general gardening & landscaping

[daisy b]

how do you start a magnolia tree from seeds :?:

[pridgeon]

Why would you want to??? I have two magnolia trees that I hate but they were planted by my husband's grandmother and taller than a two story house so I don't feel good about cutting them down. They are extremely messy and the roots are more invasive than anything I've ever dealt with before. I know, I'll probably get lots of responses about how beautiful magnolias are and I guess they are when they're blooming, but in my opinion I would never recommend one to anybody!

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

I don't know anyone who has one who really loves it every season of the year. In my opinion, they are a great tree to observe from afar and, of course, the blooms are very fragrant. Probably the worst thing about magnolias is people plant them in too small a yard. They need room to send out lots of surface roots which makes a mess out of a normal yard. If you trim up the lower branches to give some light underneath, you can grow a ground cover to cover up the roots. If you had a football field to grow them in, you could put about 4 or 5 of them at the far end and it would look nice.

When the leaves fall, they are a booger to get up. They provide too much shade and are too persistent to leave in place, so they have to be raked or mulched. Many mulching mowers will not lift them to shred them, or will mulch some and leave enough to frustrate you.

[caroler]

While it is true that Magnolias need a lot of space, may I respectfully disagree with all other advice given? A Magnolia should never be pruned up from the ground. It naturally grows in a cone shape and it's lower limbs should be allowed to remain, since nothing can grow well under them anyway.

Since they are evergreen, you never have to deal with a lot of raking. Just mow clockwise around them and whatever leaves are not destroyed will blow under them to join the mulch. I have a large flower bed on one side of my Magnolia and as the tree grows I occasionally move perennials further away. When pulling a few weeds, I can toss them out of sight under the tree.

Seed can be planted in East Texas as soon as they pop out. I line a grid-type plastic plant flat with several layers of newspaper and add almost two inches of potting soil or finished compost. Then sprinkle a layer of seed and cover with potting soil. I flip a slightly larger flat over the top or cover with a piece of rabbit wire or whatever to discourage animals from digging, and place the flat on the ground. It can winter under the magnolia tree, in a flower bed or behind the garage, with a few leaves or light mulch over it for camouflage and protection from a hard freeze. They will sprout when the ground starts warming up in the spring and you can pot them up.