plant. Water doesn't run off of the black soil that nurseries use (at least where I buy my plants from). They are always very fast draining. I was only trying to make a point that (especially since you have fast draining soil) the more water you dump in the hole, the more will drain out under the plant and on the sides. Meaning that during lets say dry periods. It's better to water one plant 2 gallons twice a week than 4 gallons once a week because the water will just drain out. Those numbers would still be to high for me because of my soil type. |
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| Rick, it makes a lot of sense (and it is how I thought it was till not too long ago), but it does seem that scientific evidence support the idea that it is much better to give a lot of water a few times than a little water frequently. The explanation is, as I understand it, two-sided. On one hand most plants need to dry out a bit in between waterings. Frequent waterings, especially in heavy soils, tend to cause hypoxic conditions that can suffocate the plant and promote the infection of the roots. The other reason has to do with how water interacts with soils. Saturating the soil with water, which means wetting all pores in it, from the atomic scale to the nanoscale, to the millimeter scale, requires time and a fairly slow delivery of water. Fast delivery of water creates crevices which end up just moving the water to the subsoil. I think of this in these terms: if you step with your shoes in a large puddle, the water will flow by, largely. But if you have a long walk in the rain, even if the total amount of water that went on the shoe was smaller, the shoe will get wetter in the end. I doubt that anybody here has the silver bullet on watering, in terms of predicting how much water a plant will need. That will change on the size of the plant, the specific time of the year and how it affects the water needs of the plant, the soil composition and structure, the type of plant, the air movement, and probably a bunch of things that still have to be discovered (just google for "hydraulic redistribution in plants" and you'll get a glimpse as to how complex things can get). Nobody can account for all that. I think the good old method of using the finger is still unbeaten, as Ken advocates... :-) |
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- Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on Thu, Oct 11, 12 at 18:02
| Thus, the frequently heard saying that watering is part art, part science. This is exactly the case. And too, this is why questions like "How much should I be watering my trees?" are so hard to answer with anything resembling actual helpful information. +oM |
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- Posted by christie_sw_mo Z6 (My Page) on Fri, Oct 12, 12 at 2:36
| You can cut your time down a lot when you're watering if you use a splitter on your hose, then you could water two at once or four or more if you go crazy with the splitters. Use one hose leading from your spigot, then split it and attach shorter hoses after you get close to your trees rather than splitting it at the spigot. That way you don't have to buy as many hoses. Hope that made sense. You'll have lower water pressure if you're watering four at a time but that will give the water a chance to soak in instead of running off anyway. Lowe's carries them and probably Walmart but maybe only in the spring. Lawn and Garden has Christmas trees right now. |
Here is a link that might be useful: garden hose splitters on Google.
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| I was exactly thinking of doing that Christie! It makes a lot of sense! It would be actually fantastic if I could just buy the splitters and then a rubber tube that I could cut to the desired length and that would fit on the splitters... something like what we are talking about has no need for fancy metal connectors... or to buy a separate hose for each arm of the "hose tree" |
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| Your "chestnut oak" looks more like Burr oak than my Burr oak does. I never heard of Swamp Burr oak, just burr oak. The pic with your hand and a toothed leaf looks like Swamp Chestnut oak. The oaks in your top pics remind me of quercus Alba and Overcup oak. Oaks in youth can look different than mature leaves, I'm sure you know that. If I were in your situation, I would print out leaf pics online, and ask the company, why are these leaves so different from these pictures that represent how this trees leaves should look? I am lost on the evergreens. |
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Love your Boxer. My Newfie is my gardening buddy, he fo llows me around while I do stuff in the yard. Here a glimpse of him. |
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| poaky, you should be very close. The "swamp chestnut" is actually a chinquapin, which is displaying an *amazing* red fall color. Apparently I found in the forum a lot of them show red fall color when young, which then fades as the tree matures.... I keep my fingers crossed. If it keeps going that way it is going to shame the white oak standing next to it. What I am not sure about is that this is the lightest green I have seen in a chinquapin leaf. The purple ones are white oaks. Certainly not landscape quality specimens but I sort of like when a plant is somewhat messy and natural. All trees around here seem to have been grown with the cookie cutter. The bur oak leaves are very much like bur oaks, but the bark on those trees is not at all corky. This is why I think they sent me the hybrids that nursery makes between swamp white and bur oak (which they call swamp bur). P.S. our dog is just wonderful - not a great gardening buddy as he tends to think anything in your hand is a toy. Your dog is wonderful as well. We had been looking into newfies but we were unsure as to how they would do in the summer heat here in IA. |
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- Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on Sun, Oct 14, 12 at 11:31
| 1cad, I'd guess you're not concerned with watering your new trees today! If you live where I think you do anyway. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure where you're at. Iowa right? I guess then it just depends on if you're far enough east to have gotten in on this deluge. We're on our way to well over three inches by the time it all gets out of here. +oM |
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| Tom, my new trees should be fine but I only got slightly more than 1 inch. I am in central iowa so I might have missed the worst (or the best, I should say). I think the soil here would really enjoy a good couple of inches of good rain. |
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- Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on Mon, Oct 15, 12 at 9:41
| Okay yeah, a little west of the main action. We ended up with a little over three inches here just S. of Green Bay. Reminded me of the kind of rain we used to get regularly! Long steady soaker. +oM |
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- Posted by wisconsitom 4/5 WI (My Page) on Mon, Oct 15, 12 at 22:39
| Update: Golf course near my house recorded 4.3 inches from Fri. to Sun. +oM |
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