As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
When we purchased a peony for the mother's grave, it was from a local greenhouse which used to be pretty good, but the guy is getting old and he tried selling us the 26.95 peonies, but I rooted around and found the first year ones for 10 bucks.
The one TL wanted was a pink one, but it's leaves were curled as the people there had not been watering things.
With planting, us watering twice a week at the graveyard, and some gumbo soil, the little plant has straightened out.
I will admit to something to in this isolated cemetery which few people ever visit, in there are peonies there, and a shirt tail relation had a huge one, the mother of all peonies, so while I was digging the hell out of graves to level them off and get some sod on another asshole relatives grave who would not sell us his place, I decided to take a slip off the big peony, not expecting too much.
I left that thing set in it's container in standing water, for about a week, and it perked right up, along with a white lilac we got off the Uncles and a periwinkle. That is what this is about is how to harvest and transplant things effectively.
That shed that TL and I built, looks like an old pole barn, dirt floor, faces the north, but that thing grows flowers as it is shaded for most of the day, does not have a concrete floor so it does not become a bake oven.
I had apple seedling early in there that died.......who knows the reason, but for these other stressed plants, they have not missed a beat.
Uncle has a juniper bush in back of the house, and next to it was a green ash. It looked like someone might have mowed it off, but it was tender and green, so we dug it up, sunk it into water, and it is a green little bush now. I will tell Uncle about it if he wants it planted somewhere and see how it goes. Good PR work, but with trees at 60 to 90 dollars a pop now, getting free trees is a better deal.
Discovered 3 little oaks over there too, which we dug up and are growing nicely in the shed.
See direct sunlight wilts things, worse than heat. With this shed, or the north side of most homes, you can take the transplant shock away, and the plants respond readily.
Having been through this from experience in the brier patch, I know all the things that kill plants. This shed and the water bath is one of the necessities of life. For example, as our place did not come to us last year, I was stuck with a Honeygold apple in the porch all winter. It was green, but would not bud. So I got fed up and soaked it in the water for a week, and it is starting to come out of it and bud. There are such things as overwatering, but most of the time it is underwatering that people do.
The ELM Maple we got for burying the mother from the mortuary. Emerald Luster Maple is the official grafted name is a 70 dollar 10 foot tree. The red maple which is Royal Red is 90 bucks, but we wanted the pretty one as red gets old in color and this ELM in checking online has a pretty green, and it has a pretty red tinted yellow leaf. I prefer that providing we do not get a freeze, followed by a 100 mph wind like we usually do stripping trees so the ice does not damage them.
The ELM was in rough shape, so I soaked that thing for 2 weeks, and it finally started acting like it wanted to live in budding. We planted and I still deluge it several times a week as maples can take water, and it is responding nicely.
If you want a tree to grow, water the hell out of it. Most places you can not water a tree enough.
In that, as stated most trees can take quite a bit of sitting in water. Apples are not as friendly, but to get them going, they will take it for awhile. What you are doing is growing those little microfiber roots that make the tree grow.
Maples, Ash, Oaks are all swamp trees, and Elm will wet their feet for quite awhile too without any harm.
I am not watering a black walnut I planted 5 years ago, but in watering that little 2 foot high tree, it is now 10 feet this year, and producing about 2 feet of growth, which is fast and I grow a tree to have a tree, not look at a stick for 20 years.
Nuts are different trees though in once they put their tap root down, they grow in a spurt, and reach like 25 feet, and then slow up as they spread out.
Where we are on this place, or our place currently, there were two massive elms when I was a child. They were original homestead trees, for shade and elm are lovely trees for that. They were over 100 years old when they died, but what set them back was my stupid, dumb ass, shit for brains old man, thinking he had to trim that tree up. That guy should have died when I was born and saved the world a great deal of problems.
I can still feel the tearing at those old trees and the pain it caused them. Yes I am a plant empath too.
I never liked elms, as I see no purpose in shade alone. Problem is that maples are not that great of shade trees and ash just suck. Elm in being triangular are why America planted them all over the place. The point is now there is a maple tree growing in the yard, and it will be a shade tree as they do grow quite fast and I am hoping that it does produce seeds, so that I can plant them to hell and gone.
I still have a bag of maple seeds that TL and I collected in the metro. I hope they are still viable as this shit of waiting around for rich people to donate and for our land is something they should have to go through in their lives to educate them on their responsibilities.
The short of this meandering post though is the reality that if you get yourselves too big plastic pots, do not disturb the roots of a plant in digging it. Stick it into a bucket with water in it, so that it can soak up water for 3 days to two weeks, and keep it in an open shed to the north so that it is shaded, you should be able to have lush trees for transplanting in August and September.
That peony lived being in water which I did not think possible, and it is sending out new shoots, so go figure on that one. The donations come in, and God gets us that place, there are plants that are going back over there this year.
You though can get some plants growing and not have to pay the unGodly prices they charge now as there is always some weed that needs to be transplanted.
You now have the million dollar knowledge in digging and prospering green things no matter what.
Once again, another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Nuff Said
agtG
