yes... cut the other out.... it will fill back in

being a new transplant ... i would do it late NEXT fall ... you cant take away half its canopy.. when it needs to grow roots ...

before you do that.. i would take to the seller ... see if he will stand up to the deal ..

if not.. its not all that big a deal.. in the the long run ...

ken

By "stand up to the deal", do you recommend that we ask the seller to replace the tree now with a single leader? The seller had confirmed in writing that all the trees would be single leader.

We have a 1-year warranty on the tree...I just mention that because if we wait until next fall to make the big cut, and the tree dies, we would be beyond the warranty period.

if its in writing.. then have him replace it ...

ken

The offending leader if you will can be shortened-it needn't be removed completely-and this simple strategy will have it acting like a branch instead of a competing leader in no time. No use making this more trouble than it needs to be.

btw.. multiple leaders on thuja is basically a snow load issue .. when they can splay open ...

i have about 50GGs ... never had a snow load issue on them .. even the one that is a multiple leader ...

where are you .;..

but again ... if its in writing.. make him replace it ...

ken

I'm located near Philadelphia, PA. I thought multiple leaders could cause a problem with snow, but I also thought there was an aesthetic advantage to a single leader tree...maybe I'm overthinking that. Our trees are planted pretty far from one another (maybe 14-16'). If they were close together in a screen then maybe looks would be less of an issue...but since they stand as separate trees I thought they might look nicer as single leaders.

Sorry for the silly question, but wisconsitom, what do you mean exactly by "have it acting like a branch". If I cut it shorter will it start growing more horizontally than vertically?

"the secondary trunk really goes all the way to the bottom"

In one of those photos, it looks like two separate trunks (i.e. two plants with one intermingled root ball). Regardless of whether this is the case, or you have an oddity with a large branch coming off just above the soil line, I suspect that a healthy mature specimen will be dense enough so that the second trunk/leader will not be noticeable.

I have a good-sized screen of Green Giants planted close to a dozen years ago as a screen. A couple plants early on suffered deer browsing damage and I moved them close together. Without looking very closely I don't think I could figure out where it is.

Yes it does look like there are two trunks coming out of the ground...so an intermingled root ball? Another tree looks somewhat similar, with a number of trunks coming out of the root ball? Here is a bad picture (sorry) of that other tree:

Assuming we keep the trees, what would be the best way to manage this? We'd like the single pyramid shape and don't want multiple trunks competing at the top. If I just keep pruning back the secondary ones and the main leader gets enough of a head start, should that work?

Or should I cut any secondary ones off completely at the ground level in a year or so (once roots are hopefully established)?

Yes, simply shorten up the offending one(s). That's really all there is to it. By doing so, you are sending a chemical message to that stem to behave itself, lol...as a branch, not a leader. Try it, you'll like it! Just fine a spot on the one you wish to reduce where there's a side branchlet pointing outward, away from the trunk. Make your cut there. It will never again compete with the main leader.

Thanks for the advice...I can always give that a shot first. My only question is that some of the competing leaders seem to go all the way down to the root ball. So I can't really make them into branches coming off of the central trunk. Thoughts?

Right-I realize that. Nevertheless, this simple technique will work. Some occasionally ask how much to reduce the stem by. There is no hard and fast answer but very generally, this is a case where more is more. But beyond that, finding the right side branch/branchlet to cut back to is a prime consideration.

There's nothing hypothetical in what I suggest here. It has been used to good effect by knowledgeable arborists all over the nation and beyond.

Took another pic of one of the trees...I'm assuming this isn't the ideal look for a Green Giant:

Should I try to remove the secondary trunks over time leaving only the center one? I'm inclined to make the cuts sooner rather than later, since our plants were supposed to be single leader and they are under warranty for one year (only).

I would yet again use subordination cuts to get these rather poorly-formed GGs into the growth form you initially requested. That supplier did you no favors, did they?

And yes, to me and others, a single-leadered arb is a better-looking plant, not just one with reduced tendency to strip apart like a banana under heavy snow or ice load.

Any updates on your Green Giant with double trunks? I just bought one like that by accident and I was worried about heavy snows in Pittsburgh. I was going to cut out the smaller trunk but it was almost as tall as the main trunk so I tried to divide the root ball. I sort of regret that now, since it probably will take the main trunk longer to adjust and the smaller didn't get many roots and will probably die back mostly, and also got a third smaller tree only about a foot tall with roots out of the mess I made. Time will tell.

@ phaedrus29 - how are your GGs doing? did you grow with multiple leaders? Or cut back the force a single leader?

great news! congrats!!! so this has been how many years?

Just one year: the spring that I divided it, then a long hot summer and all this winter, so I'm confident it made it. The most worrisome thing was when I had divided it with the shovel, one of them actually had this chopped off end on the trunk and only a few roots off to the one side. That's the one I staked and really thought was hopeless but it's done perfectly well. I can't believe how fast they grow and how they survived my hack job dividing it!

i guess you've proved their resilience, eh? thanks again for the update. Blessings...