denny144
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Breaking Bud
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I've been keeping an eye out and the situation did not improve this spring. In Troy, on Coolidge between 17 and 18 Mile, I'd say all of the 30+ Pine trees (not sure if they are Scotch pine) along the sides of the road are dying. All of the pines in the building lot at the NW corner of Adams and Square Lake are dying. Wherever pines are planted in the median and along the sides of the road in Troy, they are dying. My challenge was finding pines that are in areas that aren't salted in winter in order to rule that out as the major factor. Pines don't seem to be a popular front yard landscape tree so I can't find as many as I can along main roads. But there is a stand of pines in the backyard of the house at 2024 Briargrove that looks bad. The trees on the corner of Pondway and Riverchase and on the corner of Sunburst and Squirrel Hill look bad. These are all streets in Troy that don't get salted. I am regularly in Auburn Hills and Novi and don't see the kind of dying pines I see in Troy where I live. One of the 3 pines in my backyard and a few more on my street appear to be dying. But not very pine is affected on my street. Update 6/30/14 I was at the zoo in Royal Oak this weekend and saw some pines with the same symptoms. Not concentrated in one area but scattered around.
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My 4 year old Diablo came through with flying colors. It's getting ready to bloom. It's in a spot that is exposed to NW winds so it's definitely not sheltered. I think a lot of the damage to shrubs this year was caused by leftover stress from the drought two years ago in the Detroit area. I felt my plants were finally getting back to normal by the end of last summer after I gave them a lot of extra attention. Had I not done that, they may not have been able to shake off the effects of the extreme winter we had. If you were in a drought area, your Ninebark was not completely established when that drought hit. Provided your site is suitable for Ninebark, I'd give it another go. Be careful about watering it enough. I have a neighbor who can't understand why the spruce trees she plants die every year. She has in-ground lawn sprinklers and thinks they should be supplying sufficient water for newly planted trees.
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I've never been able to stand it long enough to know if they would all grow but I would imagine that you'd end up with some spindly survivors. What I typically do early on before adding a new layer of mulch is to take my hoe and repeatedly drag it across the ground. That will either pull the seedlings out of the ground or mangle them enough that they die. Several rounds of this a few days apart gets most of them so I don't do much hand weeding.
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I just read the post from last February about Scotch pines losing their needles. Apparently, there's a needle blight that's hitting Michigan hard. Few of the pines in my area are Scotch pines so it isn't limited to just them. I think this time next year, all the pines in Troy will be dead.
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The last two years were ones of drought in Troy. I'd watch the weather radar and see the oncoming storms break up and go around us every time. Now I'm seeing the results of that despite all the rain we've had in 2013. The pines all along Coolidge and other main roads are half dead and others in yards where they might have gotten some watering are looking bad, too. I'm not seeing the same dying limbs on other evergreens or deciduous trees, however. So am I correct in assuming it's 2 years of drought or is something else killing the pines?
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Japanese lilac tree is blooming with white clusters right now. The City of Troy planted a lot of these to replace the ash trees. From a distance, they sort of look like astible but up close, not so much.
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I'm going to plant a Smoketree (Cotinus) in my daughter's garden. I have a good spot for it but need to know if anybody is familiar enough with it to know if "Grace" and "Royal Purple" are both equally reliable or does one perform better in the Detroit area. Best as I can tell, the only difference is in the flower color.
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I have several varieties of corydalis, but don't know if any of them are Blue Heron. I've had them so long, I've forgotten the names so if Blue Heron is a recent cultivar in the last year or so, it's not one I have. Mine are yellow and lilac colored ones and they are blooming right now and will do so off and on through to the fall. They are in full to partial moist shade in a bed up against my brick house. The bed faces north but is somewhat protected from the wind by the closeness of the neighbor's house. The bed is full of lamium, hostas, ferns and other shade lovers but the corydalis spread themselves around and I never know where they will appear next. They readily pop up among the other plants but don't take over the bed. They have long since moved from the spot where I originally put the plants 5+ years ago. I don't think of them as being especially fragile (unless there's something special about the Blue Heron that I'm not familiar with) so I would go ahead and plant them in the spring rather than wait until fall. In the winter, the entire bed gets a 6-12 inch layer of leaf mulch.
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The male that was recommended and which I bought for my female Red Sprite winterberries is Jim Dandy. However, I noticed that the male was almost done blooming when the females were just getting started. I bought a second male, Southern Gentleman, and it blooms later than Jim Dandy so I am able to get a lot of berries between the two males' blooming periods. And interestingly enough, I have one lone female planted a good 75 feet away with a house between it and the males and it still manages to get fertilized. Because of the noticeable differences in the sizes of the females and the males, I have the females all planted together at the front of my house and the two males are off to the side by the driveway where they aren't in the focal point but are plenty close enough to ensure good pollination.