You MUST inspect the root system if they have been in 5 gallon containers and are that tall! I fear you will likely end up returning them once you find out how messed up the root system is. You will probably end up removing inches of potting soil before you even get to the root flare (the flare is your aiming point to get level or just slightly higher than the surrounding soil). Largish oak roots (relatively speaking) are pretty stiff in my limited experience and I have had trouble trying to straighten them out at planting. Surely for $165, they are in a bigger pot than 5 gallon? Any warranty with them? I would go ahead with planting if they are warrantied. If no warranty in that small a pot, I would return them without messing with anything. Any way you could post some pics for us to see the trees and their containers? John

If you have room for all of them, plant em all and enjoy the faster growing ones as they get big fast and the slower growing ones will in time be worth the wait. I have a BURR oak that grows faster than my 2 Q. Alba's have, BUT, it was a special kind that came from a HUGE acorn that a fellow Garden web person gave me. I have several Red oak family oaks that have grown sorta fast BUT I also have some white oak family oaks that grow about as fast as the red oak family oaks. I think the site they are growing on also matters a good bit also. My 2 Q. Albas are pretty slow growing though, I must say, BUT, everybody has different planting sites. Sometimes with certain trees I do wonder, "is it the area the tree is in, or genetics?" I have 2 Q. Robur's I got at the same time from the same person, and 1 of them has grown like a freakin Jacks Beanstock and 1 has just done "average". Now, the "Beanstocks" place used to have some horse poop near it, BUT, the OTHER Q. Robur is really close to a, area where another but OLDER source of horse poop used to be, I have a shrub there that has been growing like wild in that space from that same soil where we used to have a horse barn for about 25 years, in other words that other Q. Robur that hasn't taken off like the "Beanstock" one has is very close to the area where that OLDER pile of poop was many years ago, and actually, once that Q. Roburs roots get to wandering around I thi nk that IT will also tap into that very rich soil. My "Beanstock Q. Robur was basically planted about 5 feet from where the horse poop pile had been about 10 years before I planted it, so, it surely had a nice amount of rich soil to tap into from the get go, PLUS, it was close to the house and I had surely watered it when it hadn't rained very often. That "Beanstock" Q, Robur has also put out a few acorns as of the last couple of years and it is pretty young, maybe 7-8 years old, that is a guess, I do have a bunch of pics with dates on them, BUT, for now, I'll just guess.

He's right. It's not a matter of stability. It's a matter of different rates of expansion and contraction, and there's nothing that'll solve that.

Thanks, Chisue! I'll bet you were a good Camp Fire Girl. I wasn't in any group as a kid, but I became a Girl Scout leader when my girls were in middle school. We had fun. The turtle rug is the hooking I'm most proud of. Certainly it meant the most to me as I worked on it. I dyed all the blues and greens, as well as the peach background for the lettering. I held my breath a lot doing the lettering, but I was happy with the way it turned out. Quilters, I probably mentioned this before, but the turtle pattern came from FourTwinSisters.com, a nice source for free quilt patterns run by.....four twin sisters. :-) They're also on Facebook.