We are still new to our house, and we don’t have any trees in our yard. I wanted to plant one when we had our first child, so we planted one last fall. I did some research, and decided on a Royal Empress tree. It is hard wood, grows extremely fast, provides a ton of shade during the summer, but loses it’s gigantic leaves in the fall so the sun can shine through on the house during the cold winter months.
I wanted to plant it on the south side of our driveway. I ordered one online for $15, and it came in the mail basically as a stick. It grew about 4 inches the rest of the fall. I read that if you chop it down after the first year, it’ll come back quick and straight the next year. So I cut it down over the winter. I wasn’t sure if it would come back or not. April came, and I finally saw two little sprouts growing on the tree.
I got really excited. The tree was probably going to make it, but I still wasn’t 100% sure. I was curious as to how quickly it would grow, since I’ve read some really unbelievable statements online. I even read one place that said it grew 11 feet in one year! I thought that was crazy talk, but I was curious to see how much it would grow this year.
So another month goes by, and one of the sprouts turned into this (the second sprout quit growing, which is good):
It’s about 18 inches tall, in just one month! It’s already grown larger than that, as this picture was taken on May 12th. My plan was to create a berm around all the equipment we have here, so that’s why the grass is dead. I sprayed it and this was the in-between time. I’ll have to post a picture of the berm in another post. Here’s a picture of Brooke (my 9 month old daughter) next to the tree, so you can get a better idea of the size of it. Keep in mind that it’s only 1 month from non existent.
She’s sitting right next to it. The leaves are almost as large as the tree itself! I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like in the fall.
