What would you do?

Long story but basicly someone I ran into bought a 25 year old house with totally over grown 25 year old plants and trees. They are going to cut much of it down so I said I'll come take a look and take anything they don't want. They just moved here from NJ so they really don't know much about the plants down here and one of the things they want to get rid of are a bunch of camellias. I have a spot for more camellias so I'm taking a look at what's there tomorrow morning.

Question is, what should I do to try and transplant large camellias at this time of year? Prune them back and dig up a large root ball? Take the whole plant no matter how large it is? Is this a bad idea and they'll just die?

I know this is the wrong time of year but it's a take it or leave it type of deal. They'll just chain saw them down. I wonder what else they have hiding in the yard? I drove past their house and it is a mess, stuff everywhere. I'm going to help them out a bit on what to keep and what to get rid of. I saw a huge minmosa, that can go.

My area I wanted to turn into a jungle may become a camellia and hydranga garden. LOL. Lots of shade and enough room for for many large plants. Hmmmm.

This message was edited Aug 24, 2007 9:18 PM

I moved some large camellias a long time ago-they were about 6' and established. I can't remember the size of the rootball, but it wasn't huge-they didn't even hardly react to the transplant. Just get as big a rootball as reasonable and keep them watered well for a few months and it should be fine.

I agree with tigerlily. Go get those monsters and just plan on watering a lot over the next few months. We are almost finished with this terrible heat and our nights are starting to cool off so they should be fine. I would prune out any old dead or diseased wood but otherwise, leave them alone. This is one time I would invest in a large bottle of SuperThrive and water in about 3 gallons for each transplant.

Hope you find lots of other good stuff there. What's with folks who would chain saw a mature Camellia?????????

i agree w/ ardesia... why in the world would anyone want to not have a camellia...unless it didn't bloom (never heard of that). i bet those people never saw a mature camellia bloom before!

I bet they will plant LAWN GRASS where the camellias were. LOL

haha yeah major improvement there! cough cough

What they're thinking I don't know but I'll take some mature camellias any day. I guess I'll just take them out whole and water them daily for a couple of months. Next year I'll trim them up for shape, I have a feeling they don't have the best shapes to them. What I envisions is camellias that are planted to close together and are tall and skinny. Might not need to trim those.

Any bets on what the camellias look like? Any guess on what I might find hiding out in they're yard? If I see something priceless and they don't know what it is, should I tell them?

yes. if they offered you, then an offer is an offer. it would be very rude to uninvite you to their plants. if they have any manners they will stick to their word. plus saying yes would be considerate. i would also say no because u don't know them, and i'm not trying to be stereotypical, but down here people from the north don't have the greatest reputation for manners.

Went to see their yard this morning. I'm all packed up and ready to go, it started to rain? Basicly two weeks without rain and it decides to start now. LOL. Scored 7 camellias with 2 more if I want them. The 2 more are 20ft tall no kidding. They're just to big for me to handle. Their yard really had nothing else of interest and if I was them I would be chopping stuff down too. I'm going to take some pictures if it stops raining and get the smaller camellias out of there today. The 20 footers are surrounded by a azaleas that are 8ft or so high and 20-30ft across with the camellia dead center of the azaleas. It's an over grown mess. The lady said she didn't even realize they had a magnolia till a couple of weeks ago. LOL. It's 40 ft tall with 8 ft azaleas growing all around it and it's being crowded out by a bunch of junk trees. All the azaleas need to be cut way back, right there would add a quarter acre to their yard.

We need rain but I wanted to get this out of the way. I guess the rain is better, I can go later today or tomorrow.

By the way if you know who the orchid lady is in Bluffton this house is next door to her.

This message was edited Aug 25, 2007 7:15 PM

I've been there but I guess I never noticed the neighboring property.

Congrats on scoring the big camellias. You will never regret it, they take so long to get to that mature size. Transplanting in the rain is the very best way for the plants; much less shock that way.

I can see it is raining across the river but we aren't getting any here.

This is the average sized camellia.

There is a camellia in the middle of this with the 8ft azaleas. This is almost dead center of their front yard.

Just another for the fun of it. Anyone know where this is?

palmetto bluff

brother in about april or may

me and sister on jogglin' board. those things are awesome and relaxing. palmetto bluff is a great place

I'm thinking of trying to build one of those benches. That's what that is called? Jogglin board?

Looks like we had the same thing in mind.

lol yep that was my G-ma that took that one. i was w/ my sis on the board while the pic was taken palmetto bluff is a nice place... i love it!
yeah plantations had 'em. i think they are from Charleston originially, thus the name Charleston Joggling Board

This message was edited Aug 25, 2007 11:43 PM

I had a guy make one for me for the g-kids and we all love it. You need a really long yellow pine board. The longer they are the better they joggle.

Palmetto Bluff is neat and the tree house is almost better than the twig house although the twig thing is cool. Didn't the students from SCAD do something similar on the side of a building in Savannah?

BTW, have you looked at the price of lots in Palmetto Bluff lately?

the prices are outrageous. i've always wanted one, but we don't have anywhere to put it...

jogglin board!!!.......yay!...i miss the south, gotta get back........gonna get DH to make a board....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joggling_board

i wouldn't live anywhere else!

BTW, have you looked at the price of lots in Palmetto Bluff lately?


I went over there to look around at real estate. First no offense to the old but it looked like God's waiting room to me. LOL. I'm to young and have small childern I don't think that's the place for me. Second I thought it was over priced. If The real estate market gets slow enough I might put a low bid in or two on some lots. I like the bigger estate sized lots but your not free to use the land how you want. I would buy for an investment, not to live there.

Are prices falling apart yet?

yeah no offense to those that live in sun city, but at Bluffton High school (which i no longer attend) they called Sun City "the land of the almost dead" lol.... oh oops nvm...i mean how rude! my dad worked for toll brothers and they are having to lay off a bunch of people... including my dad, so maybe hampton hall or Hampton Pointe ( < my dad developed it) they have tons of houses... more than they are sellling, but hampton pointe is such a beautiful plantation

Not interested in houses, the carrying costs are to much and you can't rent them out for much. Right now real estate around here will go flat at best for the next 3 years or most likely lower. Back in 1991 I bought 20 condo's owner financed for an average of $24,000 a piece. I rented them out and covered my expenses for about 10 years, rent went up every year. End result was I made a killing when I sold them in 2001. I hit the condo market at it's worst, where I bought the condos had 80 units for sale and they weren't moving at all. I sold a little earily but rents started going down on HHI around 2000, lots of new apts so it was time for me to get out. Real estate goes up and then down. You just have to realize what part of the cycle your in.

Just in case you haven't noticed Core, EVERYTHING in the low country has become ridiculously overpriced. I went through this same experience in Raleigh, N.C. some 30 years ago. Land that was valued at $5-10,000 an acre suddenly was selling for $50-$100k an acre! And I mean the change was quick (less than 2 years)! "Texas oil money" was the reason given for the drastic change. Texas was drying up at the time, so these rapists needed new areas to "develop". I'm sure these moneyed people are real proud of what they've done to Raleigh, but I'm not! Now, it's not "Texas Oil Money" that's raping the low country. It's National Developers and corrupt "Public Officials"(a.k.a. "enablers") who are responsible. And the really sickening thing about it is, we don't have a thing to say about it...it's called "progress" (I call it by another, less euphemistic name!!)...

A lot of the problem is the real estate market went nuts with speculation, very low interest rates helped the most. Put that together with people who have big tracks of land and really no money, there's the combo. I've thought for the last 3 or 4 years that the market was to expensive. The ocean front houses and condos went up to their rental value and that's when the amatuers started buying. I saw beach front prices double in a couple of years, way to much. Even downtown Bluffton went nuts. A friend of mine bought a small house for $85,000 abot 12 years ago. About a year or so ago he said "this nuts I'm selling my house and renting for a few years". His house sold for $432,000. Nothing special at all with that house. He made the right move BTW. He is older with no kids so it wasn't a big problem for him to sell off his house.

Big developers are in major trouble right now so you won't see any new develops for years to come which is a good thing. The area just needs a rest. Time to plan a head or in our case catch up with roads, schools etc. Also we just have to many new people. It's takes them a while to get with the "program" around here. A huge amount of new people don't lead to stable communities. I was caught in a conversation with a few people and they were trying to out do each on long they have lived here. 3 or 4 years. Got to me and I said 17 years. Dead pause. They stopped that stuff very fast. LOL. Also we need the south of the boarder people to stop showing up daily. The amount of these people coming into the low country is insane. 50- 100 a week??? If I was them I would come here to but there is just to many of them coming over the last 5 years or so.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070828/home_price_index.html?.v=10

And so it begins.