transplanting hedge plants from hydroponics to soil

[Lars.C]

Hi, and greetings from Norway!

My sister just bought a new house with a large garden. She will be needing around 300 hedge plants. Since she's focusing on remodeling the house now, she`s gonna wait until next year to start with the garden.
My thought was that I could grow them for her in my cellar or garage, approximately 9 pr.
1 - 1,2 square meter.
Since things grow faster with hydroponics and if I combined it with LED- growlights, I think they can be quite decent in size fast and cheap under optimal circumstances, compared to how expensive they are at plant stores when 1 meter high or more.

My question is this. How would it be to transplant them to the soil outside next summer? I`m thinking that I first should transplant them to a good soil inside first to better adapt them, and then after another week or to plant them outside.
What do you guys think?
Am I far off or is this possible? Any help, tips would be appreciated

[rainbowgardener]

I don't do hydro and no expert on any of this, but I'll give it a stab, mainly to bump your post so more people will see it.

Trees/shrubs are not typically grown hydroponically, which is not to say they can't. But it does take a good set up with appropriate media, lots of light, etc. I think it is an advanced skill and you would really need to know what you are doing.

Understand that this would be a major undertaking even to do 50 of them, much less 300. A lot of equipment, a lot of work, and not cheap - you would have to buy a lot of stuff and you would be running a LOT of power in lights, pumps, etc.

Transplanting them from water to soil is also not easy. The only hydro I do is my little Aerogarden, which is an automated self- contained aeroponic gizmo. Anyway the plants in that are growing in water. I have transplanted them into soil, but it takes a lot of care. Water roots are different from soil roots. So when you put them in soil, you have to keep it consistently very moist for awhile until they grow soil roots.

[rainbowgardener]

PS something for your sister to think about. Sounds like she is planning a hedge around her property (or some parts of it) of 300 identical hedge plants? People do that all the time. Personally I think it is a very boring landscaping concept, with no ecological/habitat value AND it is a risky investment. Setting up a mono-culture like that means that if some disease or pest of those plants comes along, it will be attracted to those 300 plants like a magnet and will zoom through them like wildfire.

California planted hundreds of miles of Oleander hedge down the median strip of I-5 and other freeways. Now there is a killer disease of oleanders ripping through them and the state is spending millions of dollars removing and replacing them.

If you have a mixed hedge, it isn't as attractive to pests in the first place, stuff doesn't spread through it as fast, because there is a barrier of other kinds of plants between individuals of the same kind, and if you do lose all of one kind of plant, it only leaves some gaps, you haven't lost your whole hedge.

In your area you have lots of native berry-bearing shrubs (e.g. a bunch of different vacciniums, lingonberry, bilberry, cranberries, etc as well as ribes spp currants and others) which are great for bringing birds to your yard. You have heather, heath, bearberry, and many others.

Making a mixed hedge of some of these and others, mixed in with whatever evergreen hedge shrub she was planning, will make it more beautiful, more attractive to birds, bees, butterflies, and less vulnerable.