There I was, strolling through the hardware store, looking for a few things I needed, and looking at some things I clearly didn’t need.
You know the things, shiny power tools (I admit it, I love the sound a nail gun makes! Ah, the possibilities!), expensive looking floor tiles, massive terracotta pots, a hundred different kinds of screws and tacks… That sort of thing.

Sooner or later, anyone who wants to be a gardener will wander toward the plant section, even if that is totally not what they came for. It’s the same with me and pet shops, I always end up looking at the little doggie coats because I have a hound with almost no coat who gets incredibly cold during winter and who looks incredibly adorable in pink. Well, I think so, anyways…

Well, they had dozens of trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials, some of which I had never heard of, some I had come across whilst doing research and remembered what they are all about, and some of which sounded familiar, but I couldn't really remember anything about.
So, what does a body do? Of course, grab some cheap plugs that sound useful and see if they like my dirt! Also, those trees were looking kind of neat, you know, with their shiny bark, some grey, some brown, some smooth, some rough, some with big leaves, some with tiny ones. Some say they will make great avenue trees!
You get the drift…

Anyways, sure enough, I ended up buying a tree I didn’t know much about, by the stately name of “Pin Oak”. Proud as Harry I went ahead and selected a nice spot, always keeping the label information in mind.

Every day I walked past and looked at my little tree and wondered when the first new leaf buds would pop up. Some of my other plants seemingly exploded in activity as soon as they hit my dirt! Many have doubled or tripled in size since planting! This must have been a slow growing tree… Maybe it needed more water? Did I it mulch it well enough? Maybe I should go google it, and see what problems other people have encountered with this lovely plant, which, hopefully, one day will produce acorns, which pigs could then eat!

Well, sure enough, google had all the answers. This tree does not like alkaline soils, nor even neutral ones. It prefers acid. Planted in alkaline soils it suffers iron chlorosis, due to an inability to absorb iron from the soil.
Why, treatment is impractical and expensive you say?

Silly me, what is my soil PH again? Oh yea, I remember... It’s around 7-ish, tending more toward alkaline than acid. Oops, my bad.

The tree will have to come out. Maybe I can re-home it, kind of like a puppy? Someone else might want it and have the right kind of soil for it to boot?

Either way I’m kind of sad and dissappointed and would have been better off not buying a tree I didn’t know much about. Okey-dokey, lesson learnt, I hope!
At least I will try to ask a staff member who will hopefully know more than me about it next time, before taking home something pretty, but utterly useless to me…