Shoot's Blog

Planting sequoias with a trowel

I planted a new giant sequoia in Tahoe this weekend. This brings my count up to...let's see...six living trees. The giant sequoias are difficult in Tahoe. Seedlings do well if the are watered very frequently--but otherwise the long, dry summer means certain death. (I'm talking about planted seedlings, not real seedlings that grow in situ from seeds.) Older trees do well if they come from fairly deep pots, and are watered regularly, but many die over the winter.

A little detail on this planting. I used a trowel, which is quickly becoming my tool of choice in Tahoe! A shovel is just too big and you can never figure out how to get the rocks out, which leaves you out there making a tremendous racket and occasionally showering sparks all over the place. Using a trowel, though, you sit on the ground and settle in for a haul. When you find a rock, dig around it until you can lift it out. Stop when the hole is big enough. The process is mostly silent and gets your hands in the dirt. In the early spring, it is a pleasure to hit moist earth maybe eight inches below the surface. Gives one some idea how the plants are surviving out there.

The tree I planted is probably 3-4 years old and two feet high. It looks cute as a button right now. We'll see if it still looks that way after a Tahoe summer!

Indoor-outdoor trees

For the most part, I'm an outdoor gardener. We have a few succulents indoors but that's about it.

Now, though, I'm looking at houses and thinking about architecture. I'm wondering if anybody out there has experience with rooms that surround a specimen tree. Is it reasonable to design a house around a specimen tree that doesn't exist yet (i.e, that needs to be planted)? Or does the hoped-for specimen tend not to pan out, as with so many of my outdoor trees? Are there architects or builders that specialize in rooms like this? What are the implications for tree growth and access to water? Does the room need to be built on a platform that protects the soil? Are these rooms troublesome to maintain?

I'd also be interested to hear examples of famous houses that surround beautiful trees.

A little bit of searching turned up a couple of interesting links. Mitchell Joachim explains his vision for a house constructed from living ficus trees here. Freshome has a great roundup of cool treehouse designs here. But, in truth, these are much more ambitious ideas than those I'm asking about above. I don't want a house that is made out of a tree, I just want a house that incorporates a tree.

Guest post

Spruce recently quoted this moving poem:

Yew-Trees
by William Wordsworth

 

There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:
Not loathe to furnish weapons for the Bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! -a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! -and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveteratley convolved, -
Nor uninformed with Fantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane; -a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially -beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries -ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide: Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight, Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.

Link: Recommendations for slow growing legacy tree?.

Labor Day update

I almost called this post "Fall update". We aren't quite there yet, but in Tahoe it is getting into the 30s some nights, and occasional aspens, especially the small ones, are turning yellow. During the day, though, temps are still in the 80s.

I transplanted two incense cedars that I had grown from seed into the environment. These are the first trees that I've personally grown from seed and then moved into the ground. It is going to be very painful if they die. They are good-looking trees and I'll miss having them on my porch. My baby giant sequoias, as I called them in my last post, are still under 15 inches, so I decided to hold off on planting them until next year.

My numerous other plantings are doing well. The white fir that served as our Christmas tree and was transplanted in spring is alive and well with bright green new growth. It has no growth from its old leader, though--those buds never broke. So we may have to wait a few years for a new leader to develop. The subalpine larch that I planted in spring appear to have survived the summer, although they've looked pretty awful since the day I planted them. Hopefully they'll survive the winter and come back with a vengeance.

I think I'm ready for the snow now. Bring it on!

Potted up my baby giants

I broke down today and moved three giant sequoia seedlings to larger pots.

These guys were born last year and are pictured in my TreeDazzled gallery. They've done fine, despite the endless fog and cold in San Francisco, but recently started to turn brown, particularly near the bottom of the tree at the trunk. I decided that this might be (I hope it is) due to the trees having reached the limits allowed by their rather small, shallow pots.

When I transplanted them, I found that each tree had a large coil of rather large roots at the bottom of the pot. Seems to me that this root mass could be prone to drying out easily in terra cotta. So I'm optimistic that the change will help.

Ordered from Forest Farm

I put in my Forest Farm order for the year: three Larix lyallii (subalpine larch) and one Pinus longaeva (Great Basin bristlecone pine). The total inlcuding shipping was under $100, so I think I can congratulate myself for showing restraint.

Of course, it remains to be seen if this is really my order "for the year". It is only February!

Abigail makes the ID!

I am sad to say that I made a mistaken (read: wrong) identification.

I originally identified this tree as araucaria araucana based on its general appearance, as well as its shape. Some months later, my wife said to me slyly, "You know, I think that large tree on MLK Drive might be a bunya-bunya, not a monkey puzzle." She walks by the tree several times a week while out exercising, so she has the advantage of me. Seems she'd been storing up this bombshell for a while. After I checked it out and acknowledged my mistake, she had the guts to ask if I would be upfront about this issue on TreeDazzled!

Apparently this tree richly deserves its other name: False Monkey Puzzle.