Living Fences™ made of ornamental evergreens such as Hollies, Leyland Cypress and Green Giant Arborvitae. Instead of using hard goods such as metal or wood fences for screens in the landscape, these natural barriers create privacy, shade and closure to your landscape. Evergreens are an excellent biomass filter, producing oxygen and helping to reduce your carbon footprint.
In our last blog, we talked about soil types affecting the availability and uptake of plant nutrients. Sandy soils , which drain quickly, may not have sufficient N, P and K due to leaching, as the water rapidly leaves a sand area. Over the years rains can remove a lot of nutrients from a porous area to the garden. Regular watering is needed to establish new trees and may move materials away also, from sandy planting mix. If you could see a cross section of the soil draining, the water you are applying moves rapidly out of the sand in a more pointed, dagger like profile.
Early spring is the time to fertilize the evergreen trees of your privacy screen. Visiting our clients sites over the last 3 years, we see most Living Fence evergreens need fertilization. The past few rainy years has most likely leached most of the nitrogen from our garden soils. One year we even had 70 … Continue reading Evergreen Tree Fertilization
The largest evergreen trees for privacy screening that we grow and transplant, are 15 feet tall Thuja Green Giant Arborvitaes. For almost 40 years we have successfully planted large green giant privacy screens throughout the Baltimore/Washington area. Our green giant trees are grown from rooted cuttings at Pryor's Nursery in Damascus, Maryland. On our website we … Continue reading How Tall Are The Evergreen Trees We Grow Locally?
Its that time of year again when bagworms could appear and unfortunately, they damage plants. Bagworms prefer juniper, arborvitae, spruce, pine, and cedar but also attack deciduous trees. The bags hold over 300 eggs in the cocoon and disperse in late spring by "ballooning" or crawling. The caterpillars feed for up to six weeks. Larvae … Continue reading Bag Worm Control
At our evergreen tree farm, we experimented with different soil types and potting mixtures over 20 years ago. Leafgro, which is manufactured by the state of Maryland, proved to be an excellent addition to the planting medium. Made of leaves and grass clippings collected from the surrounding cities, it is professionally recycled into Leafgro at … Continue reading Organic Soil Amendments
The Nellie Stevens is denser than most upright pyramidal hollies. It responds well to pruning, creating additional lateral tip buds at each pruning cut. Nellie Stevens hollies tolerate wet feet well. At our evergreen tree farm in Damascus, Maryland, the clay soils are often super saturated through the winter but the Nellie Stevens holly is able to grow in these conditions.
Today we also use holly trees to create beautiful living fences for year round privacy screening. The holly trees can be trimmed a bit during the holiday season so you can make your own wreath or kissing ball. Or, you can go eco friendly by using a live holly tree as your holiday tree, then plant it in your yard afterwards.
Bagworms are easy to control when they are young and there is minimal damage to the plant. Look for bagworms in late June. Use the Fourth of July as a reminder date. The bagworms will be very small at this time and are easy to stop with most any product. They may be as small as a … Continue reading Bagworm Treatment
