Spring Can Be Tough Here for a New or Young Plant

Springs here consist of windy, continually heating, drought.   Not a friendly beginning for a new spring planting.   This is not a problem for established plantings.  With our wet winters and water hodling clay soils, they rarely required supplmental watering.  Only when the summer rains run late, do they suffer.  New plantings however lose moisture at alarming rates and have no roots spread into the surrounding clay soils to grab moisture.  Even worse, the silty clay loam tends to crack, so you can water all you want, it just runs off into endless cracks.  End result is the first year, in the spring and fall in particular you must water constantly. 

The 1-Step formula really has helped with this.  It has both water absorbing crystal to less the loss of water, and mycorriza fungus to improve root efficiency and root growth.  I have not lost a new planting since I began using it, where before it was no uncommon.

So far, new plantings this year include 2 Figs, 2 Raintrees, 3 Camellias, and 3 Blueberries.  I still have a few seedlings/young plants still to be planted as well.   I am always planting some kind of seed.  I remember as a small boy, one of the trees in our neighborhood made these giant Acorns, more than an inch across.   I parked in a parking lot a month or so ago, and sure enough under one of the trees were those large Acorns, which I had not seen in over 40 years.   I grabbed five of them.   Already, 2 trees have sprouted.  

And we are looking for a couple more Camellias to finish the Camellia Garden Room.   Cel has also just identified an area where she would like more Azaleas.  I'd like just 2 more hardy palms, but they need to be kind of large, so that won't happen anytime soon.  I am looking for a sale, haha.