Yes you can plant it now. Check out this planting guide for more help:

Planting a Tree or Shrub

Posted by brandon7 7 TN (My Page) on Sun, Feb 8, 15 at 0:49
Yes you can plant it now. Check out this planting guide for more help:
Planting a Tree or Shrub

I am surprised that soil amendments are not advisable

Thanks Brandon. Very helpful.

This post was edited by pbx2 on Sun, Feb 8, 15 at 11:17

Yep, the soil amendment thing is a pretty well-identified gardening myth. I bet you can find a hundred posts talking about that, here on GardenWeb. Unfortunately, a few nurseries and other poorly horticulturally-trained people still advise using amendments, even thought it's been clearly shown to be detrimental for a very long time now.

even thought it's been clearly shown to be detrimental for a very long time now.

Is this just for trees? Or are landscape beds as a whole to follow this guidance?

The main problem with amending small areas is how it affects movement of water into and out of the amended area. Doesn't matter what the original soil is like, what kinds of plants are being planted or what amendments are being used - as long as the result is plants in a small area of one soil texture surrounded by a large area of another texture problems may occur.

Digging organic amendments into the entire potential rooting area of woody plants could seem to have some utility as this would avoid the problem of water moving through the soil being affected by the proximity of two different soil textures (except on the edges of the large amended area). But then there is the problem of organic matter decomposing and disappearing long before the life of the planting is over, and it not being practical to dig the planting up and re-amend the bed every time this happens.

The growing of annual flowers and vegetable plants is a different situation because these have limited root systems and are replaced every year, making it feasible to establish and maintain special amended beds for them. And many of the parental species of these types are adapted to soils that contain a substantial portion of decomposing organic matter.

The 'Green Giant' should be inspected carefully before purchase, as trees and shrubs put on clearance at garden centers have often been there some time and are the worse for it. At this time of the year I would in particular wonder if they had been left to sit out in the cold, had significant root damage that cannot be seen outside of the containers. Another problem with stock that has been sitting at retail outlets for months is lack of fertilization - plants can look quite green but actually be terribly deficient, resulting in a reduced ability to grow and establish in final planting sites. Growers of container stock in particular may often use diligent fertilization regimes that are not continued at all by retailers. Some crops may be given surface applications of fertilizer pellets that fall off during shipping to or handling of the trees at garden centers.

This post was edited by bboy on Sun, Feb 8, 15 at 12:23

either amend the whole bed ... or dont ... but not individual holes ...

it makes watering harder.. with the intense diversity at the edge of the two soils ...

it encourages tree roots to come into your hole .. stealing nutrients and again.. making watering harder ...

and it cost money that need not be spent ...

if you have trouble with a bargain plant.. that has probably been sitting there since delivery last spring.. it wont be because of the hole ...

though all conifers are trees ... this is a conifer... that might be important.. if you ever try to look up pruning rules for such ....

its proper latin name is: Thuja (standishii x plicata) 'Green Giant'

ken

Actually Ken, the complete and proper designation for this clone according to the National Arboretum is:

Thuja (standishii x plicata) 'Green Giant'
(NA 29972)

;)

"either amend the whole bed ... or dont ... but not individual holes ... it makes watering harder.. with the intense diversity at the edge of the two soils ... "

There are actually two pretty widely-recognized and significant possible problems with amending soil when planting woody plants. One, drainage, is usually not affected by how widely the area is amended. Drainage generally occurs at the bottom of the hole. An olympic-size swimming pool can fill up just as easily and quickly as a narrow test tube of the same height, if the amount of water applied is proportional to the surface area. I never have understood how this is overlooked.

29972 is a collection number from the US National Arboretum and not part of the name of the plant. Also leaving off the reference to the parental species names might make for better search results when using Google.

All matrices of growing plants do produce organic matter, long after initial planting. Although we may tend to think of plant roots as static, permanent structures, the fine "feeder" roots, which do the actual absorption of water, with nutrients dissolved in that water, are replaced numerous times during the course of a single growing season. All this sloughed-off root system is organic matter, and this is the reason, for example, that old, well-established park lawns can often look pretty good even though there are almost no inputs in terms of fertilizers. If there are trees in the area, those too are growing/dying/sloughing off the active portions of their root systems over the course of a single year. So I can't agree that once applied, the gradual loss of organic matter via decomposition is a one-way street headed to OM depletion. That's not what I see, and if one were to, say, mulch over the top, with wood chips, bark, cocoa hulls, pine straw, name your organic material....this too is easily enough to maintain the OM content through time.

None of which should be taken to indicate that amending holes at time of planting, for such relatively permanent plants as trees and shrubs, is a good idea. It's not, and the drainage anomalies are the reason. If the plant came in a ball of highly organic potting medium, water will not move into that course material until all the surrounding finer-textured soil is saturated. If for whatever reason, the transplant came with very fine soil and is then planted into a courser soil, it will be prone to being inundated with water. Water cannot move from fine textured soils to coarse-textured ones until the fine stuff is completely saturated. You don't want such issues to be plaguing your plantings.

I also install large areas of bedding plants, ie. flower beds, and there, the incorporation of well-cured compost is simply an amazing improvement, with one caveat: Some species you may wish to grow actually will perform better in a dry, lifeless, almost sterile soil. Adding compost to beds where you wish to grow such plants will often yield big, floppy plants which can't hold themselves up, and which often do not produce flowers. But for all other cases, it works wonders.

+oM

"it makes watering harder.. with the intense diversity at the edge of the two soils ... "

"It's not, and the drainage anomalies are the reason."

============================================================================

Trying to understand this drainage issue in laymen's terms.

Is it that the water is not able to get to the roots of the newly planted tree?

Or

Is it that the water is not draining fast enough or adequately & is drowning the roots?

Very good explanations on a lot of that stuff +oM.

The reason I don't agree with amending larger areas (and we are not talking about cases like berms/raised beds or yards with a substantial slope), is that all the drainage problems are still present. Drainage is no better than in cases where just the planting hole is amended. The other big problem, roots being encouraged not to spread out into the native soil, is addressed by amending a larger area.

In situations where drainage is a problem, large raised beds/berms, can go a long way towards addressing the issues.

And as important as drainage is to a wide array of species, it would be wrong to paint a picture of there being vast areas-in suburbia or what have you-where that's a limiting factor. If anything, we've tended to over-drain the earth as our cities, big wide modern streets, and malls move across the land. But yes, where such factors do limit plant performance, it is important factor to pay attention to.

I suppose another take on it would be to say, if you have a situation of poor drainage, not due merely to the lay of the land, just adding organic matter to the A horizon of the soil will not "correct" underlying issues like hardpans or extremely compacted layers, that sort of thing. The soil will be "better" for having had this addition of OM, but at least in terms of drainage, no improvement will have been made.

+oM