Fall Planting, so what's on your list?

Oxydendrum.

To me, the flowers have a light hint of the Lily of the Valley smell, or something along those lines.

LOL...I can't imagine the size of the truck...lol.

Next year I will only need about 5. and about 10 ton of stone :-/

The stone I am not looking forward to...lol.

Victor,Started putting Sedum(blue spruce) on,in and around my old stonewall and it has done so well filling in.Good useful plant.

The oxydendron is a beauty! If I lived closer to PA, I'd come--not to help, but to admire those DL"s--and sample a few! I bought 3 Night Edition TBI's, that are soaking to rehydrate--they are from HD, & were all dried up, but looking pretty good today--I'll give them another day--that usually plumps them up.

I didn't want to say anything when you first mentioned 10 yds of dirt, cuz I could picture the 3 yds of mulch I wheelbarrowed and tripled it plus a little and thought - OH MY! Glad it finally came. I wished we had a hot tub after carting all that stuff. Those DL's look great. Good luck with the seedlings.

thom - thx - i remember victors pictures from earlier this year and checking out this tree. I like the fact that it is slow growing. Will have to look around - don't remember seeing any up here at the nurseries.And the descrition i just read says it does smell like Lily of the Valley.

10 ton of stone is not too bad. rock weigh more than dirt so the pile willnot be that big.

I had 25 yards of mulch a few years back! Took me about five 7 hour days to use it all. One of the many cool things about Oxydendrum is that the lily of the valley type flowers are still on the tree when the leaves start turning red. The color is very long-lasting and, as Thom said, it keeps getting deeper and deeper. I'll take a new shot tomorrow. It looked great today.

love to see it.

Wow, 10 yards of dirt! I got 5 yards of mulch earlier this year, and I was shocked to see how big the pile was. I had spread out a tarp for them to dump it on, and it turned out to be too small. Silly me!

Thom, I have gotten DL's from Ken before, and he sends really nice ones. Unfortunately most of them died over the winter. I don't know if maybe it was because I got them planted a little to late or it could have been that the garden they were planted in frost heaves every winter from all the freeze thaw cycles. I put mulch on it the following year, and it no longer heaves up.

Karen

Karen, I had five yards of loam delivered this spring and had it dumped on a couple of cheap drop cloths....on my gravel driveway....needless to say I still have some clogging up the driveway long after the project is finished. Two BIG tarps for me next time! I figure I'll need 6-7 yards of mulch next year and some loam. Miles

I am going this morning with my neighbor to the local composting facility. Compost/mulch is free to residents. You should check your local township to see if you have the same.

Posted this on the garden photos thread, but since I posted about it, here is my Oxydendrum from this AM.

Victor very nice - i did not find one today after visiting 3 nurseries. did come home with a paperbark maple, fothergilla Major "mt. Airy", and couple berry nice winterberry and jim dandy to take care of the ladies.
also picked up angelina sedum and a few fancy asters.

Thanks Bill. Mt. Airy is a fantastic shrub - I have a few. I planted a paperbark this spring.

Victor - I believe that you have mail ordered trees...what has been your experience?

Anita--not answering for Victor, but I think it depends on where you get the trees from. In the Spring time Victor and I had almost identical shipping times, and one of the same plant...C. knotkunensis (sp?). I remember seeing pics of Victor's order from Fairweather and Rarefind (I think) and both were stunning shipments! I ordered a tree/shrub order from Forest Farm, great plants also, totally and completely exceeded my expectations, although shipping was almost the price of the whole entire shipment.

I would read the reviews, or if you have something specific in mind, ask around. Chances are someone on this very forum has ordered something similar and or the same, and can recommend some place!

Thanks Thom. I've wanted a River Birch for a long time. I love the look of the peeling bark. I haven't seen it locally. That is making me wonder about mail order. I just worry about the price of shipping.

Victor and I wrote to each other through dmail about shipping. For the most part, as long as you are buying from the East Coast nurseries, shipping isn't to bad. For instance, the Forest Farm order that I received had 6 dwarf conifers, and 2 dwarf shrubs...the total for the plants (all in 1 gallon sized containers) was about $190 or so, the shipping was $110 I believe, or something like that. I believe after I recalculated the same plants, same size from Rarefind and Fairweather shipping was in the double digits and was about $40-50 for the order in regard to shipping.

I believe most mail order nurseries will ship without you incurring any extra shipping charges, as long as the tree is not over 5-6' tall. It seems like an industry standard that anything over a certain height can no longer be shipped through the mail, but must be shipped via freight...I think the 6' is the high mark...I hope Victor can chime in on this one.

Yes - FW and RF are my favorites. Ordered from FW over 20 times. Both send big, healthy stuff. What Thom said about shipping is correct. Try to stick to the east coast.

For JM's I like Wildwood Maples in CA. Reasonable shipping.

thanks guys.

also look into greer gardens on the west cost. shipping is very reasonable - similar to wildwood - only the package like forest farm - so you get the best packaging and responsible shipping. FF should be up on charges for what they charge on shipping.

I have used rarefind once and received local nursery sized oakleaf hydrangeas -

Ok, here is an update. I moved over 1/2 of the soil around, still have some to go, but it's on the other side of the raised beds wall. So I started to plant the back of the new bed with almost all of the shrubs and trees that I have gotten over the whole season. I repotted most of the things I received early in the season, and some of the root systems are insanely crazy (redundant, I know...lol.)

Please don't ask me to name everything...I'm pooped. My everything hurts. My spare tire is hurting...I have no idea what that is about?

Here is another view...

I'm exhausted just looking at it. WHEW!!! Great job

Here is the last view...in the middle of the bed where there is about a 30'x4' swath is where a majority of DL's are going. Since I had so much soil left over, I'm dumping a few wheel barrow fulls of the soil and creating new DL beds.

Looks great, Thom. Get some rest!

thom - good job. what did you mean by your spare tire is hurting:)

Thom, looks great. You won't have a spare tire to hurt with all that work!!

looking great Thom... keep popping those advil

Wha I think he meant his tummy

"My everything hurts"
That's funny!!!!

I ended up with a back spasm when I was hauling dirt 2 wks ago.

You are doing a fantastic job Thom. That is going to look amazing as it fills in!!! Can't wait to see update pics in the spring!

LOL! Thom, the only time my spare tire hurts is when I go on a long horseback ride. It's fun, but I ache for days afterwards. Great job! It's looking good. Can't wait to see it next year when all the DL's are blooming.

Karen

Oh my! That's gonna be a gorgeous garden!! I hope the results will be well worth the aches and pains, Thom. Feeling better today?

We'll I definitly over did it this past weekend, we planted fiver roses, one tree, aerated the lawn (and acre) put down milky spore and lasagne gardened a couple of spots. I found a source for composted manure for $25/yard! Much better than buying it in bags for $3.50 a pop.

Miles

Good price! That's great stuff. I filled my veggie boxes with it.

A lot of work Thom & Miles---I can see why you're hurting! I'm not much of a fall gardener--good thing as I got back spasms from lifting my Anni out of her swing!

Oh, you poor people!
I 'feel' for you! I'm trying to get outside a little bit every day this week, as the weather is supposed to cooperate somewhat, and get my baqck all out of whack!
LOL!

Ok...just got done. I still have a few wheel barrows of soil to move, maybe 5 or 6 of them! I had to create a new DL bed...thought I was going to be able to plant in a hot box (or what was a hot box) but that proved to be to small. So I had 2 extra 2x8's that were 12' long, so I butted one against the hot box, and then butted the other up against the other 2x8 to make an open on one side raised bed...I can always turn this to stone later on, and remove the 2x8's. I planted up over 100 DL's today, about 70 or so daffs, and about 40 or so ornamental onions. I'm still not done.

The hot box is 8'x8' squared...so I'm going to be placing all of my Munson's in there...except for one, this area gets full on sun. So I still have the order from Cheryl Day coming, she's the person I purchased about 80% of my Munson's from, they should arrive by the end of the week. All together I have about 28, give or take, Munson's to plant up. This area should just about handle them.

I didn't realize until I had almost finished that way down in the recesses of my brain there is some major OCD tendencies. I usually don't "plan" the garden to look any certain way. If it is aesthetically pleasing to me, then I plant it up... The whole bed that I created out of the 2x8's...all in rows. The bed that I created with the stone...the DL's are all in rows. This isn't saying the rows would be plumb but they definitely are in rows :-/

I'll take a picture of it tomorrow. Now I need to load up the wheel barrow with the remaining soil and dump it where the remainder of my hosta are going...lol. Yeah, what fun...

...and yes, it hurts...all of me...

Oh, poor Thom! That's a lot more work than I can do, that's for sure. I have been working to get my new purchases planted, and have also been moving around some established DL's. I've been redoing an old bed, extending it, moving plants around, adding a pathway, and double digging the bed to get all the invasive grass roots out, as well as adding compost to it. It should look great next year. I'm looking forward to another great year with the DL's. Will have to do a lot of spraying deterrent for the deer, as they came in one night at the end of July and cleaned me out of the DL buds on literally hundreds of DL's. I was just about devastated. This had never happened before. I had sprayed once on part of the gardens, but that was a month before this happened. Guess I will have to spray more often. Been told I have to rotate the sprays, too, as they get used to one after awhile. We'll see how it works.

Karen

You guys make me proud to 'live' among you. Such inspiring people you are!

Thom, I am totally exhausted from reading about all your work. Going back to bed.

nutsfordaylily, So sorry about the D.Deers and your DL's. They started on mine some years ago so I have moved them to the deer fenced part of the property. This week the deer got bold as they do in the fall and came up on the front porch to eat the container plants. They were still pretty. "Were" is the operative word.

Now I see a squirrel has moved in. I will have to move it along as I am about to start planting a zillion bulbs in a couple of weeks. Our ground is still a tad warm. DH has just announced a couple of more boxes of bulbs have arrived. He ain't seen nothin yet! I hope he is not here when the next ones come. Patti