Does a sun-loving, drought-tolerant, disease-resistant, mid-sized tree exist? Yes!
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Hi, guys!
I returned from a week in Sedona (with a side trip to the Grand Canyon) to find the seedlings on my kitchen counter had doubled in size. I potted them up yesterday and will move them into the small portable greenhouse I assembled on the back deck next week.
The rhododendron by the front door is blooming, which is right on schedule, considering its buds typically open nearly a full month before the others in my neighborhood. I’m not completely certain why it does that, but I assume it’s an early-blooming variety. Still, I can’t be sure since it was here when I moved in.
I also returned to an inbox folder filled with your poetry submissions! I’m looking forward to digging into them and will announce a winner in a few weeks. Stay tuned!
📬 Ask Jessica
DEAR JESSICA: I’m looking for a disease-resistant, drought-tolerant tree that provides shade to replace a dying flowering purple plum that the cemetery has planted (for the second time) near our family plots in Port Washington, NY. There is full sun and no irrigation. Does such a tree exist? —Carolyn Orlik, Mineola, NY
DEAR CAROLYN: Many cemeteries have strict regulations concerning plantings, so if you haven’t already, I recommend you check with the management office before replacing the purple plum, which, by the way, is notorious for its short life and susceptibility to borers, Japanese beetles, mealybugs, tent caterpillars and scale, as well as diseases such as black knot, cankers, gray mold and leaf spot.
If you are permitted to plant a tree near your family’s plots, you absolutely have options.
The best best for your zone 7 region would be a crape myrtle. Available in various colors — red, light pink, dark pink, purple, white — many cultivars of the flowering tree will check all your boxes and grow to roughly the same size as a purple plum, 15-25 feet tall and wide. But there are also smaller and larger varieties.
The white-blooming Natchez and Red Rocket crape myrtles are hardy in horticultural zones 7-9 and grow to about 25 feet tall and 20 feet wide. The lilac Muskogee has the same profile but can handle heat up to zone 11. Catawba has violet-purple flowers and tops out at just 15 feet with a 12-foot spread. There are others — poke around.
In zones lower than 7, however, options diminish. The few cold-tolerant, sun-loving, drought-tolerant trees that match a purple plum’s size and your requirements, such as Bloodgood Japanese maple, Amur maple and Fruitless mulberry, have problematic invasive qualities. I would not recommend planting any of them.
Got a gardening question? Ask it here.
💡 If you do one thing this week…
Give spring bulb plants a dose of fertilizer when they poke out of the ground.
👏 Sunday shoutout
Reader Kathy Burrous writes: “I took these pictures of the bulbs currently blooming in my son Andrew’s garden at Floral Park Centennial Gardens in New York. I have planted over 200 bulbs in his garden, hoping for several months of blooms, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way.”
They might not be around for several months, as you’d hoped, but they’re beautiful, nonetheless — enjoy them, Kathy!
Send in your photo, and you could be featured next (bonus points if you’re in the picture!)
📰This week in my Associated Press gardening column
I write a weekly gardening column for the AP, so you might have seen my byline in your local paper (or news website) — wherever in the world you happen to be. In case you miss it, I’ll post the most recent here every week.
LAST WEEK: How to care for potted lilies, hyacinths, daffodils and other spring gift plants
BEFORE THAT: Not all vegetables are annuals. Here are some that come back every year.
ONE MORE: Exciting new fruit and vegetable varieties to grow this year
You can read all my AP gardening columns here.
📚📺🎵 Random things I enjoyed this week
🌘 Watching the eclipse with Justine and her BF, Andrew, was fun and relaxing, as we zoned out for about an hour while listening to my custom playlist — Blister in the Sun, Black Hole Sun, The Killing Moon, She Blinded Me With Science, The Whole of the Moon, Invisible Sun, Walking on the Moon, The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades, New Moon on Monday, Total Eclipse of the Sun … Well, there goes any mystery about my age.
🛋️I ordered a new sofa and waited two months for it to arrive — defective and irreparable. So they picked it up on Friday, and now I get to sit on an inflatable couch for the next two months while I shop for and await delivery of a new one.
💸Got my taxes done. Nothing to celebrate here.
🇫🇷 Justine and I saw Boy George play Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge on Broadway yesterday. He even sang Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me during the encore mashup. So much fun!
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📧 How’m I doing?
I welcome your comments and suggestions, so please send them along — as well as any topics you’d like to see covered and questions you’d like answered in the Ask Jessica section.