Thanks gardengal48! I planted twelve 3ft brandon cedars about 4 weeks ago. The first week I was hand watering the base of the tree with the hose everyday for about 10 second a tree. I couldnt see any water pool up the soil was taking itas fast as I could give it. The very tips of the tree started to turn really light green. I called the place I purchased them from and he said they are probably getting too much water and to dial the watering back to once a week and really really soak them. I've been doing this and now I can see that down low on the tree it's starting to go a dark slight gray color and there are sprouts that are dry and not continuing to grow near the bas as well. The very tops of the trees look good and healthy. Am I being too paranoid? I have excellent soil where I live. It's deep black fluffy soil half inch down to about 18" then it's sand. I've never seen my soil dry more then 3/4" down before

Hi! We planted them 3 feet from our chain link fence and about 3 feet apart. Mulched for first and second year, but not since. We did not ever fertilize. There are more experts here that could help with the browning... but maybe too little or not enough water? Hope they come around for you!

we in SE MI got 4 to 6 inches of rain last week.. did it somehow miss you??? ... there should be no dryness issues ... imo ... thru probably july .... take a hand trowel.. and dig some 3 to 6 inch holes.. around the planting ... especially in july and august.. and just FIND OUT about moisture.. at root depth .... no guessing ... no asking us .. until you have the facts for us ... the MINOR browning.. was probably what i call shipping/handling damage ... if you ever saw a truck unloaded by a gang of college graduates.. you would be horrified to watch them just grab a handful or tree.. and throw it off the truck.. or pallet ... and then.. 6 or 8 weeks later.. you have all these mysterious fist sized areas of browning .. go figure ... damage down near the soil.. might be digging damage ... or storing them on a black top at big box .... your timing was so spot on.. i figure you are all set.. with the caveat of checking if and when we get into the high heat of summer.. and potential drought getting deep into the soil.. where the roots are ... ken

I am removing these roots. Almost every resource says to just make sure to plant a few feet away, and many testimonies say their new tree is doing fine years later, but even 8ft away I am hitting like 3x3 fresh lumber I can make furniture with lol. Ultimately I think this is a unique scenario because I checked youtube vids like below and although some of those trunks are much smaller than the Silver Maple, the ratio of roots-to-trunk size seems way different as if this Silver Maple made clusters of much thicker and longer roots for its size - I think it's because the sandy/clay grading soil when they built the development makes things root shallow in this location. This is how a lot of developments are built, they use cheap sandy/clay stuff for the main grading and then only about 18" of good soil on top for the grass and trees, and also I've heard this whole side of town was basically a swap or something once upon a time, google maps even shows a blue line (river) along this fence line but there's never been a river, maybe an underground spring or something hence the map's river line starts and ends with no body of water and I've replaced fence posts here when it hasn't rained and basically hit an underground river (the wood underground was solid because no oxygen is why fence posts usually rot at the base only). I removed the stumps and roots of a row of blue point junipers that were chopped down like 7 years prior and they were still solid. If the roots look like the below vids, then yes go ahead and plant close and don't even worry about that little amount of roots in fact yes it'll just add organic matter I'd prefer to leave some roots if it's sandy/clay which is what I'm doing adding small roots back into the mix and mixing the sandy sub soil with the dark rich compost topsoil. Green giants are well-rooted and unlikley to tip over from windthrow, and they might root deeper into the sandy/clay stuff just below the old maple roots, but bottom line is there's too much big roots in the way that I know it'll be better without them, I can't even dig a 1ft wide hole for a new tree without hitting something decent. Some trees cost too much to risk it IMHO at least get some of the old roots out, setting up irrigation, transporting the trees, fertilizing etc better to not risk it if the conditions and old roots are like this. Another thing is if a previous tree/roots had disease, it could enter the new tree, but as long as there's not a ton of old root mass, then maybe it's not a big deal and the soil microbes will correct it, but just wanted to note that about planting near an old stump. And well, you can't just make quick work of roots with a chainsaw because it'll dull in 5 seconds and you'll spend more time sharpening than cutting (although I might sacrifice a chain for this and test my dremel chainsaw bits for once because usually I just hand file), but it's not too too bad removing roots. It rained hard and turned my project into a pool that I bucket'd mostly out and then filled the finished areas back with soil and it was like working on quicksand but it's getting there and the farther away from the stump the easier it becomes. Sawsall pruning blades dull really fast too and I resharpen them on a bench grinder but it's still takes a while. I've been picking at them with an axe, splitting wedges etc, rain-soaked compost topsoil makes it a lot heavier and everything slippery, been going at it with a jack hammer with a sharpened chisel bit does decently. This Silver Maple stump was like 3ft wide at the base. I just removed a different maple's stump and roots from the sidewalk grass strip area to plant new sweetbay magnolia and that was about a 1ft maple stump but the ratio of those roots to the large silver maple doesn't correlate, I was able to rather easily remove the whole stump and what seems like the only main roots it put out due to being confined between the sidewalk and street compared to the large Silver Maple really put tons of big roots out. sorry so long, Another things though is Green Giants are an extremely QUICK growing tree so I would still prefer not to have even medium sized roots near them. Tree services should offer the option to grind the roots too if they're this big. The Silver maple roots I'm removing are much bigger for the trunk-to-roots ratio than these trees it seems likely because of the site conditions https://youtu.be/N3RUifC7Uo8?t=310 https://youtu.be/Fjg7ieBY7Lk?t=434 https://youtu.be/bRTIwWUg4fc?t=152 https://youtu.be/vM24klVyxFk?t=477