Planting Green Giant Trees

[John C 2712]

I'm new to the site. I recently purchased land in Chesapeake VA. I want to purchase 200 3FT tall Green Giant trees in containers to get best prices to plant long the highway that runs along my property. It's 200 miles away, so I want to have them delivered to my current home, and transport them 40-50 at a time and plant them over the next couple months. How long can I leave them in the containers they arrived in? Can I just leave them outside, or should I bring them inside my garage? Next year I hope to do the same thing with another 200. I'm betting before I finish I will have planted 800 trees.

[rainbowgardener]

I can't really answer your questions, but have you thought about not just planting 800 of the same tree? Monocultures are really dangerous. A big concentration of one species is a magnet for every pest and disease that likes that species. And then once it finds them, it is easy to speed through the monoculture to spread from one to the next.

California planted oleander hedge monoculture in the medians of freeways for hundreds of miles. Now they have an oleander virus that is fatal to the plant, spread by a particular leaf hopper that likes oleander. All the oleanders are getting wiped out and it is costing the state many millions of dollars.

Virginia has 6 species of native pines including the lovely Eastern white pine. It has 2 native junipers, the Thuja, and 3 native hollies. And even though you want an evergreen screen, you could probably mix in a deciduous tree every 4th one or so and still have pretty good screening. If you mix it up, you are less likely to get hit with some pest/disease, if you do, it won't spread as fast with trees the bug doesn't like in between the ones it does, and even if (worst case and we certainly hope not) the Thujas get wiped out, you will still have some screen remaining.

With globalization and plants and insects and diseases getting spread all over the place, this stuff is a lot more of a concern than it used to be.

[applestar]

Even though it seems like an easy solution and design -- and I suppose it is in terms of execution -- when you plant tightly shaped tree like this in a straight row, every little imperfection becomes blatant... And if you lose a tree here and there, leaving empty spots, that becomes obvious (faulty-looking) too.

I second a mixed native plant (trees/shrubs/vines/plants) wildlife hedge row as a much more Eco-friendly, sustainable and bio-diverse/healthy alternative.

"over the next couple of months" -- will you have time before the ground freezes? Evergreens can be tricky when planted so close to winter deep freeze since they don't entirely go dormant and will need to be protected from freeze/wind burn for which they need to be able to uptake moisture from the ground -- a good drink before the ground freezes. If you are not going to be there and will be leaving them to fend for themselves over the winter months, you may lose some.

[John C 2712]

Thanks for the advice. The VA Department of Forestry recommended them to me since they grow fast and are real resistant to bag worms. I'll end up planting other things in front of them later. These are just to block our view of the road that runs along my land (about a half mile). I have about 42 acres of timber I'll be harvesting and replanting with most Loblolly Pines and other assorted trees. I'll probably take an acre and start growing a lot of different trees that I'll later move to other areas as my wife decides where she wants them.