Turning a Water Oak Forest into a Tropical Paradise in NW Orlando

[flplantguy]

If hes hesitant tell him to go on treesaregood.org and find a local arborist to corroborate us both. They look awful in that pic too.  At least it will be his expense this time!

[Merlyn]

@Looking Glass yeah I was really happy with extending the borders a bit!  I had made a curve around that Chinensis just a bit too sharp, and continually caught the lawnmower's front wheel on the blocks.  The new curve is just gradual enough to avoid that, and gives me a few more feet of planting space.

@flplantguy I've told him about the ~40 year lifespan, but he just likes them too much.  The neighborhood was built in the mid 80s, and almost all of them are now dying.

Speaking of that, I had just enough time at lunch to finish digging out the stump grindings from the hole.  The guy did a pretty good job, and just broke through the main trunk to dirt in at least 4 spots in the middle (green circles).  It's still a 10-12' diameter hole I'll have to dig out, but it should be much easier than some extractions I've done!

[Merlyn]

And with a couple of evening's work the main section of stump is out!  I'll still need to slice off a few big roots near the surface, mostly around where the Ryobi blower is sitting. 

And my latest Floribunda order arrived yesterday!  In the front row are 4 Syagrus Lorenzoniorum seedlings, with two Dioon Rzedowskii just behind them.  The 3rd row is (L to R) 2 Burretiokentia Hapala and 4 Syagrus Amara, and the back row are two Ravenea Hildebrandtii and a Burretiokentia Koghiensis:

I'll let these root in over the winter and then find a place for at least a few of them in the spring!

[kinzyjr]

2 hours ago, Merlyn said:

I'll let these root in over the winter and then find a place for at least a few of them in the spring!

That's one heck of a lineup!  Good call on waiting until spring!

[RiverCityRichard]

4 hours ago, Merlyn said:

And with a couple of evening's work the main section of stump is out!  I'll still need to slice off a few big roots near the surface, mostly around where the Ryobi blower is sitting. 

And my latest Floribunda order arrived yesterday!  In the front row are 4 Syagrus Lorenzoniorum seedlings, with two Dioon Rzedowskii just behind them.  The 3rd row is (L to R) 2 Burretiokentia Hapala and 4 Syagrus Amara, and the back row are two Ravenea Hildebrandtii and a Burretiokentia Koghiensis:

I'll let these root in over the winter and then find a place for at least a few of them in the spring!

Syagrus Amara is one of my favorites. Be awesome to see you grow them up in our area. Nice haul!

[Merlyn]

@RiverCityRichard I'd been trying to buy Syagrus Amara for over a year, but managed to place my Floribunda order right as they sold out!  These were 4" pots trying to bust out of there...so hopefully they'll fill the 1g step-up pots by spring.

Today's silliness involved moving a B. Alfredii triple back South about 5 feet to give more space for the Encephalartos Gratus x Laurentianus on the right, staked up with the PVC pipe:

And after the move:

These were planted from big 1g pots a bit over 2 years ago, and had grown a bunch of roots straight down looking for the water table.  Interestingly they had NOT grown any significant roots to the sides.  That probably explains their tippiness in hurricanes.

I then filled 4 big trash cans with ferns from the back fenceline, and decided to take out the two more dead Viburnum:

In this cut you can clearly see the trunk fungal infection that's been killing all my Viburnum: