Source: Gardens Oy Vey (TN)
Size shipped: #3 pot (measured almost 2')
Planted: In ground, June 2020
First flowering: Unknown as of yet, no thanks to the deer
(This plant stayed behind when I moved in 2021; therefore, the following text will receive no further updates.)
UPS really dropped the ball on this one. What should have been a two-day delivery from Tennessee to New Jersey started out as such... but then the viburnum stayed at their local distribution hub (NOT the UPS Store close to me) for days, for no apparent reason. Thankfully, when it finally arrived, it seemed to be no worse for wear. I still kept it in mostly shade (under the garage eaves) until it was time to plant it some days later.
I did not bare-root this one, but mostly because the only pot I could have sprayed the substrate into (requirements: drainage holes and large size) was already full, with the Repti-Bark I'm trying to compost so I can use it for potting purposes later. One side of the pot had TONS of roots on the outside of the root ball, but it's worth noting that they were all pointing down and not circling the pot sideways, so I mostly just loosened things up as much as I could instead of actually snipping.
The planting site itself was a bit unique. I was planting somewhat in front of where an arborvitae
had once stood as part of an overgrown hedge along the road; it came down in the wind storms of March
2018, and either that year or 2019 I had ordered the stump ground out as well. But, the remaining arbs
still had significant surface roots (and I do mean right on the surface), and I did not dare
remove the largest ones for fear of significant ill effects on those arbs. So what I did instead was
use my hand-cultivator to loosen up as much of the soil as possible (and take out some fresh weeds in the
process), then plant the Prague viburnum mostly on the ground rather than in the ground,
mounding up dirt all around it.
And where did I get this excess dirt? From the pile resulting from the
ground stump, of course. It turned out it was kind of half-and-half legitimate soil and arborvitae
wood/bark, but that should still be sufficient as a medium for the roots to grow laterally into and as a
nutrient source (after I threw feather meal at it to counter the possible nitrogen tie-up from the
wood/bark, that is) while also hopefully suppressing weeds -- I noticed hardly any growing in the pile
before I disturbed it.
Interestingly enough, despite coming from the relatively warmer climate of Tennessee, the Prague viburnum still had not started growing out for the year by the time it got here. I've read that this is an exceptionally fast grower, but it looks like it may not be such for us until at least 2021. Additionally, all throughout the summer of 2020, the Prague viburnum was always one of my first plants to start visibly complaining about lack of water -- even the daphne, which had originally been just as squeaky of a wheel, was no longer needing supplemental water by mid-August. I'm guessing that this is due mostly to the unique planting method I used on the viburnum (see above).
Thankfully, by fall, the Prague had settled in and was no longer so touchy about watering... but then the deer came through in November and December and grazed it. In mid-December it was attacked again, to the point of losing two thirds of its foliage, though the tracks didn't look like deer tracks (maybe rabbits or squirrels?? IDK). By January it was basically completely leafless. And it's not even a native, AND its leaves are kind of fuzzy which is supposed to deter deer. But it recovered its original size and what looked like a decent amount of its original leaf mass in the spring.