Carl_Bergstrom

Wow, Al - you really outdid yourself with this one. Very nice primer on selecting material. Even this old crow learned a few things here and there.

A few comments, just for fun:

• "Only buy healthy trees." What great advice. All too often I buy one with bad color, root problems, whatever, on the grounds that in my care it'll do better. I lose half of these trees - and waste time on the other half. Buying only healthy stock has become one of my new resolutions.
  
• Great idea to compare the a half-dozen trees that you're about to buy with a single tree for the same total price. Especially once your garden fills up with more than a couple of dozen trees, quality is way more important than quantity, and I certainly wish that a few years back I'd bought higher-quality trees and fewer of them.
  
• I really love Rip's Ume. Now there is a piece of material with potential.
  
• Do those S-curve elms move? I assume they must, or he wouldn't have them there. I wonder who buys them.
  
• I'd love to see some of your "twisty-wired seedlings" a few years down the road. Do you have some to show us that you did a few years back?
  

All the best,
OMC

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In love with trees