Red Buckeye Shrubs

After back filling and lightly compacting the 50/50 mix of existing soil and compost give the Red Buckeye a good deep watering. This is not to be rushed. Most of the water you put on the plant at first will run away from the plant until the soil is soaked. A general rule of thumb is to count to 5 for every one gallon of pot size. For example a one gallon pot would be watered until you count to 5 a three gallon pot would be 15 and so on. Check the plant daily for the first week or so and then every other day there after. Water using the counting method for the first few weeks.

Feeding your plants is probably the single most forgotten part of growing healthy long lasting plants. We recommend feeding your Red Buckeye in the very early spring and again in mid fall after all new growth has hardened off. Bio-tone starter fertilizer is the best product to use at the time of planting. Red Buckeye tends to use more nitrogen than some other plant families. Our ideal fertilizer schedule for you to use is as follows. Do an early spring fertilizer with a product such as Espoma Tree-tone at the recommended rate this will give the plant a boost of nitrogen that will be needed for healthy abundant foliage. Follow this up with a early summer application of Espoma Holly Tone, this will provide the necessary nutrients and raise the acid level in the soil which Red Buckeye favor. Espoma products are easy to use, just sprinkle around the base of the plant and water it in. Be careful with products such as miracle-grow as these products can burn newly planted plants when not used at the recommended rates. Slow-release fertilizer can help prevent rapid sucker growth that is vulnerable to diseases and insects.

We highly recommend that you mulch your Red Buckeye with either a ground hardwood mulch or a ground cypress mulch depending on your local availability. Any type of mulch will do but cypress or hardwood mulch will be of a higher quality and provide better nutrition overall as they breakdown. Mulching helps to keep weeds away which will compete with your new investment for water and nutrients. A 2 to 3 inch layer of mulch is sufficient but remember to take care not to cover any part of the stem of the plant with mulch. Its better to leave a one inch gap of space between the mulch and the stem or trunk of the plant.

Maintenance of Red Buckeye is minimal once established as is the case with most of the native shrubs. There are two schools of thought for pruning to enhance the berries. The first method of pruning is to remove 1/3 of the shrub each spring to eliminate the oldest branches as it is the newer stems that display the best berries. The next method involves rejuvenating the entire shrub every 3 years or so by removing all of the branches to within 8″ of the ground.