Summer Transplants

Last August I transplanted a few seedling into the 2009 square to fill in some gaps where the trees had died. There were six red maple seedlings, two cedars, a pine tree and what I believe is an ash tree; all less than a foot tall. I figured that August was a good time to transplant the trees because the trees had had the summer to build up their energy reserves while it gave enough time for the trees to put some roots down before the frost. Initially they all seemed to do very poorly. The deciduous trees very quickly lost their leaves, the cedars turned an olive brown colour and the pine showed no sign of growth. Finally in October one of the maples started putting out new growth just in time for the frosts to kill it off.

With that inauspicious start I was worried the trees wouldn't survive the winter but this spring they are all showing promising signs of life. The buds on the pine tree (see above) are swelling, the maples look healthy (to right) and the cedars are greening up. These small trees were transplanted from flower gardens and from under trees where they had planted themselves. In the case of the cedars they had rooted in among the pebbles under the eaves of the house and came away with bare roots. It amazes me that they all survived since I don't know how many roots they lost in the transplantation. Yet the late august seedlings have a better record of survival than the potted trees transplanted for the city last spring. I'll save their sorry tale for another post.

In Bloom:
Forget-me-not
Dandelion
Yellow Rocket
Garlic Mustard
Trillium
Serviceberry