Amelanchier "Autumn Brilliance"

I got a deal on a 6 foot Amelanchier "Autumn Brilliance" - $5.00 ! It burst its burlap and was moved into a big plastic pot. Not big enough, I think. They wanted to get rid of it.

It's really heavy, so wherever I plop it next is where it will stay. I've been reading about where to plant. It seems like for every plant I look up it's "full sun" but then other sites say partial shade is OK, and I'm finding the same for this plant, full sun and/or partial shade. This will go in my front yard where I will have full sun (West), blistering full sun (Southwest) or light shade but with some tree roots (not surface but it will be a bit more dry) from a neighbor's yard.

Next - when I cut the pot off I expect to see that it is root bound. Should I cut the roots apart? Is that making vertical slicing into the root ball?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Geez, I guess I'll jump in here where I'm sure to get knee-deep in no time! LOL Love your nick, that about sums it all up, huh? LOL

I did the vertical slicing into the root ball thing when planting my own root bound shrub, same as a root bound perennial, right? Then I read in American Nurseryman or some such as that, never slice into the root ball. LOL You can instead, tease the roots from the rootball, and root prune, by slicing off to 1/3 of the roots and then fanning them out in the planting hole so they stop encircling the rootball, and choking the life out of your statuesque beauty. This means of course, a proper burial, with the hole 2 times the width of the rootball, and as deep. I suggest that you bury a soaker hose in the mulch, to make sure she goes into her winter nap well-watered.

As far as siting is concerned, this is one of those small trees/large shrubs that are used with some frequency now in mixed borders, along with perennial companion plants. If you are so inclined, I have some specific suggestions in the form of a planting plan I ripped out of a magazine, if interested.

'Autumn Brilliance' is supposedly pest resistant and adaptable to soil type, so my best suggestion is to plant it where you will get the most enjoyment out of it! If I'm reading your post correctly, you have three possibilities, all in your front yard? Please post pictures of the site. I'm sure you'll get lots more opinions.

I agree with about all that PG13 had to say, except this: I'm not a big fan of soaker hoses. It is just so hard to gauge how much water is being applied with them. I prefer good old-fashioned sprinklers. Not the type for lawns that wave back and forth, but the type that cast a sprinkle in one direction only. They are usually made of plastic and have a rotating top that allow you to select a sprinkling pattern. With these types I can aim them at a tree, I'll know they are watering the whole general root zone (at least), and I can set a bucket near the tree and know when I've watered a good inch or so.

When I get home, if I remember, I'll post a picture of the greatest sprinkler ever made. It's a Martha Stewart design sold by KMart for about $4.00, and it is a marvel of perfect simplicity.

Scott

Thank you, PrairieGirl. I have a feeling most of today will be spent digging a big enough hole and teasing those roots. I have decided a location, SW, where it will be lovely from the street and I will also be able to see it from the breakfast nook without having to resort to a periscope.

I think I may have gotten one of those sprinlers, Decumbent. I hope so. The price sounds right, and it's very simple. Dial and adjust water pressure. I got tired of getting soaked trying to adjust those wavers and spitters so they'd hit the right area.

I have just now lost all respect for Scott as a landscape manager.

If you can gauge the amount of water that is soaking into the ground in the precise root zone of the plant in question by setting a bucket relatively nearby a sprinkler that is shooting water up in the air at an oblique angle and is subject to wind deflection and evaporation prior to even hitting the ground, not to mention birds/bees/dogs/small children partaking of some....then you should be able to measure the volume provided by a pervious hose cut to fit exactly over the rootball of the same plant that lays in contact with soil under mulch when connected to a water supply of constant pressure.

Stick the soaker hose in the bucket and time how long it takes to generate an inch (or run it for an hour and see what the volume is).

I think you need a consultant. When should I stop by?

Why, Vim and Vigor, you big strong man-hunk, thank you for coming to my defense. I actually have never done that, I just find the soaker hose to be more efficient with our clay soil. There's inches, and there's inches, know what I mean? nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

VerdantVista,

Well, I knew all along that it was only a question of time before you lost all respect for my landscaping skills. Actually, it took far longer than I ever thought it would. If you could see me now, you would see me actually kicking myself for putting that bucket under the sprinkler thing out there so hastily. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!

Well, in my shame, I will live up to my promise and post this picture of the greatest sprinkler ever. The Martha Stewart masterpiece made of painted high carbon steel, assembled overseas by underage macaques, and sold at KMart for a pittance. So, if I must go down, I go down swinging, this thing makes a soaker hose look just plain silly. Note the simplicity. Note not a single moving part! Note the always predictable and never erring spray pattern. Note the genious of two prongs to stick into the earth. Never in this world has such perfect functionality been observed before.

Okay, no more. I'm going off to bed to sulk and watch the history channel until I fall asleep.

Scott

OK, Dynamic, I'll rescind some of the lost respect. You obviously can repair a busted hose end and are wise enough to use a shutoff valve with irrigation apparatus.

But o ye of wretched excess, blessed with the unending bounty of the Ohio River as a water source. Some of us have to count our drips and drabs when it's hot and dry.

Meanwhile, I'll go out and count the the moving parts; the Rube Goldberg-esque complexity; and Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle spray pattern of the drip hose, and wonder whatever was I thinking when I suggested it's use. Surely it's such a Ph.D level device that no simpleton on DG could ever divine its operation.

Except Pretty Great...

VV,

You overdid yourself there! I laughed until tears (made up in part by abundant Ohio River water) rolled down my cheeks. I think the last time I laughed that hard was somewhere in Indiana coming back from Illinois when we concocted that string of Betula cultivar names.

Scott

Ain't touchin' that one.

But a Martha Stewart design that is the "greatest sprinkler ever made", this I have got to see.

Um, no simpleton on DG except ME!? Aw, shucks, thanks Vivacious Vixen.

No PGZ5, I think I'd be the simpleton as everything VV said went straight over my head, taking my head with it, splatting on the wall and now I have one huge gray mass mess on my wooden floor.

Eeeww! Wonder what kind of spray pattern happens when your head explodes? And how much actually soaks into the floor?

Am I the only one who is disappointed that Martha does not offer a true verdigris?

Huh? Who's Martha? Oh yeah, ha ha. But she could probably patina it in a half hour studio session.

If it were brass some urine would do it the "natural" way. From a dog, of course.

Wait--lets go back to Scott's picture. If you are going to put a picture up like that Scott, photoshop out the clover, the crabgrass, and that other weed with the little pink flowers. Keep the Ginkgo leaves. Perhaps surround the base of Martha's sprinkler with 1,000 thread count egyptian cotton.

Kevin, could it be possible that Scott's head blew off like mine did when trying to figure out photoshop? Lessons? When are you free? Just give me a time and I'll be there. Perhaps some lessons in photography also? Does she really have 1000 TC Egyptian Cotton sheets? I want some. We can go shopping after the lessons. Deal?

Kneevin,

That is actually what serves as my lawn! My garden beds are largely weed-free. My lawn, however, is mostly weeds. What grasses grow there are not what most people would like in their lawns. Actually, that area beneath the Ginkgo is where my nursery is, and up until last week all of that area was occupied by a ton of one gallon pots. That is why it looks so bare.

I've always been very happy with my weedy lawn. It truly stays green all year and I like the violets and majus and other things that occasionally bloom through it all. But I am getting a wee bit tired of ground ivy and violets and nutsedge creeping from the lawn into the gardens, so I am considering applying weed control. I've even bought the stuff (last spring), but I just haven't the time or the will to read the instructions, learn how to use it, and then do the dirty deed.

Scott

Great Scott! That's exactly what I did, bought the weed & feed, lugged it home, put it away (raining), missed my window, convinced myself Labor Day was do or die time, missed my window, you get the idea.

I actually removed a small patch of weeds, telling hubby it would be easier to buy a single roll of sod, now I've actually had to weed the dirt patch more than once.

I hate turf.

Yesterday I started digging to plant the Amelanchier. Only a few shovels and I ran into wisteria. I am sure it's Chinese because that is where the roots were heading. I had been routinely cutting this monster down for years, This summer a friend and I cut out the "stump". I thought I was finally finished with it. There were a few small viney leaves that came up after the extraction, but I hand applied RU and thought that would be the end.

Wrong, The underground roots were massive and extensive laterally as well as deep. I traced each one to get it out whole. (I had read here that nothing could be left behind.) I ended up not digging but excavating a huge area, in a few places making holes so deep that ground level was above my knees. I gave up on two big roots in very deep holes because I had hit clay and only went about another foot after that. Is there any hope they will rot? Three feet down, the last of which is clay?

It was almost sunset. I climbed out of the last hole and started looking at exactly where I was going to place the Amelanchier. What I saw made me think I better look when I wasn't so tired.

I went out this morning to start again. It looked the same. Too close to the house if the Amelanchier was going to grow big and beautiful like the pictures. Because of a gate I would only have about 2 1/2 feet from the middle of the bush to the house wall. (It's going to be a big bush; it wasn't trimmed up (?) to take the tree form). So I filled in all the excavated area.

I went to my next choice which in a way I'm more comfortable with because there will be nice sun but not as brutal. Plenty of room and it will be a very nice place for a specimen planting. The soil was not nearly as rich and organic as the other area. Having been on DG long enough now that I would have felt guilty forever just digging a small hole and dumpling the plant in, I felt compelled to make this a very rich and healthy home for years to come. Besides, for some reason I have become attached to this plant, the lines of the branches and the delicate brilliance of the (remaining) leaves.

So I dug a hole 6 feet in diameter and almost 3 feet deep and filled the bottom layer with a topsoil/humus mix I had delivered yesterday and added good rotted moldy leaves and tossed and stirred to mix. Then I wrasseled and rolled my "Autumn Brilliance" to the edge of the hole. Using my best big Cutco carver, I cut the plastic pot off.

Horror of horrors! This poor bush still had the partially rotted burlap with a rusting wire cage around it. It had not been repotted as I was told. I couldn't remember what I read here about the wire because I never thought I would encounter it. I couldn't find any implement that could cut the thick wire, so I bent pieces back and forth until they broke. I removed about half of it. The remainder was so embedded I couldn't get hold of it to work it.

There were many fine, black tiny roots on the outside. That's not good, right? I pulled apart pieces of the rotting burlap that I could get a hold on, ready to tease those roots out and spread them, Prairiegirl. Wrong. The planting medium, if that's what it's called, was red clay. Not red from the rusting wire. Real red and slippery and impervious. Sculpting clay has more porosity.

I tried, Prairiegirl, I really did. I scratched and clawed at it with a barbecue fork. Nada. Barely scratched the surface, and couldn't see but a few fine white roots. So I went back to the Cutco carver and made many vertical notched areas with the hope that those tiny little roots would smell freedom in their humousy surrounds and be motivated to make their escape.

No wonder the salesperson told me I could have it for $5.00 and hoofed over to stick the Sold sign on before I even said, "OK". I am depressed. What a hard, short life this graceful and brave bush has had. I feel like I have given it a buriel instead of a new life.

If I am able to stand stright enough to walk tomorrow I will try to take a picture.

NGJ,

ABS's are pretty tough. It'll probably pull through unless it appears to be severly stressed. Have the leaves held on til now and look decent sized? If it makes it, it may not be bothered by the remaining wire. If it does interfere (no interference for 5-10 years probably) with the root growth, you can cut it down and then plant the latest, greatest, purple/weeping/variegated Redbud from Decumbent and be really happy! I'd prefer to think that you gave the plant a deserved second chance rather than a burial and at worst it is filling a space that is awaiting something really great.

Best of luck,
Ernie

Thanks for the hopeful words, Ernie. I'll be looking for signs of life in six months - a long wait.

There is space among the remaining wires in the former basket. One whole side is opened. I couldn't get any of the wire off the bottom, though. Should there be a "main" root going down? If it exists, it's buried within the clay ball. If it should grow down, I was thinking there is plenty of room for it to grow. I'd have to measure the wire in the trash, but I'm thinking the spaces are at least 2 inches square and the wire would rust out before the root choked.

I'll get a decent wire cutter and un-dig the bush if you think that would help it. Is there some way to loosen the clay and preserve the roots? I couldn't get it to break up at all, not at all, which is why I resorted to slicing wedges out.

Stress - the leaves are small, what I thought of as "delicate". It has lost a lot of leaves. I haven't seen an Amelanchier before, so I was thinking it just dropped leaves before other bushes.

It's been raining torrents since I finished planting. I hope that doesn't drop the rest of the leaves. I'll try for a picture tomorrow.

Maybe I should send Decumbent some Cater's little Liver pills (whatever they are!), just in case.

Oh No! How horrible. Consider that $5 a donation to charity, at least you'll have something to hang some spiderwebs on (now) and holiday lights (later). It will probably hang on, but rather like crippled Tiny Tim. There is still time to replace it this season, I know I'm rather ruthless, but you did a heckuva lot of work preparing TWO planting places...

Yep, and I did a really fine job, not like me at all. The first one is about 10' X 5' because I had to excavate so much to get the Wisteria roots. It is rich, luscious and loose. Too bad my sale gluttony caused me to buy all plants for the backyard, not this ready-and-waiting bed. I might have to go back and see what's left.

What do I know, ignore me, the amelanchier could be just fine. I'm the one who sliced vertical roots in my shrub's rootball, remember? :D

Geez, PG, maybe I was remembering your post about making vertical slices and didn't remember that wasn't the way to do it!

Here's a picture. How stressed does it look? I found out it came straight from Geogia red clay! I hope it can handle a Z 6b winter.

Another picture:

That looks about like every multi-stemmed newly transplanted Amelanchier I've ever seen, going into fall dormancy with decent fall color. I've planted a hundred or so.

Don't sweat it; let's see what spring brings. Only advice I'd add is don't dig your hole deeper than the ball you are putting in it, and don't amend in the hole. Add amendments to the soil surface and let nature work it for you.

Well darn, I figured that if I put lots of good stuff under the root ball that it would encourage the roots (which I then couldn't find anyway once I got the plastic off). I had watered it down some before putting the root ball on it because I thought it would sink some.

We got an inch and a half of rain in an hour according to the weatherperson, and it continued to rain for another three hours. I think everything is about as settled now as it will be (?). From the picture it may look as if it's too low because the picture is taken from the high side of a slight downslope to the yard, but the root ball surface is still above surrounding ground level (by good luck I guess).

Thanks for your seasoned opinion that it looks like a typical multi-stemmed going-into-dormancy Amelanchier. I do hope it makes it.

Should I call this a little tree or a bush (and why)?

It looks lovely! And so does the rest of your landscaping, such nice mature shrubs and trees. (Botanically, there is no difference! Plants are characterized by whether or not they are herbaceous or woody, perennial, biennial or annual, deciduous or evergreen, coniferous or broad-leaved, etc., etc.) Call it a done deal and enjoy it.

Positively Grand: all that book-learnin' will get you everywhere.

NiceGreenJardin: at this stage, you might refer to it as a bushy little multi-stemmed tree. Show us spring blooming pics next April.