closing the barn door after the horse left...

Hi everybody! I planted 3 shrubs today here in zone 5....it's supposed to be fairly warm the next 10 days...is it too late to plant? I know I should have asked BEFORE I planted them, but I really just needed to play in the dirt today! At the very least, it was therapuetic! Thanks for any input..

No, it's not too late. It helps that we haven't had frost yet so they have time to start settling in for winter.

What kind of shrubs were they? For most kinds I would think they would be OK as long as you make sure they have lots of water until the ground freezes.

I planted a honeycomb butterfly bush, a wine & roses weigelia (which is still flowering) and a purple smokebush. Probably at least the butterfly will be ok, huh? I will stay on them with water, thank you for reminding me. It's been dry here lately.

Put leaves around them to act as mulch too. That will help them this winter. Otherwise they should be ok.

Actually the Butterfly will probably be the most difficult.I'm in 5a and here we are told to mulch them 10 inches for winter.I have lost two of the yellow ones and a friend lost an older purple cultivar last year.If the winter is mild they should be okay.

There are some picky butterfly bushes out there so mulching them will help alot. And like Ibrabec says, it's not a garantee they will make it.

I have family in 5b and they have trouble getting the butterfly bushes to overwinter. It's funny, back when I was younger and there was tons of snow the BB's used to come back every year no problem, but now they don't get near as much snow as they did when I was growing up so the plants don't have that extra layer of snow protecting them so they die off much more easily over the winter. Maybe try taking a few cuttings and overwinter those indoors in case it doesn't make it.

And here I am thinking the butterfly would be the hardiest! lol Thanks guys, I'll get more mulch around the poor thing! Pepper, sadly, I don't have any leaves! My trees are babies, I only get a few leaves each fall, and they blow away.

water , water, water,
in zone 5 a or b, the butterfly bushes come back, but not always on the old wood. wait till late spring to evaluate..if you do not see buds on the old growth by then, cut the old wood out and you will then see new shoots from the base ....your bush has survived. if you cut the old wood away in the fall, or too early in the spring, the butterfly bush does not survive as well.
and yes, mulch well.the buttterfly bush comes back later than many other shrubs in the spring in our zone so sometimes it is just that we have give up on them too early and ripped them out......
learned this by accident after ripping out many in the early spring over the years assuming they had not made it thru the winter. it's a sleepy little bush that waits till it is warm and lots of daylight hours to appear.

As Ecrane said,they almost used to grow wild,but now there is a problem.I think the zone limit for the yellow cultivars is 5 and sometimes they do not overwinter here,despite your best efforts.

Niobe,I agree.You posted as I was typing.

they self seed too, so if we keep our beds weeded and well mulched in the spring we are keeping the seeds from growing. in the wild the seeds re sow themselves nicely. when we are grooming and mulching we don't give the little seeds a chance to come forth like they do in the wild!

we just keep things too groomed and expect too much in a controlled border.

I'm heading out to water right now! Tomorrow I'll get more mulch. I had no idea the yellow ones were a bit less hardy. Oh well. It was on sale.