Planting Stewartia Trees
Do you know why the Japanese stewartia tree is one of my favorites? "Stewart" is my last name after all.
The Japanese stewartia, Stewartia pseudocamellia, is a small, slow-growing, all-season performer that shows off fresh green leaves in spring, white flowers resembling single camellias in summer, and colorful foliage in autumn. It's also well-loved for its attractive exfoliating bark, which peels away in strips of gray, reddish-brown, and orange. Yesterday, my outdoor grounds crew planted a stand of young stewartia trees behind my Gym building in an area not far from my main Greenhouse, my winding pergola, and of course, my stewartia garden.
Here are some photos.
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- I love stewartia trees and have several different kinds of stewartias growing at my farm. This is a view of my Stewartia garden behind my Tenant House in late spring. The stewartias planted here include Stewartia gemmata, Stewartia x. henryae, Stewartia pseudocamellia ‘Ballet’, Stewartia monadelpha, Stewartia rostrata, and Stewartia henry ‘Skyrocket’.
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- One of its appealing features is the stewartia’s bark.
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- And these are the flowers of a Stewartia pseudocamellia – cup-shaped, camellia-like white blossoms up to two-and-a-half inches in diameter with showy orange-yellow anthers.
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- Over the weekend, I purchased a selection of stewartia trees to plant along the carriage road behind my Gym Building. Here, they will get full to partial shade and be somewhat shielded from any winds.
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- A crucial step in growing healthy trees is to plant them properly. The hole should be two to three times wider than the diameter of the tree’s rootball and two to three inches less than the height of the rootball.
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- Chhiring cuts off the wire basket so it can be removed. Wire baskets were designed to support the root ball during loading, shipping, and transplanting. Some cut the cages and leave them in the ground, but I prefer to remove them completely, so there is nothing blocking the growing roots.
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- He also removes the burlap wrapping that holds the root ball together.
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- All the wire cages and wrapping are piled up and discarded.
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- Chhiring rolls the root ball slowly and carefully into the hole and then looks at the tree from all sides to ensure it is perfectly straight and its best side is facing out toward the carriage road.
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- Chhiring is now sprinkling fertilizer. I always say, “if you eat, your plants should eat.” The soil in the planting hole is also amended with fertilizer.
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- The biodegradable resin coated shells allow for a slow release of the fertilizer.
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- We use Miracle-Gro® Shake ‘N Feed Flowering Trees and Shrubs Plant Food, which contains natural ingredients to feed microbes in the soil and provides continuous release feeding for up to three months.
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- The branches are just beginning to show spring growth. Stewartias have alternate, simple, elliptic, dark green leaves that grow five to nine-centimeters long.
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- This tree is placed at the right depth – at its flare – the bulge just above the root system where the roots begin to branch away from the trunk. When fully mature, the Stewartia can reach up to 30- to 40-feet tall.
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- The surrounding tree pit is given a nice edge…
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- …And then the hole is backfilled completely and tamped down to create good contact between the soil and the root ball..
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- It’s a good idea to use a tarp to hold any of the removed soil and sod – this will save lots of clean-up time and effort later.
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- I think the trees look so pretty in this area. And remember, always remove any tags that are on the tree. If left too long, these tags will eventually cut into the bark and potentially cut off the flow of nutrients.
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- While these trees are slow-growing and only about six-feet tall now, they have ample room here in this location.
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- They are some of the first flowering trees guests will see when they visit. Across is my long pergola, and on the left, the handsome tall trees are bald cypress, Taxodium distichum. I am looking forward to watching these trees grow and flourish.
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