Yardening

I have an enormous Black Walnut tree in my backyard. It was not happy when we moved in because it had not had any nutrients added to the soil in a looooong time (read: previous owners removed all dead organic matter from the ground around the tree). After calling in an arborist to assess all of our trees – this is a lovely free service that a local arborist in our area provides – I learned that walnut trees are special. The arborist helped us address the problems and educated us about the peculiarities of the Walnut.

Walnut trees produce a compound called Juglone which can stunt the growth of the plants around it. The list of plants you shouldn’t plant near a walnut tree is super long. The one in our backyard is all alone in the corner and now we knew why. But this is not the tree I’m writing about today.

I’m writing about this amazing magnolia in another part of our yard. Commonly known as a Saucer Magnolia, this magnolia varietal was created through crossbreeding two other magnolia lines in the early 1800s. The Saucer Magnolia was a favorite of the developers who built our neighborhood in the 1950s. Ours in particular is one of the most magnificent I’ve seen.

So what does my magnolia tree have to do with a walnut tree more than 100 feet away? Well, it started to thin out on one side of the tree. You can see the top left of the tree in the picture looks like someone came and took a large bite out of it. Upon closer inspection of the area surrounding the base of the tree, I found a sapling that I had cut down to the ground several times in the last 10 years. It kept growing back so I thought I’d let it go just to see what was so determined to be there. It turns out it was a Black Walnut, most likely seeded by some obliging squirrel. And though I was cutting it back, it evidently remained undeterred underground and had gotten just a little too close to the magnolia for comfort, causing that side of the tree to die back.

So this time, I cut it back (it had gotten to be about 25 feet tall in the last two years) and will kill it with an epsom salt treatment this fall when the plant starts drawing it’s sap down into the ground for the long winter. 💀 Die, walnut tree, die. 💀 Ain’t nothing gonna hurt my Magnolia. Priorities, y’all.