A Thread About Trees

[WallabyOfChaos]

I thought I would start a thread for those who love trees as a place to discuss growing tips and techniques, health, our favorite trees, etc.

I feel as though I am a bit of a tree addict. Right now my window sills are full of seeds and seedlings that I have started. I love to grow trees from seed and for some crazy reason I can't seem to let a seed go in the trash. Here is a list of the tree projects I have going right now.

Seedlings:
1 Red Oak (about a year old)
6 Cottonwoods (6 months old)
4 Plums (just sprouted)

Waiting for germination:
1 Cherry,
4 Mulberries

Stratifying:
7 Honey Crisp apple seeds

I know my plums and the apple seeds are very unlikely to produce good fruit, if any fruit at all, because they came from store-bought produce. But if they produce some oxygen and a little shade I will call it a win.

So what is everyone else growing?

 

[TXchickmum]

-love trees! We have a large red oak, Vitex, four crape myrtles, a Bradford pear, Loblolly pine, and a new Bonanza peach in the back yard. The front has a birch, Bradford pear, and a huge crape myrtle. On the east side, we have a (Black Diamond) crape myrtle, and on the west side we have four crape myrtles. This is about all we can fit on a 7,500 sq. ft. lot.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

I love crape myrtles! When is was a little kid we lived on a place that had a massive (or at least massive to a 5 year old) pink crape myrtle. I really would like to plant one here, but they are really hard to find here and a tad expensive. What colors are your crape myrtles?

We have a lot of fruit trees around the house Our house was built in the late 20s and we have a mini orchard in our backyard. I don't know how old any of the trees are or what varieties - there are 3 apricots, 3 pears, 2 apples, and 2 mulberries (one is non-fruiting). We also live along a creek, so there are tons of enormous cottonwoods that have been here as long as anyone can remember. These big cottonwoods grow naturally along creeks and waterways in our part of the panhandle. I'm afraid that some of our bigger cottonwoods may be nearing the end of their lives, so that is why I gathered up seeds this past June and planted some to replace some of the trees that have died. There are also a few willows of some kind growing along the creek, and some sort of elm trees along the fence line.

Here are a few pics of some of the cottonwoods. Please excuse the lack of grass in the first two as they were taken at the end of 2011 during the drought.

 

[lazy gardener]

We have way too many trees: had to carve a place out of the woods to build our house. However, I'd love to bring in a bull dozer and remove 90% of the existing wild trees on my property in favor of planting a mixture of edible landscaping trees and shrubs. Not a tree, but I'm going to try starting some cranberries from seed, may actually buy some started seedlings, perhaps some lingonberries. Want to plant some Siberian Pea tree/shrubs in the spring.

 

[mlongworth]

Love trees. We are on about 1/2 an acre in town. We have 2 maples out front it was 3 lost 2 nights ago in the storm, 2 black mulberries, a pine and 2 huge black walnuts that were all here when we bought it. I have added 2 apple, 2 cherry and a peach. Will be adding another cherry and peach come spring. I found a place that carries lots of old heirloom fruit and nut trees and berries. Not real expensive either same price id pay at the store for a fruit tree. Its called tree of antiquity.

 

[Life is Good!]

Add us to 'tree hugger' variety human. On a 2acre parcel, we've got more trees than I can elaborate on. We spent the last 5yrs clearing out more buckthorn and box elder trees than I can count from along the fence line - so that we could simply install a field farm fence! At one point, we counted and had taken out 47 of those two species and had another 15 large ones to go. Now, we're down to two large box elders that I'd love to remove - but neighbor wants to preserve them for shading her corral. As they're planning on moving in 3-5yrs to 'retire'....we'll wait! What's another 5 years when you're on the 40+yr plan?

Looking to add back beneficial and edible trees to the property. Added apples last spring - this upcoming spring I'd like to add cherries and pears. Perhaps a few native pecan trees as well.

I will add - be careful of ordering trees on-line from far afield. A tree grown in your climate/region is well worth the extra cost. Yes, that cross country variety might look fabulous on-line, but when it doesn't thrive in your different climate...well, was it truly 'cheaper'? We've been here nearly 2doz years and I'm still finding new sources for local landscaping. Well worth the extra cost - because it survives, where plants from across the nation don't. Experience here. I planted 3 rhodendrons locally sourced, one died after five years due to drought - replaced with one from big box store - it died the first winter because the plant froze. I've left the gap between the two - I figure it'll fill in eventually!

 

[wyoDreamer]

Add me to the tree lover list - I sure do miss Wisconsin for its trees. We lived within 3 miles of 4 different apple orchards, 2 pick your own strawberry farms and a pick your own blueberry place. This is home now -


Notice - no trees. The closest wild growing tree is about 3/4 mile and is a grove of cottonwoods growing along the stream. We have planted about 10 trees around the house and all have of htose have fallen victim to gophers, ground squirrels, antelope, rabbits, and poor soils. Oh yeah, our irish setter ate two of the dumpster maples in the back yard. The guy who owned our house prior to us drove truck for the local garbage collection company. He planted a number ot scavanged trees from the dumpsters - top dead and pretty bad shape, but they had green leaves on them. Dog grew up in Wisconsin and was used to going in the woods and finding big sticks for us to throw for him. He couldn't find any sticks when we moved out here so he made his own sticks ...
We planted a windbreak along the snow fence - 120 austrian pines, wild plum, 2 other natives. They are now 3 years old and still only about 1 foot tall. lol But at least most of them are alive. I think in about 10 years they may be 5 feet tall.

 

[Happy Flock]

I'm another tree lover. I just moved to a half-acre woodland property in southern Australia. I started a thread today called "Chickens in woodland garden". Just saw your thread!

 

[Alaskan]

I love the pictures that you'll posted!

Gorgeous!

I adore Texas, but I think Wyoming is very pretty too.


When I first moved up here to Alaska, I lived at a much lower elevation, I think it was at 200 ft above sea level. That house was on a stream, and on "the bench", and had apple trees, giant rows of raspberries and strawberries and at LEAST one more full month of summer than what I get now.

I now live outside the same town, but up on a hill bluff, at about 1,300 feet above sea level.

I have tried growing apple trees and blue berries and service berries for ages!

I thought that all of the apple trees were dead, but two were actually still alive this summer. I kinda think that it might just be the root stock that is growing, but I am not sure. We had one year with a rodent hoard, and the rodents girdled every single twig on my blueberry bushes. Killed them all.

I am right where the trees switch to all spruce. I have managed to get one cut leaf birch to a nice and lovely size (maybe 20 feet). Half way down my driveway there is one lone birch, maybe 13 feet tall, and at the base of the driveway the woods are maybe one third birch, the rest Spruce.

OK.....I am rambling.

 

[WallabyOfChaos]

I didn't mean to let this thing go dormant. It's been pretty busy around here.

Well anywho, here are some updates on how my little tree projects are going. The 4 plums are all doing very well. I guess I should have thought a little more about when I planted them because they are getting kind of tall and it seems like spring is forever away. I still don't know where they will go permanently yet. One of the four mulberry seeds has sprouted in to a pretty little thing. There is something new coming up in the mulberry pot. I'm not sure what it is yet, but I guess I will need to transplant or remove one of them when I get it figured out. The cherry never made it. It got dropped and spilled, which damaged the little sprout and ultimately killed it. Sadly for the apple seeds, I have run out of window sill space so even though they were ready to go I had to throw them out. Only 4 of them made it through the stratification, the others kind of rotted so I'm guessing they weren't viable to start with. On a happier note, I have a surprise lemon tree coming along nicely. I had some lemon seeds set out while it was still kind of warm hoping to get one to sprout and see if I could make it a house/patio plant, but our dogs managed to wreck them. I scooped up all the dirt I could and picked out all the dry, crispy lemon seeds I could find and used the dirt to re-pot my two lavenders. About a week ago something strange had come up in one of my lavender pots, so I pulled it up carefully and it was a lemon! Here are a few pictures of what I have going now:

Two of the plums:


The mulberry. This was a few days before the mystery seedling emerged.


And, the little lemon that could.