Anyone ever tried growing Yaupon?

[cedillamuerta]

I'm going to begin growing native holly species such as I. glabra, cassine, decidua, and verticillata. I especially want to try I. vomitoria due to its ability to make a good tea and I was wondering if any of y'all had experience growing these. What would be a good way to start some seeds and what sort of soil requirements do they have? I have access to a greenhouse if necessary and I will (hopefully) have some compost ready by springtime. Thanks for the help.

[luis_pr]

Gallberry is used to produce a sweet nectar (from I. glabra) so consider researching that one if you are interested in producing the nectar. It prefers moist soils and adapts to heavy to light ones. Keep it under control by regularly looking for suckers. Evergreen where you and I are. Shamrock is used in low hedges. I do not grow from seed though (too lazy). Hee hee hee.

[rainbowgardener]

I have a couple winterberry shrubs (verticillata), but like many of the other woodland natives I would like to grow, they aren't doing very well for me at all, because they like acid soil (less than 6.8 ). My soil is alkaline, very limiting! I have tried amending it with acidifiers, but when things are planted in the ground, you can acidify enough to get them started, but it is always going to get neutralized by all the surrounding ground and then they die a slow lingering death. I tortured a number of plants to death before I finally decided I can't grow acid lovers!

[cedillamuerta]

I've never heard about the gallberry nectar before. So far I have gotten about 7 or 8 young Yaupon trees and about 4 young gallberry trees. I'll probably end up cultivating at least one of every native species here because I like collecting stuff like that. I've done some research on them and most of the Ilex species around here have a long pre-germination period (up to 2 years ) so I've started with some cuttings for most of the yaupon and transplanted some pulled gallberry. Apparently they're very hardy and can root themselves from cuttings without any growth hormone.