welcome to hort tube where we talk all things gardening my name is jim putnam and this is a dwarf alberta spruce this is dwarf alberta spruce an evergreen conifer that keeps a perfect christmas tree shape year round dwarf alberta spruce is narrow and upright it can eventually reach as much as 10 or even 12 feet in height but probably only stay about four to five feet in width at the base dwarf alberta spruce works best in zones two to eight but not in zones seven b or eight in areas where it gets really really hot so in the southeast united states those parts of seven b and eight it's just too hot in the summertime and this is not a good choice for you dwarf alberta spruce is pretty slow growing you're probably going to only get about two or three inches of growth out of these in the ground each year dwarf alberta spruce needs at least a half a day sun and would probably prefer almost full sun in areas of the country where you could potentially have hundred degree temperatures you know for a week or two during the summer like in zone seven or eight in the southeast this plant would probably need to be in some afternoon shade you know where you're getting a half a day sun and a half a day shade there's a lot of uses for dwarf alberta spruce it works fantastic on the corner of your foundation it grows in a perfect little christmas tree shape works great in a container actually and you can leave it in the same container probably for two years and then when you step it up you know you can kind of double the width of the container about every two years and keep it for a long period of time that way works great as a screening plant but it's so slow growing that if you're in a hurry to develop your screen there's probably better choices i'm shooting this video in december so you can't see it now but one of the main features of dwarf alberta spruce is it has this almost lime green new foliage in the spring and early summer and it's very soft to the touch and those that new lime green foliage contrast really really well with this dark green foliage that you see now i've included videos in the description below for either planting dwarf alberta spruce in either clay soils or sandy or well draining soils just follow those instructions and you should be fine just don't plant this plant too deep and don't over mulch it a lot of conifers like dwarf alberta spruce are not very good at letting you know when they're dry they'll just start to thin out in the middle and then it's kind of difficult to get them to recover from that so this is a plant that if it's dry during the summertime if you go up you know a few weeks without rain this is probably a plant that i would check on even after it's been established and you know drag a water hose to it and saturate the entire area around it it's not a plant that i put on an automated irrigation system you definitely could love this thing to death but it is one that i would think about during drier times the new growth on dwarf alberta spruce in the spring and early summer is really fantastic and you can encourage more of that by fertilizing it and i just use any slow release fertilizer for acid-loving plants in the spring just do it once maybe as soon as the worst of the winter is passed mid-march to mid-april depending on where you are and that one application should be fine for the summer don't do it mid-summer you know after the 4th of july because we don't want to encourage any new growth late into the fall one of the nice things about dwarf alberta spruce is it really just doesn't ever need to be pruned you'll get the occasional little branch on the side here that might you might want to cut off but really not a lot of shearing there's not a lot of depth to the foliage on these and if you ever really sheared it very hard you'd almost strip it of all the foliage and then it would take a very long time for it to recover from that so i would just discourage it put it in a place where you can allow the thing to eventually reach eight or ten feet and not have to do a lot of pruning on it there are not a lot of pest problems on dwarf alberta spruce in my area in north carolina i'm in zone seven b and in seven b and eight uh it it gets too hot in the southeast for these and spider mites can take them out very quickly so that's our main issue here and if you planted this plant too deep and you over watered it almost certainly you could end up with root rot on it that would be another issue you could have but in most of the areas of the country there are not a lot of pest problems so what are you waiting for even you can grow the slow growing christmas tree shape low maintenance dwarf alberta spruce thank you for watching my video and if it was helpful please hit the like button and subscribe to my channel for future videos also comment below with any questions you have about dwarf alberta spruce thanks for watching you