Currently have a fence row between tracts, wanting to plant a tree row to block the direct line of sight to the neighbors pastures/houses (20+ acre tracts in the country). Madisonville TX area.

What's the go to tree for such an endeavor? Evergreen something or other so I don't have to look at my neighbors across the pasture? Water not an issue with a well -

Aggieland black thumb reporting the ONLY solution that would work for me in this clay soil would be to
plant a pair of trees, "twins" in a bed.
Fast growing but short-lived deciduous Chinese Pistaches @ 25-30ft in 6" raised mulch
with
Slow growth but long lived evergreen Live Oaks @ 30ft inside mulch berm watering rings

Shorter ideas could include pampass grass, evergreen privet, yaupon .....

Always wait until October to begin and be prepared to drip irrigate for at least 2 summers.

Better ideas will come from Garden Success, KAMU 90.9FM Thurs noon, phone-in or email ....

Unless you want a regimented arrangement, consider organized thicket concept with a mix of fast growing colorful trees and native brushy bush.
Decide and cordoned off (if cows) the length and width. Disc and plant in Oct-Dec.
Faster growing ideas water oaks, red oaks, cedars, ash, pistache, china tallows. Brush examps- yaupon, pampas,privet.
Got to water for summers for awhile!

+1 for Eaglestons.

Eagleston and Savannah holly's are my go to for this.

Did this years ago with variety evergreen large hedge and now it's good in places but has spotty openings due to Texas weather and lack of enough sun.

Maybe research bamboos.

The Fargesia bamboos are invaluable for screens as they are clumping and non-invasive in their habit - our favourites include Fargesia Robusta, Fargesia Scabrida, Fargesia Nitida and Fargesia Dracocephala.

If you haven't done so, I recommend putting in some form of automated irrigation. You just don't have enough time to water them as deeply and consistently as you need to. The simplest irrigation set up is those drip spikes that come off of funny pipe. The most in depth is called a deep root watering system. Drive a 3 or 4" PVC pipe about 2' feet long, holes all over it, into the ground vertically about 2' feet from either side of the tree. run a line to the pvc pipe and put a .25 or .50 gallon/minute bubbler over the top or just inside of it. Run that line back to an automated timer.

Your trees will absolutely start filling in.

youtube search deep root watering system

Thanks. I put in drip irrigation to each plant when planted long ago (first used soaker hoses which failed) and ran it for five years thinking they were mature enough to survive. I regret that decision. In hindsight I think the nonaggresiv bamboo would've been easier and better for privacy although these days full privacy is less of a concern.

Sycamore

I planted 3 Eagleston Holly in April. Like previous poster said, skinny right now but getting tall already.

Dod your Eagleston drop leaves when you first planted them?

Barnyard96 said:

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Dod your Eagleston drop leaves when you first planted them?

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Oh man I could write a small book on freaking out about leaf drop.

Yes. They dropped leaves. The nurseries will say transplant shock isn't a thing coming from buckets but the trees definitely focus on root building at the expense of leaves so they drop leaves.

I planted my trees and then we had record breaking drought that put them under a lot of stress. Each spring you'll see a lot of leaf drop as the trees get ready to push new leaves out.

I had two trees that ended the first year with not a leaf on them by the time spring rolled around. They are now super lush.

If you're planting in clay soil you need to be careful about overwatering as well as iron chlorosis. If you're concerned about leaf drop, the best action right now is to spray the leaves with and pour chelated iron into the roots. I'll update with some more info later today with what I did. I saw a nice reversal and green up a few weeks after putting chelated iron on the leaves and in the ground.

Im in Bryan, clay soil planted in March when the soil was dry. 30gallon trees.

We had bubblers installed and feel we probably overwatered and ended up with soaked root ball sitting in dry clay. Then the rains came.

Some look good, some look like Charlie Brown's Christmas.

Mine looked very similar. Couple of recommendations to save you a season of trial and error. Thanks for sharing your photos.
-Take the bamboo stakes since you have other stakes already in place. This will help them stiffen up as the wind pushes them around. And usually you're going to leave that green vinyl tape on too long and it'll show up as ring depressions in the tree bark. Ask me how I know.
-I would look at each tree and reposition a few T post stakes to make each tree go perfectly straight up and down. I know having an nice neat tree stakes looks good now, but some trees are already leaning over and your stakes wont fix it because they are all in a straight line and can't pull them back to center. I would just bite the bullet and make it look messy for a season but have straight trees. I'm currently doing that right now with mine on a few trees.
-I would recommend putting some iron down in the soil to help with chlorosis. I used 6% EDDHA. Put 4 tablespoons per 1" diameter of trunk, work into mulch, water in. Turned out to be a quarter cup per tree and a 4 pound bag did 20 trees. But 6% EDDHA is expensive. Get your soil tested. Bryan might not have as bad of clay as houston and might be able to get something cheaper, but this is the best stuff.
-You can spray a water/chelated iron mix on the leaves for faster green up but it doesn't fix the soil.
-Get the bubbler in a perforated pipe that get the water 6-10" down into the ground. That'll help get good root growth, and get air down into the root layer. During the summer months I still get out and hit the tree bases with a garden hose to soak the mulch ring when it looks like the top layer is getting too try and trees look a bit stressed.
-I'm trying to move into the soil amendment phase over the next year or two so I don't have such chlorosis problems. But its a long process.
-Those trees are going to outgrow their mulch rings in one season. I'd recommend pulling the rocks away from the fence, running some edging about 6" further away from the tree than 'close' edge of the mulch rings and making a whole strip of mulch. This is where I am at right now by the way. Probably going to pull up the grass around my mulch rings this week and take my own advice. Tired of the grass competing with the trees for nutrients and all the extra water/nutrients just making the grass grow super quick right under my trees. You technically don't have that problem as bad since its rocks.
-Sadly, the charlie brown trees you can still pick out 2 years later in my yard compared to the fully lush trees that got planted. They are all bigger, better, and healthier now but the lush trees immediately pushed out 10x more new growth the first year than the charlie brown trees. And then the next season 10x more growth on that growth. When the trees are on the edge of dormancy and the cold has passed (March) trim the trees lightly to direct the new grown and to keep the biggest trees from encroaching on the charlie brown trees.
-Grok and ChatGPT have been awesome to ping questions off of about tree health, fertilizer schedules, trimming, etc. I recommend using it as well as sleuthing around on the internet.

-The best tree I have is the one I brought to church and got blessed by the priest as part of pentacost when it was still in its bucket. It was a bit ridiculous to do, but the priest lamented that american churches don't really bring trees in for pentacost like middle eastern churches do. Americans bring in house plants. I took this as a challenge and wheeled in a 12 foot tall tree. It proudly sat next to the bishops chair as the only tree that year. That tree has had the best growth of all of them I don't think this is coincidental.

If anyone needs help picking out trees, shrubs or plants to make a privacy screen along their property, please let me know. I'd be glad to help. We do this for our customers all the time. Lot's of good suggestions on this thread already.

Based on several factors including soil type, rainfall, time of year, evergreen vs deciduous, size of plant at maturity, etc., we can usually make recommendations for you.

Bob Wells Nursery @ Sorelle Farms

Thanks,

ED

Thanks for the tips.

I dug around two of the charlie brown trees and they are sitting in watery clay holes. I went and bought bags of topsoil and replanted two of them. Widen the holes, removed the clay, and mixed in dirt. The roots had not established yet. The original 30 gallon soil ball picked right up.

I'm sure that stressed the tree some, but this greatly improved its environment.

I'm going to do this to at least two more. The surrounding soil is awful and I should have prepped better. The nursery apparently didnt care

I took a tree to my baptist church, but they assumed it was an offering and they planted it outside the sanctuary.

Meant to reply. See above

How can you get Eagleston Hollys to grow wider? Just takes time? I planted 3 15g trees 2 years ago and they still seem like babies.

Barnyard96 said:

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Thanks for the tips.

I dug around two of the charlie brown trees and they are sitting in watery clay holes. I went and bought bags of topsoil and replanted two of them. Widen the holes, removed the clay, and mixed in dirt. The roots had not established yet. The original 30 gallon soil ball picked right up.

I'm sure that stressed the tree some, but this greatly improved its environment.

I'm going to do this to at least two more. The surrounding soil is awful and I should have prepped better. The nursery apparently didnt care

I took a tree to my baptist church, but they assumed it was an offering and they planted it outside the sanctuary.

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Happy to help. We're all in the same boat trying to screen out our neighbors. I'm sure all of your trees are in clay pots, not just the ones that are looking thin. You'll know if its a problem if you start seeing huge amounts of leaf drop year after year and massive concentrations of leaf drops clustered in areas of the tree instead of just all over.

I've always been told that making the clay pot bigger doesn't solve the problem because you're just delaying the age in which the roots finally decide to push out into the clay. The holes they are planted in need to be 3x diameter of the bucket and planted with about 25% of soil depth of the bucket above ground. Planting in clay its just a balance of watering to meet the holly tree water usage rate. During the summer those trees will soak up to 10-15 gallons of water each a day. Thats why watering should only be two or three really deep waterings a week during the peak summer scorcher temperatures. Give the tree enough time to soak the water up and get rid of its wet feet.

If you really wanted to get rid of the extra water, you could put in a french drain behind the trees but thats a lot of work. I love my trees and I want them to grow as quick as possible to screen out my neighbors and I'm still a bit of eh on french draining them.

Hollys though are pretty tough plants. I would try to not monkey with them to death. I was promptly freaking out about leaf drop up until about this spring when the trees all finally had a big growth push. As much as I wanted it not to be true, 'sleep, creep, then leap' is the standard 3 year growth chart for planting trees.

And about your baptist church planting. They're now anticipating you donating another one to make it symmetrical next year.

maroonpivo said:

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How can you get Eagleston Hollys to grow wider? Just takes time? I planted 3 15g trees 2 years ago and they still seem like babies.

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How old are your trees? We are basically halfway through the summer growth phase right now. Doing anything more than a very light trim right now will stress the trees and your resulting new growth might not be frost hardy come winter. If you can hold off, I would recommend giving a light trim to stimulate growth once the cold has passed in February of next year.

In the meantime, the tree will appreciate the leaves that are destined to be trimmed off next early spring as it'll let those leaves absorb sunlight all fall and winter to store up nutrients in the roots for next years growth.

Whats your watering schedule look like? Fertilizing schedule? Those are both hugely important to growth.

I've got a bubbler on each tree that puts .25 gal/min of water at the roots of the trees and its on a timer. Really helps get the tree watered year round. Even just a soaker hose and a timer can help a ton.

I was recommended on texags to use Lesco Polyplus Opti45 28-3-10 and its been great. Its slow release so you can really pile it on and it wont burn your tree. I'll probably switch to 14-14-14 for next year as I think I need some more phosphorous

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm sure were all just floating around in remedial and 101 tree care.

Do you have any experience with the oak tree varietal that is very vertical? Skyclimber is one of the versions but I think there are more.

Thanks.

They planted them too low….

And i sent you the lesco recommendation!

Planted in April 2023. Fertilize twice a year with Osmocote. Water with sprinkler 3x a week. Was running hose on it in its first year with tree rotations then went to sprinkler. Trim in March. I know we don't give them enough attention as they deserve, just still little guys!

I had a much smaller screening project but chose to go with Little Gem Magnolias - 7 total to cover about 50 feet. So far, okay. Biggest issue has been deer going after them in the wintertime. They are slow growing and can be messy, but I love the look of them in the screening rows that have been done successfully.

Barnyard96 said:

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And i sent you the lesco recommendation!

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Hahaha this made me bust out laughing. Sorry about that Barnyard!

Its good stuff! I made the guy working the Lesco store look at me weird. They don't get many retail customers, especially ones looking for turfgrass fertilizer for trees. I basically had to tell the guy working the counter to please shut up and go get me what I want.

I've got one tree thats a bit wilty on its limbs and I think thats related to low phosphorous. Gotta wait though because phosphorous binds to chelated iron and makes them both harder to uptake.

maroonpivo said:

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Planted in April 2023. Fertilize twice a year with Osmocote. Water with sprinkler 3x a week. Was running hose on it in its first year with tree rotations then went to sprinkler. Trim in March. I know we don't give them enough attention as they deserve, just still little guys!

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I think you're doing the right things. I'd recommend finding a way to get water on them for deeper soaking than just sprinklers. Do you have any pictures from when you planted them to today? You don't have to share, just that I bet they've grown just not at the rate you'd like. These trees are technically moderate growers that only gain about a foot per year once established.

15 gallon trees can get as small as 1" trunk diameter, usually 1.5". They're technically not big trees yet. Mine started out in that bucket and there is still about on average 3 feet of open space between most trees above the fenceline. Realistically its going to take 4-5 more years to make the hedge wall I want.

The widest trees I have are ones where the nursery cut the leader branch off for some reason, I didn't catch it, and the tree they developed a really wide growth pattern instead of more conical shape. They have shot out wide and are slowly all growing upward like a front. I wouldn't recommend that approach.

When I drive around my neighborhood and see houses that have actually been able to screen out their neighbors the trees look to be on average 20-25 years in the ground. Granted, they were screening their neighbors completely around 10 years ago but still. The mature tree look we all want is going to take time. My wife jokes that I'll never get this screen and that the future homeowners of this house will.

See if this works.

I am the wife so I can definitely understand your wife's feelings! We've been here 9 years so I tell my husband we should have done this first thing, then they'd really be something today! Will try to add back the water hose rotation; I was afraid I was overwatering it after a year so that's why I went to just the sprinkler route. I do think I should have planted them a foot closer to each other and bought 1 more.

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Thanks for posting photos. So I've got some good news and some bad news.

The good news: The trees are definitely growing and on track. They've only had 1.5 real growing seasons and they're up about 2 feet in height. They've grown out thicker as well and no real signs of yellowing leaf drop so that is on track and good.
The bad news: They look to be spaced at 9ish feet apart based upon counting pickets. They're most likely only going to form a privacy hedge when approaching near full maturity. These trees will get 25ish feet tall and 20 feet in diameter in full maturity. Thats going to take a while to get full coverage of your neighbors. You're probably 7-8 years away from those trees getting branches that touch all the way up to 15 feet high and forming a hedge.

Hedge planting spacing is recommended to be 5-6 feet and you can go as tight as 4 and not have many problems.

The good news: At 9ish feet you can certainly go back in and plant another tree in between them.
The bad news: Money

If you just want something nice to look at, those trees will do great as is. If you want a screening hedge, I'd recommend putting a tree in between them if you've got at least 8 feet between trees now.

I'd also recommend making your mulch rings a bit bigger to match the dripline of your trees (Where your tree branches extend to.) Will help the tree not fight grass for nutrients. I'd also recommend putting in bubblers on a sprinkler valve at the base of the each tree to get consistent watering in.

If you're interested in planting an extra set of trees and up for the task yourself, I'd highly recommend Glenn Flora Farms out in Wharton TX. Its technically now Moon Valley Nursery's wholesale place. Its a drive from y'all but they have 15 gallon eagleston hollies that are about the size you currently have for $150 bucks each if you show up, pick em out yourself and leave with them on your own trailer/truck. Its where I bought my trees from and went back and got another one. They are a massive operation and its cool to get back in the trees. The road noise falls away and all you can hear is the bees buzzing. Really neat.

Planting 2-4 trees isn't that bad. Good way to spend a weekend.

By the way your trees are going to explode with growth next year. They've leafed out a good bit and the amount of sites to sprout new branches is way higher. It'll be an exponential increase in new leaves next year. One final recommendation would be to take a pole, set it to 42" and then cut everything beneath it on your trees. (next early spring). This will help the trees grow up instead of trying to grow out very close to the ground where you don't need the hedges touching. Don't lop em off right now as those leaves will help store energy for next years growth.

General disclaimer - There are a ton of factors that cause a tree to do well or do poor. The condition of the tree and the rootball at time of planting, your soil type, how deep or shallow tree was planted, amendments used, weather, rainfall etc.

Ok, got that out of the way :-)

If you are not getting good growth and you are about two years down the road, there is a good chance the roots were rootbound at time of planting. If you have heavy clay soil, this can exacerbated because the roots will tend to just circle around the hole.

To encourage new growth, do some light pruning on the tips of the branches in winter (4-6 inches back is a good guage). This will encourage a flush of new growth in the spring. Also, patience is a virtue in these cases oftentimes.

Good luck, and reach out at any time.

There are two Live Oak varieties that tend to have an upright growth habit. They are the Cathedral and Sky Climber. I do not have any personal experience with these two varieties, as I have historically grown just the standard Live Oak (Quercus virginiana).

If the eaglestons are planted a little low is that going to be a problem long-term?

Greatly appreciate all the tips! We are located in Houston if that tells you what type of soil we are dealing with. The nursery dug and installed for us so hopefully they did it right. I honestly missed the first winter's prune, so it's only had 1 trim.

We have discussed squeezing in 2 more for a full row.

The number one mistake most homeowners make when planting a tree is to plant it to deep. Better to be a bit too shallow than too deep. You should be able to see the root flare of the tree/shrub, and should keep the area around the truck clear of mulch.

https://garrettchurchill.com/what-is-a-root-flare-and-why-is-it-so-critical-when-planting/

At this point, if they have been in the ground for a while, just do your best to clear the top of the rootball of any dirt or mulch and check for girdling or circling roots and prune them in the winter.

Glad to help if I can.

If a nursery/landscape company did the install, they should know what they are doing and you'd expect that it was done correctly.

There is no magic formula, but usually the third year is where you start to see some real growth. First year they sleep, second year they creep, and third year they leap.