Source: Woodie's Garden Goods (MD)
Size shipped: 1 gallon pot (1'+)
Planted:
First flowering: None yet
(This plant stayed behind when I moved in 2021; therefore, the following text will receive no further updates.)
I originally got this expecting a shrub that would grow in an upright habit (Woodie's claims 4-6'x2-4') and work well in the bed on the north side of the house with the pieris, azalea, and October Magic Ruby Camellia (sasanqua). But when I read from enough other sources that the Olympic Fire typically grows wider than tall, and that in any case it grows rather slowly, I eventually decided to replace it in that spot with the April Dawn Camellia and keep it in a pot until I can find a better use for it.
Unfortunately, I didn't make that decision until after I had already planted it... which itself wasn't until late November, a month and a half after I had received it.
So when I dug it out of the ground in April and back into a (new, bigger, and RootBuilder II) pot, I found that I could basically just pop the entire old rootball out of the ground without disturbing anything -- in other words, the roots had done no growing into the surrounding soil the whole time it had been in the ground. Well, now I know that November is too late to be planting these things if one is to have any hope of getting them established before growth resumes in the spring. But at least it doesn't appear to be any worse off for it -- you can see from the photo that it started pushing new growth as expected when the time came.
That first flush of new growth wasn't very big and didn't last long before the mountain laurel just settled in and sat there for a few months, so I was surprised at the end of July to see what looked like some new buds extending again -- especially as we were still getting 90°+F temperatures and little rain, just like the few weeks before. Unfortunately, at some point after that, the plant appeared to have been grazed (deer perhaps?), losing those new growing tips and a fair amount of mature foliage as well. This happened again in late August, leaving the plant looking quite bare but still with new leaves that still hadn't finished extending yet, and leaving me rather annoyed at the sources such as NCSU and UConn that claim that Kalmia latifolia is resistant to deer.
In mid-September I planted the mountain laurel in a shaded spot behind the fothergilla and more
underneath the arborvitae hedge, a spot that should be able to accommodate its currently upright habit;
if it does end up getting wider, I might consider moving it again. I was incredibly disappointed to
undo the RootBuilder II pot and witness basically all of the new substrate just falling away -- the
roots appeared to have done almost no growing out of the original rootball in all of the five months
this thing had been potted, and it wasn't for lack of fertilizer. Maybe the combination of Fafard 52
and pumice (I believe) was too coarse compared to the old substrate from the nursery (which I never
washed off), and the roots didn't want to venture out of the more water-retentive original rootball?
Also, this was while the plant was still regrowing from the
latest grazing, and said regrowth seemed to have ridiculously short internodes, which was concerning
-- a possible sign of depleted starch reserves. I made sure to add blood meal to the planting hole,
aiming to promote a much more normal-looking growth flush for the next spring.
And yet it STILL wasn't enough, as early November saw the mountain laurel get browsed AGAIN, leaving me with very little hope that it would ever grow to any significant fraction of its potential. This made me very leery of using any more arborvitae for anything on this property, or introducing chokeberry at all.