a QUALITY nursery ... should receive a fall delivery.. in a big enough market ..

you could order some in.. for the PROPER fall planting time ...

sounds like you know proper aftercare .. to get away with that august planting ...

but just because you buy something.. does not mean its the proper time to plant ...

i would just put them in full shade.. and hold them a month or so ... as i found that regardless of heat.. the cooler nights of fall ... are very much more forgiving ... a daily recovery period ...

J tip blight.. in my garden.. is limited to J sclorpum ...

i actually hate J virginiana ... as it is a weed in MI ... lining hundreds of miles of MI roads ... just not a real pretty garden plant ... too many peeps think it the cats meow ... since they find them free ...

ken

Terri, depending on where in New England you are located there are some quality nurseries that you can get container conifers under 5ft for fair prices. Katsura Gardens in Plymouth, MA and Broken Arrow Nursery in CT are exceptional. They both carry hard to find conifers in many different sizes.

Combine those two local nurseries with orders from Conifer Kingdom and Western Evergreen and you can obtain just about any variety you are looking for. Mail order typically requires patience, as you will be starting with a BP or 1gal most of the time. Planting conifers in the heat of the summer is a losing formula. Get them planted in early spring or wait until the fall.

how does one convince them to special order when they are sitting with a lot full of trees? Because the only 3-5 footers they have are baby blue eyes and shrubs. Same thing every year, every nursery.

"Sounds like you know proper after care" I threw down the manure and newspaper cure-all, let the worms do the work, lol. For full disclosure it was a river birch- pretty hard to kill.

I find watering very stressful. Impossible to tell,without getting in the dirt if it is too wet too dry just right.

Terri

how does one convince them to special order

==>>> because its a sure sale.. rather than brought in on speculation ... that they will find a sucker.. i mean market.. to buy it ...

and .... remind them of their mark up .. lol ...

ken

You can find the 3-5 footers if you look hard enough, and ask the right questions. Here's a good example....Conifer Kingdom will box and ship up to 5 gallon stock if they have them in stock, you give them some notice, and you ask nicely......even though they are not shown as the normal shipping size on their website.

Several companies will work with you. You just have to hunt them out.

As for planting, in my southern Oklahoma heat I only plant in late fall and in rare cases, very early spring....for me that means October, November, or maybe very early March. Any other time and I run a better than 70% chance of death. In the norhteast you should be able to expand that range quite a bit, but late fall is still the preferred time to plant almost anything down to small shrubs.

Pot grown is your other friend. People are quick to jump at B & B for that instant size gratification. In fact if you look at the pots at the big box stores, most of the big ones are B & B, stuck in pots with the burlap ball buried in potting soil. But pot grown in that 3-5 foot size will have a much better chance of survival over field grown. If field grown, you have to absolutely make sure the dirt root ball isn't broken. If it is crumbled inside the burlap, then once again you have a better than 70% of death because all the fibrous water roots have been broken off.

Good Luck......Mark

Sc77 - not sure I will make it down to Broken Arrow but I,would like to. Katsura is a definite. I will go there soon. Conifer Kingdom I would like to try them. It is too hot now to put anything in the ground.

Ken - very insightful as always. Special order, I doubt they will do that but, it is a better idea than searching.

texjagman - I will try Conifer Kingdom. I've missed the Spring planting season and as you say too hot is a recipe for failure.

big THANK YOU to you folks.

Special ordering for the fall sounds like the right idea.

-Terri